'Fiasco' or 'Debacle' by any other name

At the Wilson County Public Library a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a book I'd been wanting to read for several years but had never gotten around to. Part of the problem was I kept getting the title wrong: I kept thinking "Debacle," but the title of Tom Ricks' 2006 book is "Fiasco." It's an apt title for his thorough history of American errors in the Iraq War.

Ricks' analysis of all the things that went wrong — and almost everything went wrong or was based on false assumptions — is devastating. From the initial decision to launch the invasion, based on the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or that he was tied to the 9/11 attacks, to the failure to secure weapons caches that later supplied the insurgency, to the failure to plan for post-invasion governance, the Bush administration misjudged and mismanaged everything.

In one sense, the history of the early years of the Iraq War, which is still not over (we still have 100,000-plus troops there), is a Greek tragedy. Hubris, that personality flaw that drives so many Greek tragedies, is evident aplenty in this history. The neo-conservatives in the Bush administration were so absolutely certain that they knew what was best for Iraqis and how Iraqis would react to an invasion that they never considered what might happen if Iraqis did not welcome invaders with open arms or if the toppling of Saddam's regime resulted in anarchic chaos. The planners of this war apparently never considered the impact of sectarian hatred or the absence of any history of democratic institutions. The key players in this tragedy — Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle — stubbornly stuck to their preconceived notions of how this adventure should end, despite the devolution in other directions.

The invasion of Iraq has been called the worst foreign policy mistake in American history, and Ricks' book does nothing to rebut that assertion. In fact, his history of this debacle, revealing the short-sighted assumptions and the failures to face reality, adds support to that accusation.

I've read that Ricks' follow-up book, "The Gamble," is kinder toward the Bush administration. "The Gamble" reports on Bush's decision to order a "surge" in troop strength in 2007 — a reversal of the 2003 doctrine to use minimal manpower — which succeeded in dramatically improving security in Iraq and making possible national elections and, it is hoped, the withdrawal of American troops. If "The Gamble" is as thorough, revealing, interesting and well-written as "Fiasco," it also will be worth a read.

CIA prosecution would set dangerous precedent

The U.S. Justice Department appears to be headed down a path President Obama has said he didn't want to follow. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that he was appointing a special prosecutor to look into interrogation tactics used under the Bush administration. The previous administration had investigated the matter and concluded that no prosecution was warranted. Obama has said America should be looking forward, not replaying divisive old issues.

A new administration that prosecutes the previous administration over what are essentially matters of judgment sets a dangerous precedent. The possibility that CIA agents will be prosecuted for following the orders of their superiors and the advice of the U.S. Justice Department leaves the U.S. intelligence community vulnerable to political whims.

For the sake of national security, the Justice Department had better back away from any prosecution of CIA interrogators. Prosecuting interrogators who used harsh techniques has been pushed by some liberal Democrats who see another opportunity to isolate and embarrass the Bush administration. Besides embarrassing the Bushies, this course could harm the CIA and set a dangerous precedent for future politics.

In the months following Sept. 11, 2001, when everyone expected additional terrorist attacks on American soil, U.S. intelligence agents and soldiers were doing everything possible to uncover and stop the planning and execution of terrorist attacks. Justice Department officials gave a green light to harsh techniques, including "waterboarding," which gave detainees the false impression that they were being drowned. Whether these techniques provided information that otherwise would not have been available remains a topic of debate. Subsequently, the Bush administration abandoned waterboarding and similar techniques, and the Obama administration has officially forsaken torture as a means of gathering information.

But prosecuting CIA agents for what they did at the direction of the administration then in power can only have bad results. Those agents did not set policy; they merely carried out policy at the direction of policy makers. Top Justice Department lawyers in the Bush administration declared harsh interrogation techniques to be legal, and while this policy comported with Bush-Cheney desires, there is no evidence that the attorneys were dishonest in their opinions. Other attorneys see matters differently, which is not unusual. It is as if President Roosevelt had lost the 1944 election, and a new administration, disagreeing with war policy, decided to prosecute B-17 crews for killing German civilians on their bombing runs.

Advocates of prosecuting Bush administration officials and agents are proposing that political differences be criminalized, a strategy that would cripple progress in Washington forever. Obama was right: Let's look to the future, not the past.