Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Economist Edition)

The cossacks work for the Czar, goddamit!

We watch as the Economist continues its flame-out. Today it plays fast-and-loose with reality by trying to make Donald Rumsfeld the scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq--for Cheney's and Bush's decisions as well as his own:

Economist.com: September 11th transformed a has-been into a national hero. Mr Rumsfeld immediately captivated the country by running into the burning Pentagon to rescue the wounded. And he kept it captivated with a series of press conferences that projected a mixture of defiance and determination. This was American manliness at its best. The staid Wall Street Journal called him a "hunk"...

The word "hunk" appears not in the--admittedly somewhat staid--news section of the Journal, but in the bizarre over-the-top wingnut-dominated editorial section, and it appeared in a column by Claudia Rosett that ran not in the main edition of the Journal distributed in New York and Washington but only in the European edition. "Lexington" knows full well that the editorial section of the WSJ is not "staid."

Then came the Iraq war and the disgrace of Abu Ghraib; and this paper, among many critics, called for Mr Rumsfeld to go.... [T]he current furore can't be brushed aside.... The secretary of defence has become a liability that Mr Bush's troubled administration can no longer afford: a distraction at home and a barrier to success in Iraq. There is now widespread agreement on what he got wrong. His biggest mistake--the fons et origo of all the others--was to try to fight the war with too few troops. His second-biggest was to make no proper provision for restoring order afterwards. But there is no shortage of other mistakes. Mr Rumsfeld misread the intelligence in the build-up to the war, and much of it was simply wrong in any case. He failed to plan for the occupation. He ignored the growing insurgency. He disbanded the Iraqi army, scattering 300,000 armed and unemployed men into the population.

But Rumsfeld did not decide to fight the war with too few troops. Cheney and Bush were his bosses, and decided with Rumsfeld to fight the war with too few troops. Rumsfeld did not misread the intelligence. Bush and Cheney decided to misread the intelligence.

The more interesting question is why he messed up so comprehensively. The most obvious reason, of course, is arrogance. Mr Rumsfeld suffered from exactly the same problem as another whizz-kid CEO turned secretary of defence, Robert McNamara: iron self-confidence. He junked the army's carefully laid plans for invasion (General Zinni's plan called for at least 380,000 troops, for example, far more than Mr Rumsfeld sent). He dismissed warnings from General Shinseki that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to win the peace. He ignored pleas for more troops on the ground. And he surrounded himself with similarly one-dimensional strategists such as General Franks and yes-men like General Myers.

Another reason is bureaucratic turf wars. Henry Kissinger once described Mr Rumsfeld as the best practitioner of the art of bureaucratic infighting that he had ever seen, which is no mean compliment; and he certainly did a brilliant job of elbowing Colin Powell and the State Department aside, putting control of post-war reconstruction in military hands for the first time since the second world war. But he had no idea what to do with his new-found power. Without the State Department's experience of post-war reconstruction, gathered in Bosnia and Afghanistan, Mr Rumsfeld veered all over the place...

Again: Bush and Cheney and Rice decided to place post-war Iraq in the hands of the Pentagon rather than Foggy Bottom. They agreed with Rumsfeld's assessment of the situation.

The cossacks work for the Czar. The Economist plays journalistic three-card-monte in the hope that it can get its readers will forget that fact.

Certainly George W. Bush doesn't forget that. As Tim Russert said, a source “close to the President” told him that Bush “won’t fire Rumsfeld because it would be the equivalent of firing himself.”

Comments

[MTC]

ba -

The 101st Airborne does work for George Bush. In fact, we all do. Didn't you get Gonzalez's memo? Yoo sent it to everybody.

Wait a minute..."Airbourne"? Not an error an American would be likely to make...

Not of the Body! Not of the Body!

[reason]

Once more I must say "Lexington" is not the Economist. You should be campaigning to get him fired not against the Economist. It is like saying that the Wall Street Journal and it's editorials are the same things.

[BHC]

You think that was bad, you should read their piece on the Democrats from this week's issue: http://www.economist.com/world/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=6823528 (sub req).

