Ten Years Later, What Paul Wolfowitz 'Owes to the Country'

[Bill USA]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/ten-years-later-what-paul-wolfowitz-owes-to-the-country/274129/

Andrew Bacevich has a wonderful essay, in the form of an open letter to Paul Wolfowitz, in the current Harper's. You have to subscribe to read it -- but, hey, you should be subscribing to any publication whose work you value. This essay isolates the particular role Wolfowitz had in the cast of characters that led us to war. As a reminder, they included:

- Dick Cheney, who was becoming a comic-book churl by this stage of his public life;

- Colin Powell, the loyal soldier, staffer, and diplomat whose "Powell Doctrine" and entire life's work stood in opposition to the kind of war that he, with misguided loyalty, was to play so central a role in selling;
- Tony Blair, the crucial ally who added rhetorical polish and international resolve to the case for war;

- Donald Rumsfeld, with his breezy contempt for those who said the effort would be difficult or long;

- Paul Bremer, whose sudden, thoughtless dismantling of the Iraqi army proved so disastrous;

- Condoleezza Rice, miscast in her role as White House national-security advisor;

- George Tenet, the long-time staffer who cooperated with the "slam-dunk!" intelligence assessment despite serious disagreement within the CIA;

- and of course George W. Bush himself, whose combination of limited knowledge and strong desire to be "decisive" made him so vulnerable to the argument that the "real" response to the 9/11 attacks should be invading a country that had nothing to do with them.


But Paul Wolfowitz was in a category of his own because he was the one who provided the highest-concept rationale for the war. As James Galbraith of the University of Texas has put it, "Wolfowitz is the real-life version of Halberstam's caricature of McNamara" [in The Best and the Brightest].

Bacevich's version of this assessment is to lay out as respectfully as possible the strategic duty that Wolfowitz thought the U.S. would fulfill by invading Iraq. Back before the war began, I did a much more limited version of this assessment as an Atlantic article. As Bacevich puts it now, Wolfowitz was extending precepts from his one-time mentor, Albert Wohlstetter, toward a model of how the United States could maximize stability for itself and others.
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[Purveyor]

1. Good read, indeed! Thank you for posting. eom

[PolitFreak]

2. His Head on a Plate

With Cheney's and Rumsfeld's. (I'd include W, but he doesn't have a head.)

[Rhiannon12866]

3. K&R! Yes! James Fallows is just excellent!

Thanks so much for posting!

[Squinch]

4. Yep. Wolfowitz was the pied piper of that rat party. And now he's resurfacing. Lets not let him.