Thomas Ricks on Iraq

New Republic's Isaac Chotiner interviews Thomas Ricks, and it's an interview well worth reading in full. I disagree with Ricks' rebuke of Biden's foresighted (I believe) partition plan--a rebuke whose reasoning Ricks fails to spell out--but in general the former military correspondent assesses the Iraq mess with almost incontrovertible clarity. A key passage worth quoting at some length:

In many ways, the Obama people are handling a situation they didn’t create. A lot of this is all fruit of the poisoned tree. Maliki is the result of a botched political process that began under Bremer. We went in and said, "we’re going to hold national American-style elections, one man, one vote." And the country had three profoundly different groups who are at each other’s throats. It was insane. At that point, when we wanted one man, one vote, we turned control of that country over to Iran and that’s why it appalls me when you see Cheney and Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams saying the Obama administration blew it. No, the Obama administration was trying to clean up the mess these guys made.

I suspect foreign-policy historians will barely footnote them--the Cheneys, the Wolfowitzes, the Abramses--with respect to the Obama administration's Iraq involvement, or rather disengagement (I hope). They're seemingly everywhere now because lazy network bookers and their whorish, ratings-obsessed executive superiors find comfort in names the television audience will recognize. But in the long run they're just that: history--barely footnotable history.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

But I suspect those very names will resonate in every graduate school devoted to international affairs and diplomacy as a case study in self deception. As far as wishful thinking goes Iraq makes the Bay of Pigs look like just a glitch.

[Peter G]

Btw, In many ways? Bullshit. In every single reflection, transformation and translation there is Obama's people are handling a situation hand crafted by the nitwits in the previous administration.

[Max]

Ah, the Bay of Pigs, anther mess Ike left Jack Kennedy, something that seemingly no one ever touches on (as well as all the other messes Ike left is successor, like Indochina and racial segregation, to name two biggies).

All of this depends on who is writing the history books. We knew by early 2002 that our grandchildren will still be cleaning up the Bush Catastrophe, and it is up to us to remind our children and grandchildren this.