Ricks delivers a good-old-fashioned bean ball

Tue, 06/30/2009 - 3:52pm

By Peter Feaver

I received a couple high, hard, fast ones from fellow FP blogger (full disclosure: and old friend) Tom Ricks recently.

What provoked his ire was a blog post of mine which expressed concern about whether it was prudent to stick inflexibly to the withdrawal schedule. I noted that people whose judgment I respected were on both sides of the "is it safe to do this now" issue. I concluded that I hoped it was safe to do so but I also hoped it would not lead to a stampede for the exit that would leave Iraq in a far worse position. My policy conclusion, Tom conceded, was the same as his own.

So what led him to reach deep into his junior-high gym-bag for such rocks as "kool-aidish" and "repeat after me?" Apparently my sin was I referenced an article by Fareed Zakaria that was entitled (by Fareed, not by me) "Victory in Iraq." In my blog post, I did not use the word "victory" to characterize the situation in Iraq. Check that, I deliberately did not use the word victory. Instead, I wrote "the opportunity for a decent outcome in Iraq seems tantalizingly close." But Fareed did use the v-word and I did link to it, albeit with an explicit sense of irony, and I guess that was enough for Tom to revisit the central theme of his work: Bush (and people who worked for Bush) merit history's condemnation because they/we made mistakes in Iraq.

Tom is perhaps the most celebrated advocate of this view and, like all partisans in a fight, he is keen to see that his villains stay in the stockade. Thus, when a former Bush-staffer like me says that we should be careful not to undo the progress we have achieved since 2007 -- or when another former Bush-staffer like John Hannah (the other villain in his piece) says that after all the mistakes the Bush administration made in Iraq it would be a shame to squander recent progress with a hasty exit -- we must be condemned, even though those points are exactly the ones that Ricks himself makes.  

I don't have quite the same animus he has and feel more comfortable in the role of an umpire who just calls them as I see them. Tom and I agree that the Bush administration made mistakes in Iraq and that these mistakes have had tragic costs associated with them. Where we appear to part company is here: I think that the Bush administration also did some things right in Iraq, notably President Bush's surge decision, and that this means that President Bush salvaged some things in Iraq that the next team should seek to preserve. And Tom and I appear to part company on one further matter: I believe the other team is up at bat now, and so it seems proper to attribute to them the consequences of their choices, just as we did with the consequences of the previous team's choices.

I think Tom is persuadable on this last point, because it is the logical conclusion of an insight I read from a trenchant observer of the Iraqi scene writing in 2008: "...the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened."

So was Tom chiming 13 when he went after me? The umpire in me says that this was less a 13th chime and more a good-old-fashioned bean ball. I can take a bean ball or two just so long as they don't tap into something deeper still.

Peter Feaver | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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You're far too kind: The guy

by blue13326 on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 3:37am

You're far too kind: The guy reverts to the emotional maturity of a boy entering puberty whenever anyone suggests Iraq might not be a total catastrophe.

It's amazing to think that his real job was supposed to be impartially reporting on the war.

logic..

by jms180 on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 8:39am

... appears to be on your side here, Dr. Feaver. If I can digress, the few non-partisan pragmatists left in the foreign policy community recognized long ago that the Bush administration's mishaps in Iraq had been matched or exceeded in ignorance by the anti-Bush, anti-Iraq, anti-logic fervor that spread across the Left beginning in 2004-05. From someone who was only tangentially attached the Right before the war it was extremely disappointing to see their only opposition intellectually implode just as I lost faith in the Republican Party. They proved they can be just as petty, ideological, and narrow-minded as the "hard right," only they -- with their ivy-league educations -- can't legitimately claim ignorance. (See: our troops are making things worse -- only when they leave will things get better, the only way out of this is a regional/diplomatic solution with Iraq's neighbors, this war is lost, we must break Iraq up into three countries, the surge will never work, etc). On the other hand both sides actions since 2003 makes one realize how poisonous and counterproductive politics is vis a vis policy, and that those infatuated with the former cannot be trusted to conduct the latter.

As to your exchange with Mr. Ricks, suffice to say anyone who still uses "nice job, W!" as the punch line in an article, essay, blog post, or passing thought, doesnt deserve a serious response -- even if they have done a more than commendable job reporting in their previous life.

False argument

by motown67 on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:15am

jms180 wrote
"pragmatists left in the foreign policy community recognized long ago that the Bush administration's mishaps in Iraq had been matched or exceeded in ignorance by the anti-Bush, anti-Iraq, anti-logic fervor that spread across the Left beginning in 2004-05."

The problem with this argument is that the "mishaps" of the Bush administration had actual effects upon the U.S. forces and Iraqis. The anti-Bush camp just talked a bunch, but had no influence on policy. The U.S. has spent $50 billion in Iraq and according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction the one thing we got out of it was a rebuilt Iraqi army. The reconstruction goals failed. That was due to the faulty assumptions and lack of coordination in the White House for dealing with post-war Iraq that lasted all the way up to the end of 2006. Can this "mishap" be matched by the anti-Bush camp? I think not.

