I think it worthy of comment that there are a number of accounts of the interdepartmental warfare within the Bush administration that manage not to mention the President at all.

This would be hard to imagine in Nixon's administration, or Reagan's, or even Carter's, if the subject being discussed were the given administration's top foreign policy priority.

I was far less impressed with Packer's account, partly because of the devotion to the inside-the-Beltway soap opera elements (Pentagon vs. State) that seem to play so well to so many people, partly because for the most part it repeats familiar and unpersuasive themes.

First, I guess those 15 single-spaced pages in the State memo must have contained some history that's so classified none of us have heard of it - because "international support" is arguably NOT a factor in the key early stages of most successful occupations. The key factor is a competent, strong occupational authority -- most often a single power or a coalition with a clearly dominant power -- with an effective plan for re-engaging the locals in their own affairs. The best occupations/transformations have featured a strong single power running the show (Japan, Germany in the western zone, East Timor under an Australian-dominated operation) -- and the worst have featured many cooks stirring the broth, none of them playing for keeps (Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, various other African situations).

Iraq is a hybrid situation -- the international war was finished, leaving the civil war, in which we are the main player. Iraqis of all leanings (save for the small group of dead-enders whose world we have destroyed and who have no alternative but to fight) are of course most interested in security, but that translates in this case into: does the US have the will to finish off the losing side in the vesitigial civil war? Iraqis rightly aren't focused on whether Uruguay or Malaysia are committed - it's US commitment to finish the war that counts here.

Second, the "more troops" thing has never passed muster, and to me is sort of a key indicator of sloppy analysis. Most US forces in Iraq will serve there and leave without seeing much action (good thing). Most of the country is quiet. The consistently unquiet parts don't need more troops, but they probably do need different troops, with better intelligence and language capabilities. Or perhaps not. Perhaps some things in human and military affairs just take time, effort, the adaptation we are seeing among US forces, and sacrifice. Perhaps there isn't always an operations-analysis silver bullet that turns lead into gold.

A civil war with an international overlay such as today's Iraq doesn't get solved in a few weeks. It takes time to kill and capture enough of the bad guys to break the back of their doomed undertaking. It takes time to engage a populace understandably spooked by past experience and still fearful of their erstwhile oppressors and unsure of the grit or skill of their new "friends".

The implied "we told you so" re post-war planning rings rather hollow. Warrick's still breathing, all those documents produced still exist -- if they provided great solutions to today's myriad challenges in Iraq, I doubt they would not be used. Bremer reports to DOD but is surrounded by a phalanx of State regional experts.

In any case, it's not the reconstruction per se that's the main issue, it's security. There surely have been/will be major mistakes in the reconstruction, but some of those are in execution (media training, to mention one where I have the inside story), and if some spurned State project had all the ingenious answers I'm sure that will be documented some day -- but I'm not buying it based on what we know.

As for Rumsfeld's aversion to use of forces as peacekeepers, it's sensible -- but a moot point at the moment. The troops in some parts of the country are fighting a limited version of a low-intensity conflict, so they're not peacekeepers.

It's not clear how any "plan" would have materially altered the post-war security situation. The dead-enders have to be finished off -- no planning could have finessed that (and speculation as to the extent and nature of the trouble-making was just that -- speculation -- making the post-war anonymous we-told-you-so comments by intelligence types especially juvenile).

Second-guessing the reconstruction planning is surely possible, but mostly an arid exercise -- and meeting the threshhold of materially altering the post-war situation might not be so easily met.

Let me get this right.

Pentagon: Bad
State Dept: Good

That about right?

Try reading Mark Steyn's commentary about his personal experiences in Iraq. It's obvious Parker didn't make it out into the country.

The implied "we told you so" re post-war planning rings rather hollow. Warrick's still breathing, all those documents produced still exist -- if they provided great solutions to today's myriad challenges in Iraq, I doubt they would not be used.

As a matter of fact, Ice, they ARE being used now, as the NYT reported last month:

The groups' ideas may not have been fully incorporated before the war, but they are getting a closer look now. Many of the Iraqi ministers are graduates of the working groups, and have brought that experience with them. Since last spring, new arrivals to Mr. Bremer's staff in Baghdad have received a CD-ROM version of the State Department's 13-volume work. "It's our bible coming out here," said one senior official in Baghdad.

