You wanna understand the umpteenth American intervention in Iraq (and now Syria), well, in a background primer, Andrew Bacevich provides you with the sort of memories of how we got to this godawfful spot that anyone could choke on. Here are just two examples. Tom Project for a New American Century’s ‘Letter to President Bill Clinton’ Created to promote neoconservative foreign policies, PNAC has since — thankfully — departed the scene. This artifact from 1998 remains — a letter signed by luminaries such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton, among others, urging President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Get rid of Saddam, they insisted, and all would be well. Substitute “ISIS” for “Saddam,” and that’s pretty much where we are today. A testament to the naivete of ostensibly sophisticated people. The Downing Street Memo Eight months before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 invasion, senior British officials just back from consulting their counterparts in Washington, met in London to brief Prime Minister Tony Blair on what they had learned. George W. Bush had already decided on war, they reported — a tidbit Bush had not yet shared with the American people. With that decision having been made, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” One more thing: “There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action” — an oversight, to put it mildly. At the piece, you can click to the actual documents. bostonglobe/opinion/2014/09/24/bacevich-recommendedreading/AB2hAVr3scy7sz2X3tXsVL/story.html
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 12:30:01 +0000
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