Jeanne Kirkpatrick - "We wuz wrong?"

"Iraq presented a very different set of circumstances from Afghanistan, however. These are things we ought to have known and taken into account when weighing our decision to invade in 2003.

Iraq lacked practically all the requirements for a democratic government: rule of law, an elite with a shared commitment to democratic procedures, a sense of citizenship, and habits of trust and cooperation. The administration's failure involved several issues, but the core concern is that they did not seem to have methodically completed the due diligence required for reasoned policy-making because they failed to address the aftermath of the invasion. This, of course, is reflected by the violence, sectarian unrest, ethnic vengeance and bloodshed we see in Iraq today."  Jeanne Kirkpatrick

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Jeanne Kirkpatrick was the aunt by marriage of an old Army friend of mine.  He used to talk about her a bit.  An interesting woman.  I had the "pleasure" of briefing her several times.  I would not have descrbed her as a warm person, but maybe under other circumstances...

In any case, she is one more of those who have discovered that their "invincible ignorance" of; human nature, the Middle East, Arabs, Iraqis and Muslims have brought us to the "jaws of..."

This is becoming a veritable rogues gallery and I am collecting names.  Any nominations?  They must be based on actual confession.  pl

http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2007/04/neocon_godmothe.php

Comments

[Peter Principle]

I would not have descrbed her as a warm person, but maybe under other circumstances...

Well, that's one way to put it. Having had some passing familiarity with Kirkpatrick from my own professionnal past, I would suggest that "she wolf," "scaly dragon" and "raving monster" would be more appropriate terminology. Think John Bolton, without the warmth and grace.

[Nick]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or, in this case, the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick is right because Iraq has turned into a total blunder.

It's easy to believe JK's argument because of the situation we find ourselves in. But it's a post hoc ergo propter hoc statement. She basically absolves the US of wrong doing because we didn't peer hard enough into the soul and civic shortcomings of everyday Iraqis.

But her argument about the political culture of Iraqis is wrong on the basis of her own statements. 1) There is (was) a Baghdad elite with common goals. Shia's and Sunni's who lived together in mixed neighborhoods; whose parents served under the monarchy and again under the early and late Ba'ath regimes. Further, there was a sense of Iraqi citizenship. Unfortunately, Saddam was the blacksmith who helped forge that identity, whether we like it or not.

It was into the mess we created that the current forces spilled. Colonel, your Iyad Allawi post just below this one tells it all. We made monumental mistakes when we cut off the head and the proceeded to stab the body. We shouldn't have disbanded the military, purged the civil bureaucracy and elevated the Hawzah to the level of Supreme Court.

The whole project was a mistake from the beginning. But I won't accept Kirkpatrick's argument for a second. She's as wrong now as she was as UN Ambassador under Reagan. A stupid racist, and nothing more.

[Will]

what was Condi's rationalefor advising Dumbya?

It had nothing to do w/ WMD. The sanctions were coming off after 10 years. He, SH, was coming out of his box. he was getting away w/ it. The troops were over there. We might as well kill his nation now. Or we may have to assemble them over them there again at some future time. That was the extent of her pea brain thinking.

Some smart ass repub had emailed my wife a version of the grasshopper story going on welfare and stealing the hardworking ants tax earnings. The lesson was be careful for whom you vote. I sent him my own made up grasshopper-ant story.

Truer Story for our times,But Much Sadder

The ant being industrious had joined the Reserves to earn a few extra bucks. he figures it's one weekend a month and a couple of weeks a year. W invades a country that did not desire war with us and did not threaten us. W sends the Ant's Ass to Irak. He's there on his third tour.

The Grasshopper is there at the Ant's house living with Mrs. Ant, eating the Ant's food.

Moral
Be Careful Who you Vote For and what Idiot you let in the White House

[Patrick Theros]

Pat, Jeanne Kirkpatrick seems to have stayed in her ivory tower. One should not speak ill of the dead, but this is the lady who, when she served as the permanent representative to the UN, invited Arab ambassadors to breakfast and served bacon and eggs. She repeats an argument subscribed to by a broad spectrum of people - from neocons to Sen. Biden - that there was no Iraqi nation. There was. Allawi is only one illustration of the very large number of a sophisticated, well-educated elite which shared sense of nation in the Western sense. And it wasn't just the elite. Iraqis fought a 9 year war against Iran with an Army that was 70% Shia peasant and urban proletariat, who acquitted themselves with determination and courage in the name of Iraq.
Bremmer and his carpetbaggers set about systematically destroying the elite and the institutions of the Iraqi nation, not just the Iraqi state. Jeanne Kirkpatrick's statement is as ignorant now as the administration's decision to Iraq was in 2003. She doesn't deserve any credit for prescience or good judgment.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Patrick Theros:

Did an American nation exist in 1859? In 1862? In 1868?

[W. Patrick Lang]

PT

I would say that Iraq in '03 was a work in progress with maybe half the people thinking of themselves as Iraqi and the rest thinking of themselves in other categories which were both older and deeper. pat

[Arun]

Did you see this?
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/17102685.htm>http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/17102685.htm

"In a question-and-answer period after his speech, Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.

``I think it was Osama bin Laden's,'' Rove replied."