And Daniel, as time goes by, your perversely self-congratulatory grip on the "no coherent narrative" meme comes across more and more like a willful retreat into ignorance. Of course, no one can be sure exactly how things will turn out, but over time certain possibilities become more or less likely. Someone who purports to offer intelligent commentary on foreign affairs (and indeed, apparently gets paid for it on occasion!) should at least aspire to offer some insight into these trends, rather than throwing up his hands and saying "Sorry, no coherent narrative! I can't help you!" every chance he gets.

For example, instead of the NoCohNarr copout, you might discuss the growing signs that the U.S. occupation has backed itself into a position where Grand Ayatollah Sistani has gained more control over what Iraq's next government will look like than Bush, Bremer, or anyone else on the American side. Whatever that implies for the overall "narrative," odds are that it's not good.

I think they had to have the war in March to pre-empt the IAEA announcement that Iraq was nuke-free. I have no way of telling whether more troops could have been put in before that, but it makes sense that they went in shorthanded because otherwise, there would have been no Brits.

In any case, as far as "more troops" I'm with IceCold. More troops would just mean more convoys, more patrols, or more bored troops... it's a line from the Democratic establishment, which was afraid to be against the war, and tried to put up all these technical obstacles instead of being honest and forthright.

Dear SWOPA,

You nailed some good points there. Let's put it into perspective - any situation can be confusing and most of all wartime situations. The essence of leadership is judgement and communication. If there is no 'coherent narrative' it means that our government has failed to communicate a coherent plausible interpretation of events. All their stuff comes out as tin-earred propaganda, and the media is always doom-and-gloom and the-sky-is-falling melodrama so no one knows what to believe. But the failure lies in the Administration. If we have no 'coherent narrative' it's because the Admin ain't telling it straight. And that's not just my opinion- that's the opinion that came out of the Republican governor's conference recently.

The second point is that judgement is clearly lacking. Even Dan can see that the post-war planning lacked judgement. Garner recently has come out against what went down too. Furthermore, incidents like the failure to cooperate properly with Sistani show extremely poor judgement. Incident after incident only underlies this epic level of cluelessness. And not only is it apparent to us, it is even more so apparent to the Iraqis. Salam Pax's statement is a strong indication of that. Even pro-USA Iraqis don't think we know what we're doing.

Now, it doesn't matter if things are getting better over there in a sort of jumbled disorganized way. What people pay attention to is the jumbled disorganized bit. Iraqi's are used to strong order. When they sense that we are fumbling our way through things like a virgin boy in the backseat of a car, then they get leery and start thinking that maybe we aren't going to do things right and see it through. And that lack of confidence is destroying any chance of success over there. It's destroying it at the highest levels of the IGC and Sistani, and it's destroying it at the lowest levels when Iraqi youths throw rocks at Western military vehicles.

We have no coherent overall thrust over there, and that is the coherent narrative of what is going on. The story is that there is no story, and that is the news because this is a situation where confusion can be equated with eventual failure.

In any case, as far as "more troops" I'm with IceCold. More troops would just mean more convoys, more patrols, or more bored troops.

By that logic, shouldn't we have kept all the troops at home?

Theoretically, those convoys and patrols are supposed to be serving a purpose -- protecting Iraqis. The fact that we've largely abdicated that role (because we barely have enough troops to protect ourselves) is the primary reason so many Iraqis resent the occupation.

When they sense that we are fumbling our way through things like a virgin boy in the backseat of a car, then they get leery and start thinking that maybe we aren't going to do things right and see it through. And that lack of confidence is destroying any chance of success over there. . . . this is a situation where confusion can be equated with eventual failure.

Well said, Oldman.

Dear SWOPA,

It is my prediction that in the next 30 days - until the new year - the war in Iraq will resemble a high-noon show-down that may well determine the course of events decisively there. What is the basis of my prediction?

The good news is that the military is deploying a short term increase of boots on the ground, including Marines, and more counter-insurgency type troops, as well as lighter faster armored calvary. Along with the small injections of foreign forces, despite the naysaying of some liberals this might turn the tide and totally shut down the Iraqi insurgence.

The bad news is that the heavy handed tactics being used like collective punishment are already starting to backfire; the decrease in insurgence attacks may have had more to do with the end of Ramadan than US military maneuvers and so will reverse itself soon; the new US deployment includes the potentially fatally flawed Stryker retrofit units which if the armored cage doesn't hold may prove veritable death traps as well as other untried units; the temporary increase in numbers will be drawn back down again as of early next year so that the insurgency only has to wait us out; the Marines jug-heads that they are only staying for six-month deployments instead of the army one year policy; We are losing all Iraqi political cohesion over there ala Sistani and the IGC falling apart.

