Eliot Cohen Crosses the Aisle and Joins the Reality-Based Community

The word was always that Eliot Cohen was a very smart man, and a wise one--even though he was, for some impossible-to-grasp reason, a neoconservative. Here the Belgravia Dispatch catches him crossing the aisle back to the reality-based community:

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: A Neo-Con Speaks Out: Eliot Cohen speaks very openly to the WaPo in a short Q&A. It has become increasingly rare to find bright (neo)conservatives willing to buck party orthodoxy and the approved talking points ("last throes"!)--who have the requisite integrity to be honest and forthright about some of the missteps that have rendered so difficult the Iraq effort.

Excerpts:

But a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.

I did not know, but I might have guessed.

Another passage:

Question: Your son is an infantry officer, shipping out soon for Iraq. How do you feel about that?

Cohen: Pride, of course -- great pride. And fear. And an occasional burning in the gut, a flare of anger at empty pieties and lame excuses, at flip answers and a lack of urgency, at a failure to hold those at the top to the standards of accountability that the military system rightly imposes on subalterns.

It is a flicker of rage that two years into an insurgency, we still expose our troops in Humvees to the blasts of roadside bombs -- knowing that even the armored version of that humble successor to the Jeep is simply not designed for warfare along guerrilla-infested highways, while, at the same time, knowing that plenty of countries manufacture armored cars that are. It is disbelief at a manpower system that, following its prewar routines, ships soldiers off to war for a year or 15 months, giving them two weeks of leave at the end, when our British comrades, more experienced in these matters and wiser in pacing themselves, ship troops out for half that time, and give them an extra month on top of their regular leave after an operational deployment.

It is the sick feeling that churned inside me at least 18 months ago, when a glib and upbeat Pentagon bureaucrat assured me that the opposition in Iraq consisted of "5,000 bitter-enders and criminals," even after we had killed at least that many. It flames up when hearing about the veteran who in theory has a year between Iraq rotations, but in fact, because he transferred between units after returning from one tour, will go back to Iraq half a year later, and who, because of "stop-loss orders" involuntarily extending active duty tours, will find himself in combat nine months after his enlistment runs out. And all this because after 9/11, when so many Americans asked for nothing but an opportunity to serve, we did not expand our Army and Marine Corps when we could, even though we knew we would need more troops.

A variety of emotions wash over me as I reflect on our Iraq war: Disbelief at the length of time it took to call an insurgency by its name. Alarm at our continuing failure to promote at wartime speed the colonels and generals who have a talent for fighting it, while also failing to sweep aside those who do not. Incredulity at seeing decorations pinned on the chests and promotions on the shoulders of senior leaders -- both civilians and military -- who had the helm when things went badly wrong. Disdain for the general who thinks Job One is simply whacking the bad guys and who, ever conscious of public relations, cannot admit that American soldiers have tortured prisoners or, in panic, killed innocent civilians. Contempt for the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war, and for the blithe disregard of the bungles by some who think they were right in favoring it. A desire -- barely controlled -- to slap the highly educated fool who, having no soldier friends or family, once explained to me that mistakes happen in all wars, and that the casualties are not really all that high and that I really shouldn't get exercised about them.

There is a lot of talk these days about shaky public support for the war. That is not really the issue. Nor should cheerleading, as opposed to truth-telling, be our leaders' chief concern. If we fail in Iraq -- and I don't think we will -- it won't be because the American people lack heart, but because leaders and institutions have failed. Rather than fretting about support at home, let them show themselves dedicated to waging and winning a strange kind of war and describing it as it is, candidly and in detail. Then the American people will give them all the support they need. The scholar in me is not surprised when our leaders blunder, although the pundit in me is dismayed when they do. What the father in me expects from our leaders is, simply, the truth -- an end to happy talk and denials of error, and a seriousness equal to that of the men and women our country sends into the fight...

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

Comments

[John Emerson]

What was he saying in late October and early November 2004?

A lot of moderate Republicans and rational conservatives say the right things at the wrong times. Bush has three years and six months more as C in C, and no one's opinion makes any difference until the 2008 election.

[milo]

"Contempt for the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war"
I could follow his statement, but I don't understand this phrase. It must be obligatory to include a swipe at people who foresaw the myriad failures to come. As one who opposed this war and found myself in a small like minded circle (a circle which doesn't include any ghoulish glee), I wonder if he can name any names.

