If I were Andrew Sullivan, I’d feel pretty stupid. He supported the war on the same ideological (indeed, idealistic) assumptions of the Bush administration, citing the need for democratizing the Arab World and the possibility of doing so with US arms. The war’s now failed because of those ideological assumptions, and Sullivan is not man enough to admit it. He instead wants to pass the buck.
This strategic concept led to abysmally low troop levels. Pollyannish assumptions about Iraqi democracy combined with pollyannish assumptions about likely Iraqi responses to their “liberation.” The allocation of few US troops was based on the idea that the Iraqis wouldn’t need much policing, would appreciate our gift, would view more troops as occupiers, and would prove responsible enough to behave peaceably and then take over the reigns of a democratic Iraqi government.
The superficially hard-headed Rumsfeld and Cheney bought into these radical assumptions. These views had the double effect of also allowing the technology-obsessed Rumsfeld to validate his transformation concept.
They told us three SF troops, a donkey, and a B2 bomber can conquer Iraq and Iran at the same time. Acknowledging the reality of Iraqi backwardness would have required Rusmfeld (and Sullivan) to acknowledge that far more troops would be needed after we destroyed their piss-poor conventional military, and, for the same reason, also to acnowledge that the Iraqis probably could not create a successful democracy. These troops would be needed chiefly for occupying a primitive, violent, and tribal people for years to come simply to prevent it from becoming a terrorist haven and a destabilizing region. To recognize these things would require our military to devolve into a throwback from World War I, with large cadres of infantry detailed for counter-insurgency and occupation duty. And we’d have to reconsider large portions of our domestic and international policy, insofar as they assume civilizational compatibility between ourselves and the Arab and Muslim world.
Far from being a war for oil, this was a war to prove a political theory that would have been familiar to the radicals of the French Revolution. And it also was waged to prove a military theory worthy of Al Haig. Whether the political or military theorizing predominated in Pentagon decision-making is hard to say. It is clear that post-war planning was informed by highly radical and untested assumptions by highly ideological people and their lackeys in the uniformed military,such as Tommy Franks.
So, Sullivan now carps: “Fire Rumsfeld Now” among other harsh things. But Sullivan and his neoconservative cronies had a lot to do with this war, including their vigorous defense of Iraqi capacity for democracy. Where’s Sullivan’s infamous emotiveness when it’s time for a mea culpa.
Let’s not forget Sullivan’s giddiness when the Iraqis elected a bunch of ethno-religious political parties, “I don’t want to be excitable, but aren’t you feeling euphoric? It’s almost a classic tale of good defeating evil. We always needed the Iraqi people to seize freedom for themselves. Given the chance, they have. This is their victory, made possible by those amazing Western troops.”
The pro-democracy views Rumsfeld and Sullivan share contributed to how few troops were committed to Iraq. They reasoned that if the Iraqis are good enough for democracy, they’re good enough to run their own show. They also misdiagnosed Soviet ills in Afghanistan, concluding that more troops would be seen as an army of occupation, increasing friction and the likelihood of a guerrilla war.
But Sullivan and other neoconservatives enabled this delusion. In February of 2003, he wrote, “[Bush]has to show the essentially progressive nature of the war against Islamist terror and its state sponsors – not just for the security of the West but for the future of the Arab world.”
So, while Rusmfeld and Sullivan may have come to disagree about troop levels in the Iraq mission, theirs was a disagreement about tactics among people with fundamentally similar views. Sullivan’s shares the same messianic concept of the Iraq mission with Rumsfeld and Bush. And rather than revisit his liberal, pro-democracy assumptions, he instead projects gross incompetence upon Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld may be incompetent, but he’s also very smart. He’s incompetent because his thinking is warped by the same liberal ideology that he shares in common with Sullivan.