What this all adds up to, is that by Xmas we ought to know if the new military mix is going to make significant progress on the ground and win the confidence of the Iraqi's, or their public opinion will start to turn decisively against us. We live in interesting times. As of right now, I'd say it's a toss-up - it could go either way.

Second-guessing the reconstruction planning is surely possible, but mostly an arid exercise.

Even Jay Garner, considered tight with the neo-cons prewar, has gone public with how unprepared he was, and how Rumsfeld and Cheney made matters as bad as possible for him, mostly due (I think) to the maleficent influence of Ahmed Charlatan Chalabi, master of the Iraqi 4-1-9 scam.

Daniel D., I sense a sort of disconnect between your praise for Packer's excellent article and your criticism of Matt Yglesias just downscreen. I felt the Turkey Accomplished was as good a morale-booster as any, and the sort of PR incumbents can legitimately generate for themselves, which is probably the first time I'm more generous to Bush than Yglesias. But then, I didn't believe a word of the Administration in the run-up to the war; I found its 2000 campaign or its promise of tax cuts and surpluses too ample evidence of reflexive mendacity. Someone who did trust the Administration before, and is now so disappointed with reason, you seem to agree, shouldn't be faulted for seeing everything they do now in the most twisted way.

“There is still no coherent narrative about the future of Iraq.”

I haven’t the foggiest notion what this sentence means (perhaps I’m too dense?). Human beings in the real world basically muddle through with general plans that may have to be changed at a moment’s notice. The role of “planning” is grossly exaggerated. One could plan until the cows come home and never get anything done.

“Bureaucratic politics made an absolute hash out of the pre-war planning for the postwar reconstruction of Iraq.”

This is a secondary issue. More importantly, we acted “multilaterally” and France repaid us by stabbing us in the back. This betrayal then encouraged the Turkish government to prohibit us from invading Iraq from the north. In other words, when you read about the deaths of the coalition’s brave soldiers---make sure you remember to blame the French. Their government is our unofficial enemy.

What about Donald Rumsfield’s alleged difficulties with the State Department? Unfortunately, the latter organization is filled with pseudo educated academic “elites” who prefer to place America under the power of the United Nations. These folks cannot be trusted---and must be purged from government. The thinking of the intellectually immature Zbigniew Brzezinski represents their way of looking at the world. Rumsfield would have been a fool to trust these conniving knaves. These are also the same idiots who keep demanding that Israel give Arrafat another chance. Have we already forgotten the Olso accords?

“I’m very cautious about dealing with anyone talking about Iraq who’s absolutely sure one way or the other..”

I feel the same way. Nonetheless, the odds are very favorable that Iraq will become a democratic nation.

“American forces had blocked off the road with a five-ton truck, but the U.N., because it was uncomfortable with a heavy military presence, had asked that the obstacle be removed.”

This sentence deserves to be reread at least ten times. It aptly reflects the childish thinking of the liberal “Olso” intelligentsia. The United Nation leadership literally thought that its officials were safe because they presumably represent the Age of the Enlightenment and mushy sentimental feelings.

No translation needed. As I said, the second-guessing continues to be an arid exercise. As in -- no specifics that were plausibly foreseeable and would have made a MATERIAL difference. Still waiting. Problems and mistakes aren't invariably evidence of failure or bad planning; however proceeding as though they are, without serious alternatives, is evidence of ignorance or bad faith.

(That's quite interesting about the CD-ROM, and clearly a good move -- but I imagine it's mostly relevant to functional reconstruction issues, and not political or security ones?)

I'm sincerely looking for concrete interesting ideas or suggestions. Not looking to defend or trash anyone in particular. But there's a breezy and substance-light feel to most of the negative commentary. Lots of sweeping harsh generalizations but little detail or historic context.

It's fairly pristine and overdone second-guessing to assert Sistani was grossly mishandled. At least without offering the play we should have run on fourth-and-goal that was sure to score. Bremer's over-flowing stock of ambassadors and regional experts -- shockingly, foreign service careerists and not puppets of the evil "neocons" or tools of the dreaded Chalabi -- have presumably had some say in such things (I say presumably because the "reporting" we get on Iraq rarely rises above the neocon-Rummy-Chalabi-"nya nya, we knew better, can't say exactly how, but we knew better, nya nya" cartoon -- so we can't know).