[ch2]

milo,
it's a classic strawman.

[Ray Radlein]

It's a strawman, all right, but it serves to reassure the people who really need to read the article -- Conservatives, Neocons, and other supporters of the Great Misadventure -- that the author is still a member of their tribe. To the extent that it means that they might actually listen to him as a result, I don't particularly mind it.

[Viacondotti]

"It has become increasingly rare to find bright (neo)conservatives willing to buck party orthodoxy and the approved talking points ("last throes"!)--who have the requisite integrity to be honest and forthright about some of the missteps that have rendered so difficult the Iraq effort"

Increasingly rare? That's like saying it's increasingly rare to find snow leopards in Yellowstone. And "Iraq effort"? It's an ARMED INVASION of more than a hundred thousand troops on the ground and millions of pounds of high explosives dropping out of the sky, buildings ground to rubble and dead and dismembered people filling morgues and hospitals. That's not my definition of "effort".

[Michael Robinson]

"I did not know, but I might have guessed."

Might have? He's letting himself off the hook lightly.

Daniel Davies (2003/2/23):

I find myself with a few spare minutes and make the mistake of reading Thomas Friedman again. His conclusion after a long, dull and witless ramble about the introduction of "democracy" to Iraq (just what the Gulf region needs, more puppet states) reads "If [it is] done right, the Middle East will never be the same. If done wrong, the world will never be the same". There's not much you can say to that except "shut up you silly man". But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I'd have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn't in some important way completely fucked up during the execution.

It's just that I literally can't think what possible evidence Friedman might be going on in his tacit assumption that the introduction of democracy to Iraq (if it is attempted at all) will be executed well rather than badly. Worst piece of counterfactual speculation by Friedman since the day he pondered the question "If I grew a moustache well, I would look distinguished and stylish; if I grew one badly, I'd look like a pillock".
http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2003_02_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html#89796111

Kevin Drum (2003/3/8):

For a variety of reasons related to post-war planning and Bush's seeming indifference about tearing down international institutions in order to get his way, I've been on the fence about war with Iraq for several weeks now. Basically, I figured that all it would take is one more thing to send me into the anti-war camp, and I think this is it. If we're planning to start a war based on intelligence from the same guys who made this mistake, it's time to take a deep breath and back off.

I still believe strongly that we need a tough-minded long-term policy aimed at eradicating terrorism and modernizing the Arab world (among others) — and that this policy should include the use of force where necessary — but not this time. This is the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
http://calpundit.com/archives/000606.html

[Jim]

Does someone have Mr. Cohen's email address? Not to harrass him, but to ask him to provide one example of those he feels "Contempt for the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war".
This bullshit is where tossed off as fact so often that I doubt Cohen even realized that he was accusing half the country of hoping for American deaths. He (and every other genius who finally realizes that invading Iraq wasn't a good idea)needs to be told the obvious truth that most of us opposed the war because there would be senseless American casualties.

[NixonWatch]

As usual, it would be funny if it weren't so serious; Professor Cohen says:

"More than this: Decades of American policy had hoped to achieve stability in the Middle East by relying on accommodating thugs and kleptocrats to maintain order. That policy, too, had failed; it was the well-educated children of our client regimes who leveled the Twin Towers, after all."

Gosh, Beav, I don't know; maybe we should have stopped accomodating thugs and kleptocrats, instead of thinking a one-off invasion would do the trick.

[Maynard Handley]

"If we fail in Iraq -- and I don't think we will -- it won't be because the American people lack heart"

(1) Define fail. Define it now, not after the fact, where whatever the US finds itself with is defined as success.

(2) Aah, the good old "American people don't lack heart". Did they lack heart in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia, but somehow found it just before this engagement? Is it some sort of political science fact that countries that lose wars have people with no heart, whereas those that win wars have plenty of heart? Did the British people have no heart in 1938 (Munich) and suddenly grow hearts in 1939.
An author who claims to despise happy talk and to expect the truth from our leaders has no business peddling such a bullshit meaningless statement. If ever there was a piece of happy talk, that is it.

[SteinL]

Your son gets sent off to war, suddenly you get a new perspective on things. Apparently, Operation Yellow Elephant is a lot more important to get underway than I ever thought.

[otto]

'The word was always that Eliot Cohen was a very smart man'

What does this reputation rest on? "Supreme Command" was drivel.

