And Still We Have No Voice

by tristero

In the Times’ News of the Week in Review – the Sunday editorial section – is a huge spread entitled How to See This Mission Accomplished :

For the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, the Op-Ed page asked nine experts on military affairs to identify a significant challenge facing the American and Iraqi leadership today and to propose one specific step to help overcome that challenge.

And who, pray tell, are those nine “experts” on miltary affairs, as if you couldn’t guess?

Exactly one (1) current member of the military and one (1) retired Army general (presumably one that was not part of the Pentagon’s propaganda initiative). It is unclear how many of the others ever actually served. My guess: less than 3. Perhaps much less. Maybe one (1).

L. Paul Bremer, the brilliant, sober-minded military expert who, flying in the face of the commonest of sense, all but unilaterally disbanded the Iraqi military, one of the most critical, if not the most critical blunders of the occupation (aside from being there in the first place, of course).

Three (3!) I-use-the-term-loosely scholars at the American Enterprise Institute including Surging Fred Kagan, the conistently wrong Danielle Pletka, and Richard Perle, a man so geographically challenged he once wrote that the United Nations was located on the banks of the Hudson.

Kenneth M. Pollack, about which the less said, the better. Suffice it to be said that I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and concede that once in his life he was partly right about something.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the liberal hawk’s liberal hawk.

Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, who advocates phasing out most aid “by the middle of the next presidency.” presumably 2011 and withdraw 2/3 of the troops “over the next few years.”

Cordesmann and the retired general are the only two who discuss withdrawal or diplomacy with anything remotely approaching seriousness. The current officer essentially urges the McCain line, ie for the Shi’ite and Sunni to cut the bullshit. The rest are – there is no other phrase that’s appropriate – equally stupid.

And I am left wondering where are those who were right all along, who watched in shocked disgust as Bush vogued on that carrier in his codpiece, because even then, they knew nothing had been accomplished except the start of the worst foreign policy debacle in living memory (and that includes, yes, Vietnam) – where are the experts?