In Germany and Japan we leveled the place, moved in, and largely imposed our preferences (though it was more a two-way street in Japan than most think). Obviously Iraq is a very different situation, in which we were not forced to devastate the country and where local poobahs like Sistani will (and must) play on a much more level field with us. Sistani ideally SHOULD have more say than Bush or Bremer -- of course the key thing is that he use his influence competently to help bring about a stable and evolving Iraq. Losing tussles with Sistani's not a problem per se.

Garner was overwhelmed and failed to get any sort of grip on the situation -- and not because he didn't have the CD-ROM yet. This doesn't bear logically on the substance of anything he says, but I didn't see much there except the absolutely true bit on poor communications and the very dubious bit on not disbanding the (already self-disbanded) army.

In my whole rant I meant to focus on the military/security side of things. Of course there is overlap with reconstruction, but I wasn't pretending to even have an opinion on whether there should have been 4 rather than 3 wireless contracts awarded, or whether the up-front investment by the awardees should have been higher or lower than it was, or such things.

Dan probably wouldn't be posting on this and we wouldn't be commenting if there weren't a security problem. And on that I didn't find the New Yorker article (the orginal peg for the post) very useful.

"Parker didn't make it out into the country"? Come on, he went on door-knocking expeditions with the American army, among other things. With all due respect to Steyn, there's no evidence he's ever left the comforts behind the razor-wire.

No, what's "obvious" is that Norman Rogers didn't read the article.

You know, I might have at least a smidgen of interest in a blog commenter's dismissal of Brzezinski, national security advisor, professor at Harvard and Columbia, first head of the Trilateral Commission, as "intellectually immature," if the source could manage to spell "Arafat" or "Rumsfeld" correctly.

Dan,

At this point, I don't trust _any_ western newspaper or electronic media reports from Iraq or about Iraq policy debates.

The current generation of media types are captives of their sources and everybody but everybody games them. You get more hard news on Iraq via CENTCOM press releases and military blogger reports (like this site http://www.iraqnow.blogspot.com/) from Iraq.

Dunnigan's web site has made the following observation on Iraq:

http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=IRAQ.HTM

November 27, 2003: President George Bush made a surprise visit to 600 American troops, and some Iraqi leaders, at Baghdad airport. This boosted morale among American troops, as the president showed his confidence in their work in maintaining security just by being there.

The visit will be portrayed by some of the media as a propaganda ploy. But the Iraq operations are increasingly a propaganda battle between media desperate to outdo each other with more spectacular stories. The favorite gambit is to concentrate on interviewing people in Sunni Arab areas. Most of these folks worked for Saddam and are now out of work and facing a dim future. So they can be sure to give an endless supply of anti-coalition comments. The most aggressive media are from Arab countries, and coalition troops recently arrested Arab journalists who were caught communicating with pro-Saddam forces, and getting advance information on attacks so the journalists could be there to film the attack and interview participants and witnesses. This reporting greatly distorts the truth about what is really going on in Iraq. In most of the country, rebuilding the country, after two decades of Baath Party mismanagement and corruption, is moving ahead rapidly. For most Iraqis, the only political problems are how to organize themselves locally and who to vote for. Saddam brutally suppressed any potential political rivals for over twenty years, so the political leadership is up for grabs. This is especially confusing for a population who have not experienced democracy since the Sunni Arab generals killed the king in 1958 and replaced the freely elected parliament with a hand picked one.

The French media is frankly on the other side, as their cooperation with the Ba'athist hold outs is at Arab media levels:

(http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9072_Our_Allies_the_French#comments)

Our Allies the French

French magazine publishes photos of attack on DHL plane in Iraq.(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/iraq_missile_france)

PARIS (AFP) - French weekly magazine, Paris Match, is to publish exclusive pictures of what it says are Iraqi rebels launching a missile attack on a German DHL cargo plane over Baghdad that led to a shutdown of commercial air traffic to the Iraqi capital.

The images were taken by one of the magazine's photographers, Jerome Sessini, who was with the attackers -- described in the accompanying article as "Iraqi guerrillas" -- at the time of Saturday's missile strike, editor-in-chief Alain Genestar told AFP on Wednesday.

He said Sessini and a special correspondent sent to Iraq, Claudine Verniez-Palliez, had been with the group for several days beforehand and were unaware they were about to witness the attack.

Photos of the attack are here. (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031126/photos_wl_me_afp/031126152948_z2bel1e2_photo0)

Here's another interesting thing about the commentary on Iraq: almost all of it is related either to the question of whether we should be there at all or the question of whether the Bush administration is proceeding in the best way to create a durable, liberal Iraqi democracy.