Hard to find a more tired rehashing of old cliches, RNC talking points and inappropriate expectations, interspersed with facts that go directly against their conclusions.

Example: "The Democrats are trying hard to sound fierce about the deficit. Hillary Clinton, their most prominent presidential aspirant, declared recently that “red-ink fiscal policies will undermine America's competitiveness”. The party promises to restore the “pay-as-you-go” principle that was scrapped in 2002. In other words, all new tax cuts or spending would have to be balanced by new savings. But do the Democrats propose any specific tax increases or spending cuts that might actually bridge the deficit? Apart from promising to repeal Mr Bush's tax cuts for “the rich”—whom they take care not to define too clearly—no. In opposition, anyway, they have clamoured above all for more spending."

[Sean Matthews]

True, Lexington is not the Economist, but the Cossacks, as they say, work for the Czar.

Point about WSJ taken, but the WSJ makes a much clearer distinction between reporting and analysis than does the Economist.

[Sean Matthews]

True, Lexington is not the Economist, but the Cossacks, as they say, work for the Czar.

Point about WSJ taken, but the WSJ makes a much clearer distinction between reporting and analysis than does the Economist.

[ajay]

This is so dumb. The Cossacks were a kind of cavalry regiments, recruited in particular regions, wearing special uniforms and frequently used for police duties. They no more "worked for the Czar" as 101 Airbourne "works for George Bush".

ba, you're confused. The Cossacks were cavalry regiments, right? So they were under the command of the Imperial Russian army. If they were police, they were responsible to the Russian civil authorities. The ultimate commander of the Russian army, and the ruler of the Russian state through the civil authorities, was the Tsar. So the Cossacks did indeed work for the Tsar.

Just as the 101st Air Assault (not Airborne, by the way, not any more) works for the Commander in Chief of the Army, George Bush.

[kharris]

It is also rather silly to call for Rumsfeld's resignation (firing) when the odds of that happening are so obviously low. The best we can hope for is that he is forced to retire in place. Same manly address before the press, same steely-eyed squint, but no more decision-making authority. Trouble is, Rummy is a far better bureaucratic warrior than warrior in reality. Retirement-in-place would just leave him time to undermine whoever was put in charge of making decisions. Bad prospects.

[Karlsfini]

September 11th transformed a has-been into a national hero. Mr Rumsfeld immediately captivated the country by running into the burning Pentagon to rescue the wounded.

Wait a minute, minor point and not important to the thread, but did this really happen? I'd like to hear more.

With all of the thousands of people who work at the Pentagon, most of them active-duty military and moderately fit, someone allowed an old civilian bungler to run into the fire and play hero?

The United States is under attack and instead of reporting to his command center,
the Secretary of Defense gets in the way of the pros.

But then that's the story of his life.

[Karlsfini]

Brad, when I hit post from preview and filled in the verification code Opera went silly and asked if I wanted to activate voice. I hit cancel and my first, less elegant and unedited comment was posted.

No matter, everyone gets the point.

When I filled in the verification code for this second comment Opera crashed. Lets see how many times it takes to make this work.

[sglover]

"With all of the thousands of people who work at the Pentagon, most of them active-duty military and moderately fit, someone allowed an old civilian bungler to run into the fire and play hero?

The United States is under attack and instead of reporting to his command center, the Secretary of Defense gets in the way of the pros."

For all his mistakes and unsavoriness, Rumsfeld is almost unique in this administration in that he actually did military service -- and he even showed up! I don't think anyone questions his physical courage, and if memory serves, his hands-on performance on September 11 shored up his reputation among the uniformed military.

I'm as eager as anyone to see this gang of idiot criminals in jail, but in this particular case, your criticism of Rumsfeld is off-base.

[anne]

Whenever I read the "Economist" I am conscious there is a wish coursing through that we might return to the days of the Raj :) The problem however is beyond any particular person in the Administration save for the President. We fought a needless war and needlessly extended the war by choosing to occupy Iraq and we are in Iraq after 3 years at a cost of $10 billion a month with seldom a thought given to the material cost let alone the more important and tragic costs of such a war and occupation.

[Matt]

The Economist has always been a little peculiar-- charming and interesting, except for when those Tory prejudices show through. BTW, isn't there a new editor?

