The neocons’ big Iran lie
The right-wing hawks who thought Iraq would be a cakewalk think it'd be easy to attack Iran. Real soldiers say no.
By Matt Duss
Salon.com
In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Gen. Eric Shinseki told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would be required to occupy Iraq in order to stabilize it in the wake of an invasion.
What quickly followed is well known. Several days later, in what journalist James Fallows called “probably the most direct public dressing-down of a military officer, a four-star general, by a civilian superior since Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur, 50 years ago,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called Shinseki’s estimate “wildly off the mark,” and said that “it’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself.”
The cavalier dismissal by civilian officials and conservative pundits of military analysts’ predictions of the likely consequences of the Iraq war was symbolic of the entire hubristic enterprise. Over $800 billion and tens of thousands of civilian casualties later, the idea that America can deal with its problems and create specific outcomes simply through the application of its considerable military might is rightly understood as a mirage.
Fortunately, when it comes to the challenge posed by Iraq’s neighbor Iran, the current administration has shown itself to be far more reality-based. But this hasn’t stopped many pundits from making similar calls for military action, though now thankfully doing so from outside the halls of power. As with Iraq, these calls for action are couched in the rosiest of post-strike scenarios, which fly in the face of what a preponderance of military and civilian analysts have predicted would have extraordinarily negative consequences.
(More here.)
By Matt Duss
Salon.com
In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Gen. Eric Shinseki told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would be required to occupy Iraq in order to stabilize it in the wake of an invasion.
What quickly followed is well known. Several days later, in what journalist James Fallows called “probably the most direct public dressing-down of a military officer, a four-star general, by a civilian superior since Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur, 50 years ago,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called Shinseki’s estimate “wildly off the mark,” and said that “it’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself.”
The cavalier dismissal by civilian officials and conservative pundits of military analysts’ predictions of the likely consequences of the Iraq war was symbolic of the entire hubristic enterprise. Over $800 billion and tens of thousands of civilian casualties later, the idea that America can deal with its problems and create specific outcomes simply through the application of its considerable military might is rightly understood as a mirage.
Fortunately, when it comes to the challenge posed by Iraq’s neighbor Iran, the current administration has shown itself to be far more reality-based. But this hasn’t stopped many pundits from making similar calls for military action, though now thankfully doing so from outside the halls of power. As with Iraq, these calls for action are couched in the rosiest of post-strike scenarios, which fly in the face of what a preponderance of military and civilian analysts have predicted would have extraordinarily negative consequences.
(More here.)
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