There hasn't been much discussion of whether this objective was realistic to begin with. Even Bush's fiercest American critics reacted to his speech last week on encouraging democracy in the Arab world by agreeing with the sentiment -- their criticism was that American policy should have focused on encouraging democracy 30 years ago. But whether democracy, liberal or not, endures in Iraq is mostly up to Iraqis, not up to us. Setting a liberal democracy as our goal in this venture is setting the bar for success pretty high -- so high we can't get over it on our own. Unless Iraqis over the next few years show a capacity for self-restraint and civic virtue well beyond what has been customary in the Arab world for centuries, the country could collapse into civil war or settle into bloody, unfriendly factionalism even if the coalition forces and the Bush administration do everything right from here on out.

We ought to keep in mind that the American interests in removing the destabilizing influence of the Baathist regime from the region and blocking the possibility that Saddam Hussein might one day supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction have already been served. I would like to see a stable, liberal Iraqi democracy, and believe it would have an influence on the Muslim world very like what its most zealous proponents imagine. But wanting this and achieving it are two different things, and the difference does not lie in the amount of effort or money we Americans put into it.

So if I understand Trent correctly, he doesn't trust any "Western" media because they're all idiots, and he doesn't trust any French or Arabic media either because they're all terrorist sympathizers, and that the only people left who are trustable are American Armed Forces public affairs staff.

Well that would certainly make the whole "exercising your critical faculties" task easier...

“You know, I might have at least a smidgen of interest in a blog commenter's dismissal of Brzezinski, national security advisor, professor at Harvard and Columbia, first head of the Trilateral Commission, as "intellectually immature," if the source could manage to spell "Arafat" or "Rumsfeld" correctly.”

Oh well, I at least spelled Zbigniew Brzezinski’s name correctly. Why do I call him intellectually immature? Here is an example:

“The United States as the government, but all of us as citizens and Democrats particularly, will soon have an opportunity to underline their commitments to a peaceful solution in the Middle East because in the next two weeks a group of Israelis and Palestinians are going to unveil a detailed peace plan on which they have been working for months and months. It's a fifty-page document with maps and detailed compromise solutions for all of the major contentious issues, solutions which public opinion shows 70% of the Israelis would accept.

When that happens what will be the stance of the United States? Sharon has already condemned it, and not surprisingly. I hope we do not decide to condemn it. I hope we will show at least a positive interest, and many of us as citizens, as people concerned, should I think endorse it because if we count on the people who want peace eventually we will move towards peace. But they have to be mobilized and given support.”

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/brzezinski-z-10-31.html

The above comments are overwhelming proof that Brzezinski is a second rate thinker. Only a fool makes a big deal about a Palestinian commitment to peace while Yasser Arafat is still in power. The destruction of the Palestinian militants is mandatory if peace is to be achieved. A policy wonk styled statement is virtually worthless. Moreover, it may even cause far more harm than good. One may be deluded that such an “agreement” is worth the paper it is printed on.

Lastly, we should consider anyone associated with Harvard, Columbia, and theTrilateral Commission as guilty of being an intellectual slut until proven otherwise. To be blunt: it should normally be held against them! It is often very difficult for a person with any sense of moral integrity to be successful within these three institutions.

There is an outstanding amount of partisan vitriol passing itself off as thinking in this comments section today.

First is that as many news reports and personal accounts from Iraq attest everything is not going great. Everything is not going bad either. It is not a problem to focus on the areas that are bad because that is where there is work to do. When we invaded Iraq we did not say "we want a liberal democracy...except in the areas where people hate us" We got the whole thing and need to make it right.

So, once we acknowledge that there is a problem in Iraq (not that all of Iraq is a problem) we can start having an intelligent discussion about what are the sources of that problem. Some suggested sources of that problem that I want to dismiss straight away are the French and the media.

I hated what the French did in the lead up to the war as much as the next person, but looking back they had a good point to make. We were invading a nation on the justification that it violated UN resolutions regarding possessing WMD. (A key point is that it was not actually possessing WMD, but just violating resolutions regarding them). The French caused us to send in inspectors and while they were not finding any evidence, and being allowed to search the country, we invaded. It seems that the French might have been on to something by trying to get proof that Sadaam had no weapons, which might have gave some will back to his domestic enemies and led to an Iraqi led overthrow of Sadaam. That might have happenend, but we will never know.