[Jussi]

My favorite bird of all:

http://www.suomikuva.net/show.php?start=0&file=316-3.jpg&album=14

[Jussi]

"Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now."

Agreed.

Anyone who wants to argue can join the defense.

[Don Quijote]

"If we fail in Iraq -- and I don't think we will -- it won't be because the American people lack heart"

Having seen our recent army recruitment numbers, I 'll have to disagree!

Apparently, the american public are voting with their feet, and they are not voting the way you would like them to...

[jasper emmering]

Reality-based, my ass. More from the same Cohen "self-interview":

"Long before 2003, weapons inspections in Iraq had broken down, and sanctions, thanks to countries like Russia, China and France, were failing."

As compared to the Wikipedia oil-for-food page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_for_food):

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations assigned to investigate the scandal has also concluded that

"The United States (government) was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions. On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales."

The report also found that individuals and companies in the United States accounted for 52% of all oil-voucher kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein. The largest of theses recipients, Houston based Bayoil and its CEO, Bay Chalmers have been indicted by the US Department of Justice for their actions.

[JR]

Cohen has come around for one reason only. His son's life is on the line. If his son weren't shipping out the war would still be a video game to him as it is to the rest of the neocons.

[bailey]

Who deserves inclusion in the "reality based community"? Why are our top Economists so concerned about political minutia & not the least interested in developing a reasoned basis for calculating & monitoring inflation? Dean Baker (cepr.com)has issued a Housing Bubble Fact Sheet that should once & for all make a laughing stock of ANYONE who asserts U.S. inflation is running @ a paltry 3% growth. Baker's not revealing anything we all don't know. Gov't. methodology for monitoring & gathering info on inflation is shameful, at best.
PLEASE PROF. De Long, leave the daily political snipping to others, focus on improving your chosen field of study.

[KevinNYC]

Cohen in that piece also talks about the President's character. It seems like he has gone far along the path of the returned to reality-based world, but he still has that last bit of cognitive dissonance to travel.

How is it character to not hold anyone responsible for a military debacle?
How is it character to surround yourself with yesmen and squash debate and contrary views?
How is it character to be so lazy and ignorant that in January of 2003, that an Iraqi-exile has to explain Sunni vs Shia Islam to you?
How is it character to not acknowledge any mistakes in the conduct of the Iraq War.
How is it character to spend several days setting up a premature victory celebration in front of Mission Accomplished banner, days that could have been spent trying to solve our problems in Iraq?

[Ottnott]

JR, somebody needs to coin a term for people who have made that conversion.

[bailey]

Dean Baker's @ cepr.net, please excuse mistake.

[anne]

Jussi

http://www.suomikuva.net/show.php?start=0&file=316-3.jpg&album=14

This really is an astonishing picture and astonishing bird. What nature has allowed for is truly wonderful. A vision of white on white. Notice how puffy she is in the snow. I will learn more about her and how she eats through the Finnish winter. Thank you. I noticed at once.

[anne]

Here Jussi:

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4446&u=267|30|...

Snowy Egret in Flight
New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

[sglover]

Look, we'd be disingenuous to deny that there are people among the anti-war crowd who fit Cohen's "ghoulish" description. But they occupy about as much space in the war sceptic camp as those who, in the war apologists' camp, advocate turning the Mideast into smoking, radiating glass. Cranks are everywhere.

Otherwise, Cohen's "how could I know?" wailing is just another stereotypical example of a new genre of self-serving bullshit. The thing that finally pushed me over the edge into opposing the invasion was the dismaying, multiplying evidence of administration incompetence. Remember how many times they'd present 'evidence' that got shot down within days of publication? Remember the shoddy analogies to the postwar occupation and reconstruction of Germany and Japan? Remember the smooth assurances of how easy and cheap it was all going to be?

Hell, I only read non-scholarly histories and the daily paper, and I picked up on a certain, ahem, competence deficit in the administration. What the fuck do the august scholars at the Nitze school read, that this managed to escape them? That learned institution gave us Cohen AND Wolfowitz. With that kind of record, shouldn't its accreditation come under some kind of review?!?

