(From the book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 480 pages, $26. Published in American Enterprise Institute: National Post  (Canada) October 25, 2005)

 

 

Last week, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, delivered a blistering attack on the Iraq war and the Bush administration. To strengthen his case against the President, Wilkerson cited a new book, The Assassins' Gate by George Packer.

 

You have to give Wilkerson credit for acute literary judgment. The Assassins' Gate, published this very month, is the most vivid and sensitive account to date of the war and its aftermath. Packer, a college classmate of mine, spent months traveling and reporting in Iraq between 2003 and 2005. He kept traveling and reporting even after the insurgents began kidnapping and murdering Western journalists. He has much to say about what went wrong, and he harshly condemns the leading Iraq policymakers from the President on down.

 

Some of his criticisms seem clearly right in retrospect; others less so. Leave that aside for now. What I think will most surprise readers is the book's conclusion: As fiercely critical as he is of the Bush administration, Packer was and remains a supporter of George Bush's war.

 

"I came to believe that those in positions of highest responsibility for Iraq showed a carelessness about human life that amounted to criminal negligence," he writes. "Swaddled in abstract ideas, convinced of their own righteousness, incapable of self-criticism, indifferent to accountability, they turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one. When things went wrong, they found other people to blame."

 

Searing words. Now listen to what comes next: "The Iraq war was always winnable; it still is."

 

The controversy over Iraq is not like the controversy over, say, Vietnam. Although there is considerable pessimism about the war, there is little protest against it. Even those who blame the Bush administration for entering Iraq now acknowledge that the United States cannot afford to quit. And for all the blows Packer lands against the Bush administration's errors, he is equally tough on the failure of the Democratic Party to offer ideas of its own.

 

"[What] Iraqis and democracy needed more than anything . . . was a thoughtful opposition that could hold the Bush administration to its own promises--not in a game of gotcha, but in a real effort to make Iraq a success," Packer writes. "What the Democrats offered was something else: a detached and complacent negativism. The election year [2004] proved to be the year in which Iraq did turn into a disaster, and if the Democrats failed to benefit, it was partly because they had nothing to offer instead, and the public chose not to elect a party whose stance on the most important foreign-policy issue in a generation was arms folded across the chest."

 

Packer's assessment of what went wrong in Iraq, though more vividly presented, is not novel: There were too few troops and too little planning; the failure to suppress looting at the very beginning signaled weakness--and the dismissal of Iraq's Saddam-era officer corps discharged onto the streets a group of men who bitterly exploited that weakness.

 

The great question behind the assessment, though, is this: Why did things go so wrong? Why weren't there enough troops, why not enough planning, why so many mistakes?

 

Let me suggest an answer, based on my knowledge of the people involved. Many of them are my friends and colleagues, and I can attest that they are brilliant and deeply experienced people, seriously committed to American security.

 

It's often said that America lacked a policy for postwar Iraq. The truth is worse: America had two policies for postwar Iraq.

 

One policy, advocated by the Pentagon and other war-planners, called for U.S. forces to install an Iraqi provisional government immediately. American forces would keep a low profile--and rapidly draw down their numbers--as the provisional government took control of the civil service and army. The Pentagon rebuffed attempts by other branches of government to engage in more detailed reconstruction planning: The last thing the Pentagon planners wanted was a prolonged American occupation, with all the risk of triggering Iraqi nationalism and Muslim resentment.

 

The other policy, advocated by the State Department and civilian agencies, argued against going to war at all--but insisted that if the President went ahead, he should plan for a lengthy and costly occupation. This view reflected the very genuine convictions of State Department and CIA experts. It was, however, also influenced by the loathing felt by many at the civilian agencies for Ahmed Chalabi, the exile Iraqi politician whom the Pentagon had in mind as the leader of a provisional government.

 

Instead of choosing between the two policies, the Bush administration tried to fuse them both together. There would be a light, fast invasion--followed by a heavy, prolonged occupation. The result . . . well, we can all see the result.

 

Over the past few months, despite horrific atrocities such as yesterday's bombing, the news from Iraq has gotten better. More and more Iraqi forces are taking the field, and intercepted insurgent communications paint a picture of a movement in distress. Iraq remains winnable--and the consequences of defeat remain horrific. All of us though who advocated this war need to reckon with and learn from our mistakes. Packer's tough but idealistic book is a good place to start.