Those Magical Pulitzer Prizers

by courtneyme109 on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 11:18am

They love to dish it out (often with no footnotes or id'd sources) yet cannot seem to bear counters, friendly give and take or open questioning. Kinda like Dr Fred Kaplan.

Hard Luck

by Zathras on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 11:51am

We haven't had a President fail the country as badly as George W. Bush did, or in as many ways as George W. Bush did, in a while. I imagine some people who worked in the Buchanan and Harding administrations also felt aggrieved that later critics didn't recognize they were doing the best they could, appreciate their accomplishments or acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes. But these people are all long gone now, so former officials in President Bush's administration are having to find their own ways of bearing the burden of their association with him.

My advice is to suck it up and tough it out. The Republican Party will be a permanent, out of power minority party as long as it is seen by the public as George Bush's party. So from a purely partisan viewpoint public defenses of Bush's decisions now are about as useful as arguments that Watergate was, too, just a third-rate burglary would have been during mid-1970s. Is that fair to everyone who worked in his administration? Is life fair? No administration in recent history has had as many damage control assignments dumped on its desk as President Obama's; I imagine its officials probably look askance at "umpires" from the last admininstration offering guidance as to the resolution of problems they helped cause in the first place, and wonder if that's quite fair.

What provoked his ire was a

by J Thomas on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 1:56pm

What provoked his ire was a blog post of mine which expressed concern about whether it was prudent to stick inflexibly to the withdrawal schedule.

So, the iraqi government did not agree to revise the schedule. What was the alternative to following the treaty we had signed?

Well, two choices. Maybe we could have coerced the iraqi government into agreeing to change the treaty. Or failing that we could break the treaty.

The problem with the first approach is that the iraqi government gets its legitimacy entirely from its ability to influence us. It has an army that we supply and that we do close-air support for, and that our military bails out when it gets into things it can't handle. And it has made the promise that it can get the US military out of iraq. Those are its basic claims to legitimacy in iraq. If we show that they can't get us out, they lose all their support.

I guess maybe it's OK to take a realist position and argue that our treaties don't mean anything. They're just scraps of paper really, and all that truly matters is the force you can bring to bear to back up your decrees. But that has such profound implications, I'd hesitate to publicly state it. And yet that is what you were saying, wasn't it?

For awhile the UN said it was OK for us to occupy iraq. But that agreement ran out. And then we had an iraqi government which gave their permission for us to continue to occupy iraq without any responsibility to them. And now the iraqi government says they want us out after awhile, and we tell them that no, we're going to stay regardless?

You want Obama to tear up the treaty that Bush signed, and occupy iraq with no more justification than israel occupying the west bank or russia occupying hungary? "We don't need anybody's permission, we're the only world superpower and we can do anything we want."

Somehow that doesn't sound like something Obama would want to get caught doing. It sounds more like Bush.

And you wonder that your friend Ricks says you're being an idiot?

Re: Hard Luck & What provoked his ire was a

by jt1928 on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 7:21pm

I don't disagree with your point that, fairly or unfairly, many Americans will associate the GOP with the incompetence that characterized the early years of the Iraq war, Katrina, etc. But Thomas Ricks is supposed to be an objective analyst and should be able to separate himself from partisan viewpoints and a mainstream narrative to assess the Bush administration. His use of "kool aid, nice job W" and similar cliches - used regularly in his posts - seems more appropriate for a more childish segment of the blogosphere. I'm a fan of his work, but frankly, his posts are a bit disappointing.

Regarding J Thomas's comment, if you actually read Feaver's original post and Biddle's essay that he cited, you'd see that neither suggested the U.S. remain in Iraq against the wishes of the national government and occupy the country in a West Bank/Hungary-like scenario. Biddle specifically says that the U.S. should renegotiate the SOFA with Baghdad if the security situation worsens, noting that the Maliki government was under political pressure to demand a near withdrawal date in the SOFA due to the upcoming elections. I guess he's an idiot too.

Regarding J Thomas's comment,

by J Thomas on Sat, 07/04/2009 - 6:44am

Regarding J Thomas's comment, if you actually read Feaver's original post and Biddle's essay that he cited, you'd see that neither suggested the U.S. remain in Iraq against the wishes of the national government and occupy the country in a West Bank/Hungary-like scenario.

Well, good!

In that case, what's the problem? We tell the iraqi government they ought to let us stay longer, they tell us no, we go away.

It's prudent for us to stick to our agreement unless the iraqi government decides otherwise. It isn't our choice. (Unless the iraqi government asks us to stay longer, and in that case we get the choice whether to pull out on schedule anyway.)

It isn't our choice. We don't have to decide whether it's prudent. So if Feaver isn't talking about ignoring our treaty, there's nothing to talk about and Feaver isn't really talking about anything.

End of story.

Irony

by wolfboy on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 8:15am

No, Dr. Feaver, your link to Zakaria was not made with a sense of irony; it was made in an attempt to bolster your argument by citing someone who might be a particularly credible optimist - not the same thing.

What is ironic is the plaintive request to be seen as an impartial umpire, who would never recklessly use the V word, when in fact you were previously one of the most important cheerleaders for the war and not at all shy about projecting victory.

You are not a credible umpire on Iraq, as your SG posts make clear; please face this reality. For what it's worth, I accept that I am not either.