[dust]

The Economist called for Rumsfeld's resign after Abu Ghraib broke out; according to an article in the Financial Times, he will become the longest-serving defense secretary on Dec. 28, 2006 (overtaking McNamara, and become the longest continue serving defense secretary (including secretaries of war, for that matter, setting a record that's unlikely to be broken) if he serves out the Bush term).
Honestly, I'm not American, and am puzzled by the fact that the defense secretaries who carried their countries through disastrous wars serves the longest term.

[Henry]

Yes there is - and it's Micklethwaite, who used to supervise the Lexington column in his capacity as US editor, and whose sidekick Adrian Wooldridge usually writes it.

[rea]

Criticizing Rumsfeld for not sennding 380,000 troops to Iraq is a bit silly, isn't it? We didn't have 380,000 troops. If 380,000 troops were required for the war, the mistake wasn't failing to send 380,000 troops to Iraq---the mistake was starting a war with Iraq in the first place.

[Karlsfini]

sglover, the question was: "Did this really happen?"

Courage is a straw man. I asked if he really contributed anything and if that was the best thing for him to be doing at the moment -- this is the first I'd ever heard of where Rumsfeld was on 9/11.

"If memory serves, his hands-on performance on September 11 shored up his reputation among the uniformed military."

Probably a typo, since all the military is uniformed. Did you mean "uninformed military."

Another straw man. His popularity or unpopularity with "the military" is irrelevant, and in any event it would be impossible to determine.

[anne]

Yes; the astounding tragedy was needlessly going to war against Iraq, but the occupation of Iraq much compounded the sadness. Why then did we not immediately leave Iraq when the government was removed? Why did seemingly every reporter immediately term leaving Iraq as "cutting and running" so that we became psychologically unable to leave and still are?

[jim]

rea above is quite right.

What Lexington is doing is shifting the blame: it isn't the decision to go to war, a decision that was clearly made by George Bush, that was the problem, it was the implementation of that decision, the technical question of how many troops to use, a decision that can pushed onto the SecDef, that was at fault.

But as Rumsfeld more or less said, you go to war with the troops you have. If you have 140K troops, that's what you go to war with. There weren't 380K troops available. The option to go to war with 380K troops wasn't on the table. The decision was either go to war with 140K troops or not go to war and that was George Bush's decision.

What lets Lexington (and others who push this line) get away with it is the tendency in DoD to avoid direct confrontation with authority, rather to fence acquiescence around with impossible conditions. Neither Zinni nor Shinseki were willing to tell Rumsfeld that invading Iraq was the stupidest notion they'd ever heard; instead they said it would require more troops (380K or 500K doesn't matter, neither were achievable) than were available. Yes, But rather than No.

I am beginning to believe that Rumsfeld's adoption of RMA and Transformation was because Bush wanted to invade Iraq from the beginning of his Presidency, as soon as he had a sufficient excuse, and Bush is the kind of boss who tells his subordinates, "Don't tell me why I can't do what I want; tell me how I can do it." Transformation (plus the neocons' fantasies of being greeted with flowers) was the only possible mechanism how he could do it.

[Dirty Davey]

Regarding: 'As Tim Russert said, a source “close to the President” told him that Bush “won’t fire Rumsfeld because it would be the equivalent of firing himself.”'

The other thing, of course, is that Bush et al would not at all enjoy the hearings, investigation, and testimony that would be an inevitable part of the process of replacing Rumsfeld after a resignation.

(Unless they could make the hearings secret, on the grounds that disclosing the identity of the nominee for SecDef would be giving aid and comfort to the terrorists.)

[No von Mises]

Richard Perle is on record saying 40,000 was enough. The wingnuts lowballed and 140k was probably too much for them and Rummy to bear.

[Aniruddha G. Kulkarni]

I am surprised that you still consider The Economist worthy of your criticism. This publicity for them will jack up their US edition's print-runs making them even more smug. Their biggest trip in life is how much they sell in US and that is all.

[cossack]

You are stinking, pathetic piece of lying shit. Cossacks as an army unit never, ever had anything to do witbh pogroms.