The French were also blamed for blocking our invasion from Turkey. They might be at fault here, but my question is "So what?" We took out the Iraqi army with the greatest of ease, in the areas in the south we still did not capture the hard-core fighters, and up until recently the north was held up as an example for how things should be in Iraq. All these things are evidence to me that not invading from Turkey did not turn out to be a problem.

The media are not at fault either. They are reporting on the things going wrong. That is what they do. You don't expect to see on the front page of a US paper a story about a man goes safely to work and returns home in evening (maybe if you read the Onion you expect that story). News is what is remarkable, and what is remarkable are the attacks, not a job well done. So don't blame the media for doing what they do. If you want to read stories about all the jobs well done then by all means rely on the Army PR to tell those stories, just don't expect that because it happens it is news.

One final point that bothered me in this discussion is blaming "planning." As if because things cannot be forecast they cannot be planned for. Well, this is actually what the Army is great at. I am sure they had countless scenarios for what to do at each stage of the invasion. The problem was what to do after the invasion. A plan would be helpful. Something that said, "if no fires, if no refugees, if no chemical attack, then stop looting." The report of the 3rd Division described in the New Yorker article indicated that no such plan was in place, and surely we can look back and agree that it might have been useful to have such a thing.

BTW: While this has mostly critiqued the partisan defenses of the President, the critics are just as bad. One quick example is the attacks on Bush's visit. Winning in Iraq requires motivated troops. Bush's visit was a quick, cheap way to provide a morale boost to the troops. So regardless of how it plays in the media in the US, I just have to say nice work on this one to him.

'IceCold' and 'Wellbasically' are exactly right on the 'more troops' thing.

But dems (and the anti-war crowd)aren't the only ones: McCain's been pushing the same thing, except with....

Marines, not Soldiers. Well, "...surprise, surprise, surprise" - and this from the patron saint of anti-pork, and a man that should know that sustained land OPS is not the point of Marines.

Mr. TommyG,

The Marines are reportedly only staying six months instead of the usual year. We can expect them to probably stay in "hostile territory" incursion mode for the duration of their stay.

Mr Thomson,

As for your absolute categorical dismissal of literally anyone associated with Harvard as an "intellectual slut", this contemptuous statement is indicative of your thinking. You form cariactured stereotypes and then apply them with a broad absolutist brush. I'm not terribly fond of the Harvard institution myself, but this is one demonizing slur too far.

Anyone examining this kind of thinking will quickly realize that you lack almost all capacity for objective and pragmatic reasoning. It is unfortunate that naive ignorant bigots like yourself exist, and even more unfortunate that they have any power to govern in this nation at all.

Once I asked you where the traitors amongst were, or if they were like witches that needed to be found. It was a joke at the time, but clearly this is the exact intellectual level of your thinking.

Folks, Dan -- What I'm not following is that you say "there's no coherent narrative" as if it were a criticism. I mean, so what? Nothing of this scale or scope is likely to have a coherent narrative: reality is not fiction. To a great extent the counter-insurgency's coherent narrative is like a description of a game of whack-a-mole: there's one! Whack! And the imposition encouragement of democracy is going to be inherently messy, since there are so many putative power groups with a stake.

So, ahem, from whence do you imagine a coherent narrative would arise?

“As for your absolute categorical dismissal of literally anyone associated with Harvard as an "intellectual slut", this contemptuous statement is indicative of your thinking. You form cariactured stereotypes and then apply them with a broad absolutist brush.”

I have no idea what you are talking about. Please consider signing up for a course in reading comprehension. My comments were far more cautious and nuanced than that.

There's a Trilateral Commission? Where?

"The Marines are reportedly only staying six months instead of the usual year."

Marines have been on an 18-month deployment cycle (6 mo prep, 6 mo deployment, 6 mo refit) for decades. The logical conclusion in this sort of employment is that it's viewed as a long-term commitment.

On the "sustained land ops" issue, the recent drawdown left the USMC a higher proportion of total combat forces. The current manning level of the military and the large perstempo inherent in providing forces for Iraq makes their use logical.

Have to disagree with you , Cecil. Love the leathernecks, very capable - but everything to their purpose. 'Hostile incursion' mode or not - don't like my Marines that far from their ships.

If this country needs an increase in land combatants (and I don't think the framers would be pleased) than those numbers belong in the Army, not the Navy.

