Critics on Iraq Policy Come Out of the Woodwork Too Late

[norml]

October 25, 2005
Critics on Iraq Policy Come Out of the Woodwork Too Late

by Ivan Eland
With the continued quagmire in Iraq and the likely indictments of senior Bush administration officials for trying to shore up the shaky rationale for the invasion, one would think that things couldn’t get much worse for the administration. But where success has a thousand architects, failure leads to much finger pointing. The administration’s latest headache comes from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff. In a well-publicized recent speech before the New America Foundation, which I attended, Wilkerson lambasted the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” that got control of U.S. foreign policy from a president “not versed in international relations and not too much interested either.”

Wilkerson’s scathing remarks were designed to deflect criticism from his former boss. As one anti-war Republican Senate staff member told me, Wilkerson “summoned his courage about three years too late.” The typically politically correct, inside-the-beltway audience was too polite to ask why Powell and Wilkerson didn’t resign over the invasion of a foreign nation that they privately opposed.

Those taking a more optimistic view might say, “better late than never.” Like Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neil before him, a disgruntled former administration official like Wilkerson draws a lot of public attention to horrendous administration policy. In his speech, Wilkerson praised a new book by Democrat George Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, called The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. The book will be just one of many new books exposing the administration’s incompetence in the Iraqi occupation, but will certainly get a boost from Wilkerson’s speech and the extensive media coverage of it.

Packer traveled to Iraq multiple times to research the book. Although valuable for cataloging the Bush administration’s bungling, however, the book falters by implying that a more competent administration could have been more successful in the Herculean task of restructuring an entire society’s political, economic, and social system. In other words, the author presents an essentially Wilsonian Democratic critique of a Wilsonian Republican occupation, thus avoiding the larger question of whether such grand nation-building can ever be successful.


snip


http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=7757

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. "Powell and Wilkerson didn’t resign"

Resign? In the old days, regret for causing that much horrible shit would have been good reason for suicide.

[norml]

2. Top Republican Evokes Eisenhower, Blasts 'Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal'

This article appears in the October 28, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Top Republican Evokes Eisenhower,
Blasts 'Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal'
by Edward Spannaus

A scathing attack on the Cheney-Rumsfeld "cabal" that is running the current Administration, and high praise for Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush, was delivered on Oct. 19 by Col. Larry Wilkerson (ret.), who served as chief staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001 to early 2005. Wilkerson's statement, delivered at the New America Foundation in Washington, was taken as representing the thinking of a section of traditionalist Republicans, and at least some of the Bush 41 circle.

No Administration in history has screwed up the national security decision-making process as badly as the George W. Bush Administration, Wilkerson said; he blamed this on "a cabal" between Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which made decisions for the Administration in secret, and who represenated what Eisenhower called the "Military-Industrial Complex."

Col. Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army, and worked for 16 years for Colin Powell, including in the Bush 41 Administration, in which Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is the former Associate Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State, and has taught at both the Naval War College and the U.S. Marine Corps War College.

Col. Wilkerson was introduced by Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, who referenced the policy debates and discussions within the Eisenhower Administration. Following are excerpts of Col. Wilkerson's remarks:


snip


http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3242wilkerson_v_cheney.html