[kharris]

"Requisite honesty" and "the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war" cannot apply to the same guy. Cannot. Where is the recognition that there is a group, overwhelming the larger group, who opposed the war and feel no such glee? Who feel sadness, both for our soldiers and (Mr Cohen, I didn't here you) for the Iraqi dead, by far the most of whom are innocents killed by combatants on both sides. Ghoulish anti-war guys? Has there ever been a better example of the black-as-white character assassination style of the neocon thug?

And what is this "think they were right" business at this point in the debacle? This is no more than Cohen stamping his indignant little feet and insisting even now that his views were the right ones. There is no room in his self-righteous view of the world for any admission that starting a war in contradiction of long-standing international standards, a war that was apparently going to happen no matter what, a war that our government lied its way into, might have been a mistake.

We mustn't let Cohen's anger over how badly his side has failed mask what he is. Cohen is bloody-minded, arrogant, partisan. And if honesty means anything, he's dishonest.

[dilbert dogbert]

Coming to a newspaper, radio, TV talk show near you soon:
Stab-In-The-Back
Get ready for it.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Cohen's critical mistake was in indoctrinating his son with his own B.S. If he hadn't, his son would cheerfully be looking for job opportunities with the other Young Republicans, and Cohen would still be supporting the war.

"If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied."

[c roast]

So, the guy's kid is now in the cross-hairs and he wises-up.

Bring back the draft. We can then welcome folks back to the reality based community in droves, and support for "our troops" will more than just lip-service to the chumps, suckers and fall-guys currently suffering as members the imperial mercenary force.

[Dubblblind]

The "Iraq Effort" is what you get when its initiators are people who are functioning at the level of ulterior motives.

I'm waiting/hoping to see car magnets that say:

"Support Our Troops - Impeach Bush"

[David in NY]

Cohen's timing is very, very bad. About three years late, in fact.

[Tom Cecere]

This self-selecting group already knows that Bush is a political coward of the highest order. He has never once refused any of his constituencies anything in order to achieve a higher goal -- taxes, fees, trade, wars, oil prices, blah, blah, blah.

It is a seminal event in these US when someone actually changes their mind. Sad, but true. Instead of screaming about his motives, I'd be glad, and, while we're at it, try to find others in the same boat and send his missive along to them. We can start to make progress even in the '06 congressional elections; we don't have to wait till '08.

[Tim B.]

So he was pro-War until his own son is now at risk. Suddenly it's real and incompetence isn't acceptable anymore.

What a fool. Disgusting.

[JR]

Tim, the only way the war will end is if many others also change their minds.

[Andrew Steele]

I'm interested in the call for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. What specific "high crimes and misdeameanors" have they committed.

I'll note that I agree with the substance and tone of Brad's post up to the impeachment comment. There doesn't seem to be a lot we know now that we didn't know in November 2004. On what grounds is that election thrown out (for the purpose of bringing Denny Hastert in as President)?

[anatol]

After reading the entire self-interview by Cohen, I wouldn't be as approving as Brad. It seems obvious to me that Cohen is a typical example of a semi-reformed and semi-enlightened fanatical ideologue. I know quite well a different (Communist) variety of the species from my past life in the Soviet Union. Hey, I held similar views at some (thankfully distant) time.

See, the idea of reforming the Middle East [creating a Communist society] by war [dictatorship] was good, and still might succeed, it was just the incompetence of the people in charge, who's motives were pure, but who's implementation was imperfect. Yeah, right..

And BTW, inventing straw men like the “ghoulishly gleeful opposition” is an easily recognized symptom of the same semi-reformed fanatic syndrome.

The right question for Mr. Cohen to ask himself is: if the war planning and prosecution (pre-war and post-war included) had been impeccable, would it be a good thing to take the country to war on a mountain of lies for purposes that, when stated publicly, had no chance of winning international or national support. Apparently his answer is yes.

[RonK, Seattle]

"... even after we had killed at least that many ..."

In Vietnam, we killed the enemy we started with ten times over. Maybe twenty. We lost almost as many men as we thought they started with. And we lost the war.

[liberal]

Andrew Steele wrote, "I'm interested in the call for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. What specific 'high crimes and misdeameanors' have they committed."

Faking a _causus belli_.

[Kimmitt]

I have to agree completely with the extremely cynical posters who have noted the relationship between the guy's kid going to the war and his sudden opposition. This isn't a sign of intellectual honesty, it's a sign of near-total intellectual dishonesty. It's Andrew Sullivan finally noticing that we torture people because Bush came out against gay marriage.