Well, I don't want to seem too argumentative, but someone ought to tell Congress. The USMC has two battalions of M1A1 tanks (plus a third in reserve), 8 dedicated squadrons of CAS aircraft (and another 12 of strike fighters)--none of which can be employed properly from current amphibious decks. It also has far more mech and arty assets than it can land with current amphibious lift. Someone apparently thinks land ops are at least in the realm of possibility. And the two-division assault on Kuwait in '91 or this year's single-division thrust into Iraq point up the capability to do it fairly effectively.

Nothing in the Constitution delineates roles and missions (and I doubt the framers ever considered the relative merits of CVBGs, armored divisions, or stealth bombers). As long as we have a 10-division Army and a 3-division USMC, the Marines should properly fill in the gaps in overseas deployment requirements. If the Army is getting stretched thin, as it appears, this makes sense. (And taken to the logical extreme, I'd far rather see Marine infantrymen patrolling than Army cooks.)

Mr. Thomson,

As a matter of record, my standardized tested reading comprehension put me in the 99th percentile of graduate students test-takers at the time. Not that it would take a genius or even a first grader to comphrehend:

"Lastly, we should consider anyone associated with Harvard, Columbia, and theTrilateral Commission as guilty of being an intellectual slut until proven otherwise."

This is not exactly shall we say dripping with caution or nuance. Either you wrote the words, or someone posting underneath your name did, and if you consider that nuanced then you really are out of your mind Thomson.

No less amphibious are the CVNs than the LPD's in the embarkation of strike air assets. As to the two battalions - You mean a whole 96 tanks? How fearsome.

As to your 'combat force percentage' canard - that's the point of marines, Cecil, not something clever that you've uncovered - they're meant to be expeditionary. Nice try. How tiresome.

Anyrate - You're chasing the wrong tail, the reference attributed to the framers is that we do not need additional full-time marines. We need to prioritize the force commitment of a 700,000 man federal standing army.

David Thomson (December 1, 2003 04:00 AM): Lastly, we should consider anyone associated with Harvard, Columbia, and theTrilateral Commission as guilty of being an intellectual slut until proven otherwise.

Oldman (December 1, 2003 02:18 PM): As for your absolute categorical dismissal of literally anyone associated with Harvard as an "intellectual slut", this contemptuous statement is indicative of your thinking.

David Thomson (December 1, 2003 08:19 PM): I have no idea what you are talking about. Please consider signing up for a course in reading comprehension. My comments were far more cautious and nuanced than that.

Heh. You know, the only fun part about having someone like David Thomson post here regularly is finding out exactly how dumb righties like him think the rest of us are. You can quote his own words back to him and he'll still claim he never said them. And less than five hours after he made the statement, on the same thread yet, he denies ever saying it.

Not sure that Dave Thomson isn't one of the better done troll avatars. His posts have a bright, chirpy "just-had-my-meds" quality to them. He's also pretty non-confrontational: you cannot get him to engage in a one-on-one argument in any meaningful way.

Plus he displays a tremendous consistency across a wide variety of boards, on which he posts in his copious free time. Rigid consistency is the hallmark of brain-dead trogdolytes or trolls, and for a trogdolyte his spelling and grammar are impeccable.

I find that attempts at psychoanalyzing people via comments sections is even a bigger waste of time than psychoanalyzing them in person. Just my opinion, whatever that's worth.

?No less amphibious are the CVNs than the LPD's in the embarkation of strike air assets.?
Ask any Navy bubba whether CVNs are ?amphibious.? (And LHAs and LHDs are much more on point than LPDs when talking about amphibious lift or aircraft.)

?As to the two battalions - You mean a whole 96 tanks? How fearsome.?
Seemed to work ok in the last couple of conflicts (BTW, at least part of the reserve Bn made it to each). And given that there are a grand total of zero LSTs, it?s hard to claim they?re designed for amphibious ops.

?As to your 'combat force percentage' canard - that's the point of marines, Cecil, not something clever that you've uncovered - they're meant to be expeditionary. Nice try. How tiresome.?
Gotta admit having a hard time figuring out your problem, Burt. Obviously the USMC drew down slightly less, percentage wise, than the Army in the famous ?peace dividend.? That leaves them at a larger percentage of ?boots? in the country?s inventory (that?s basic arithmetic, not a ?canard?). And in case you didn?t notice, they provided a higher percentage yet of combat troops for OIF. If your point is to lobby for a larger standing Army, I agree. If you?re going to claim nefarious intent on the part of SecDef by adding Marines to the deployment mix (rather than just additional available deployable forces), you?re going to have to explain it to me.

