Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer

George Packer has written a truly enlightening and intriguing book about our descent into Iraq. Packer is a lucid and engaging writer who can clearly summarize the intellectual debate between the neoconservatives and the realists. It's also a sad book. Learning how policy is arrived out and then justified and implemented can be very discouraging.

The neocons and Bush had decided to go after Iraq for a variety of reasons before 9/11. The concern then became how to sell that decision. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad Paul Wolfowitz fold an interviewer: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S, government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction." The real rationale for the war was to realign American power in the Middle East, toward a democratic society and away from Saudi Arabia, home of the Wahhabi sect that virtually controlled Saudi society and government and had been the home to almost all of the 9/11 terrorists. (See Sandra MacKey's very excellent book on Saudi Arabia -- The Saudis -- for a detailed view of what it's like to live in such a theocracy.)

The job then became to selectively use pieces of intelligence that supported their common justification. "Just a year earlier, Iraq had been viewed as an outlaw state that was beginning to slip free of international constraints and might present a threat to the region or, more remotely, the United States in five years or so. Now, suddenly, there wasn't a day to be lost. . . It didn't matter that there was no strong evidence to back up the doomsday prognosis."

Scotsman.com News - International - Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer

Scotsman.com News - International - Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer

Other "creationism is nonsense" links:

"Don't distort science to promote religious beliefs, say scientists"

Excellent screed

This guy nails it. I heard a great line the other day. It's about as impossible to teach Democrats fiscal responsibility as it is to teach Republicans decency.

Christian Republicans?

Other comments:

John Adams: ""This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

""Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects." - James Madison

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." - Thomas Paine

Familiar names

[we advocate] . ..the spread of democratic forms of government and open economic systems. . . our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."
from the Defense Planning Guidance, 1992, of which Paul Wolfowitz was an architect.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was founded in 1997 by Robert Kagan (erstwhile Wilsonian Democrat who believed the lesson learned in Vietnam was not to withdraw from the world, but to promote American values and democracy hegemonically throughout the world) and William Kristol. Early members included Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. (Sound familiar?) They signed a document recommending to President Clinton that a change of regime was needed in Iraq. Iraq had been on the mind of Wolfowitz as early as the late 70's when he was an official in the Carter administration. He authored the Limited Contingency Study that argued for an invasion of Iraq to seize and thus control the oil fields of Iraq. And who said oil had nothing to do with the invasion? How convenient was 9/11 for these folks to provide the justification for what they had always wanted to do anyway.

Vietnam by Any Other Name

Bibliography:

In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam by Robert McNamara
Dereliction of Duty : Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H.R. McMaster (written as a dissertation by a colonel who just finished a tour of duty at Tal Afar, Iraq, the city cited recently by President Bush as a measurable success, it castigates the generals during the Vietnam War who avoided telling the truth to their political superiors with disastrous results.)

Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American by Cecil Currey

American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips

The Assassin's Gate by George Packer

"Changing the Army for Counter-Insurgency Operations" by Brigadier General Nigel Aylwin-Foster. (This article was sent to every general in the US Army by the Army chief of Staff. Much of it was publicly disavowed but privately applauded. It was published in Military Review, a US Army publication. The link is to a pdf copy of the article)

I know the administration and other representing the head-in-the-sand approach to foreign policy remain committed to the idea that parallels to Vietnam are fallacious. I cannot help but being struck - as one who lived through Vietnam as a very draftable college study - by the similarities of language and participants. Just look at Rumsfeld, he even resembles McNamara. Both had similar ideological agendas: to reform the military and make it right and efficient; both used language to obfuscate reality ("They didn't even want to say the 'i' word," 'one officer in Iraq told me' "It was the specter of Vietnam... The next word is 'quagmire.'" **. ; and Rumsfeld is well on the well to being discarded the way McNamara was on the slag heap of history. Whether he'll have the fortitude or guts to do a mea culpa as did McNamara remains to be seen. And this ghastly "Coalition of the Willing" for heaven's sake. Twelve soldiers from El Salvador? Vietnam's obloquy to multi-nationalism all over again

Now that we are building permanent bases in Iraq, the future is dim, I fear. Can we never learn from the past? The Communists in Vietnam knew they would win; all they had to do was wait us out. It was, after all, their country. Sooner or later we would have to leave. The insurgents - oh, excuse me, the "enemies of the legitimate government of Iraq - know that too.

And finally, someone admits this war is just about protecting our supplies of oil. Bravo Kevin. Any moron could see that formed a major undeclared justification, even if most reporters ignored Cheney's comments years ago about it being a way to protect our source of oil.

It's all so sad.

** The New Yorker, April 10, 2006, p. 51