Wrong thread, Slart.

No, I intended that to be here. Guess I should now tell what that was in response to:

Not sure that Dave Thomson isn't one of the better done troll avatars. His posts have a bright, chirpy "just-had-my-meds" quality to them. He's also pretty non-confrontational: you cannot get him to engage in a one-on-one argument in any meaningful way.

Plus he displays a tremendous consistency across a wide variety of boards, on which he posts in his copious free time. Rigid consistency is the hallmark of brain-dead trogdolytes or trolls, and for a trogdolyte his spelling and grammar are impeccable.

Looks like amateur psychoanalysis to me. I expect it's even less effective than psychoanalysis via telephone.

Not hacking you too much, BP. Just noting, obliquely, that analyzing the motives of your rhetorical opponents is a little less direct than addressing his points (if any).

It’s obvious that a number of people need to learn how to read more carefully. Oldman asserted the following:

“As for your absolute categorical dismissal of literally anyone associated with Harvard as an "intellectual slut", this contemptuous statement is indicative of your thinking. You form cariactured stereotypes and then apply them with a broad absolutist brush.”

These are my actual words:

"Lastly, we should consider anyone associated with Harvard, Columbia, and the Trilateral Commission as guilty of being an intellectual slut until proven otherwise."

I never absolutely and categorically dismissed everyone associated with these three institutions as intellectual sluts. No, it’s just damn hard to remain a moral human being in such liberal dominated social milieus.

Just last night I was reading my subscription copy of The Commentary. Mark Falcoff's review of Richard Pipes’ new book, Vixi, is most intriguing:

“Shortly thereafter, now married, (Richard) Pipes entered Harvard, where he eventually took a Ph.D. in Russian history and where, with interruptions, he would spend the remainder of his academic career. His reflections on this long immersion in the precincts of American academe are without illusion. "The university," he writes, "turned out to be a microcosm of the society at large, and the quest for knowledge by its faculty was closely tied to personal advancement and the craving for fame." No less trenchant are his comments on academic self-regard at a rarefied place like Harvard. After he received tenure, one colleague privy to the review proceedings remarked to him, without a trace of irony, "You have no idea how close it was; on the knife’s edge: on one side Harvard, on the other utter darkness."

Pipes’s rather detached view hardly prevented him from participating in and excelling at the academic game. His zest for it, however, seems to have ebbed decisively after the self-imposed "reforms" introduced by the student uprisings of the late 1960’s. He puts it this way:

[After the 1960’s] Harvard . . . began to view itself as an agent of social change and increasingly devoted itself to solving society’s problems: instead of acquiring knowledge, no matter how esoteric, and teaching it to its students, it emphasized outreach. Rather than select its faculty and students solely by criteria of talent and creativity, it pursued sexual and racial diversity. Elitism, even when it involved exclusively intellectual excellence, was frowned upon. Much of what Harvard now did reminded me of the early Soviet educational experiments which aimed at breaking down the isolation of institutions of higher learning and harnessing them to the cause of social reform.”

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bk.falcoff.htm

Cecil? I think you'll be happier over at:

http://pub165.ezboard.com/bwarships1discussionboards

I know I am.

Here we discuss politics, not the nature of wet-well depth, and the relative merits of ducted-fans.

Mr Thomson,

If you consider that the usage of "anyone associated with ... guilty until proven otherwise" to fall significantly short of "absolute and categorical" then you might be right in some sort of vague philosophical sense, but in any meaningful sense your words were NOT nuanced and cautious!!!

The fact that you can write such a thing with a straight face indicates how far gone from reason you really are.

The fact that you can write such a thing with a straight face indicates how far gone from reason you really are.

Either that, or he really has just had his meds.

Nah, nah. It's the same infinitesimal weasely word-parsing that reassures us "imminent threat" doesn't mean "imminent threat," "outing a covert op" doesn't mean "outing a covert op," and "stockpiled WMD" can be defined as "a vial of germs in some guy's fridge."

Words mean exactly what they need to mean at a given moment; neither more nor less; and the definition will shift at need.

C'mon Prof! You can write the f-bomb and I can't call a JA a JA? I think you should know that he did, in fact, show up at the warships board, and is now happily arguing with naval science grads from the program executive offices of the Naval Sea Systems Command.

And they want you to take him back...(g)

http://www.navsea.navy.mil/navseajobs/whoarewe.asp?txtTypeID=53

YOu can delete this too - relevance=0