Review: "No End in Sight"
[Phillip Carter,
Friday July 27, 2007 at 10:43am ]
On Tuesday, I attended a screening of the new Iraq documentary "No End in Sight" in Los Angeles which was co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress and USC's Center for Public Diplomacy. (The movie is reviewed today in the New York Times.) Bottom line up front: go see this movie. It presents the history of the Iraq war in clear, sober, and vivid footage, and makes a compelling argument that we are past the point of "winnability" (whatever that means) today in Iraq.The film was written, directed and produced by Dr. Charles Ferguson, a former Brookings Institution scholar. During the post-screening Q&A, he said he decided to make a movie about Iraq after having dinner with George Packer in mid-2004, around the same time that Packer was writing his opus The Assassin's Gate. The book picks up the narrative of Packer's book to a large degree, but does so in a spectacularly visual way, stiching together interviews, footage from Iraq, press conferences, and data charts. If you've read Packer's book, and the other fine books on the war like Cobra II and Night Draws Near, as I have, then very little of this movie will feel new. Nonetheless, the movie does a good job of weaving together all of these written stories into one coherent film narrative. If Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" pioneered the art of the political documentary, then "No End in Sight" takes it several steps further by using the elements of the format in a dramatic way.
Dr. Ferguson clearly makes an artistic judgment to focus roughly 2/3 of his film on the run-up to the war and its early aftermath in 2003. This reflects his political judgment, as explained afterwards during Q&A, that the events and decisions during that timeframe set the stage for what would come. His movie barely covers the 2004 assaults on Fallujah and the Abu Ghraib scandal, and omits mention of the 2005 elections, the Maliki government, and the 2006 Samarra mosque bombing. I'm not so sure that I agree with this; I think the window of opportunity in Iraq stretched into 2004, and that it really didn't slam shut until the disastrous response to the sectarian violence incited by the February 2006 bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra. But the movie does a good job of explaining the early sins of the occupation, and arguing that these put us on the wrong path from the start.
Despite the pessimistic tone of the movie, a few heroes do emerge. Army Col. Paul Hughes, a brilliant, idealistic officer detailed to be Jay Garner's strategic planner at ORHA, comes across as one of our nation's best and brightest, who was unfortunately unable to change the course of events because he was blocked or overruled by ignorant and foolish political appointees. Marine Lt. Seth Moulton tells of leading his platoon through two deployments in Iraq, and the frustrations he felt as he tried to do his best while the mission crumbled around him. Army Spec. David Yancey and Cpl. Hugo Gonzales, both wounded severely in action, provide the human narrative of this story. Both suffered grievous wounds; Yancey still serves in the reserves; Gonzales had to be medically discharged because of the head trauma he suffered. And yet, these men retain an indomitable spirit which is inspiring. The film closes with Moulton telling us of his optimism and determination, leaving us to feel guilty that we let down these men and women who we sent into harm's way. It's a powerful conclusion.
0 Trackbacks /
That's about right. And you're being charitable with "disastrous."
But what is one to do now, Phil?
"Above all, it’s clear the United States and our allies will continue to be threatened by violent extremists, almost always operating in countries with whom we are not at war."
Why is that clear?
Ah, that makes our strategy clear: if we make sure to be at
war with everyone all the time, then there won't be any
peaceful place for the violent extremists to attack us.
For as long as anyone cares what happened I suspect. But I think some of the "missteps", like the lack of troops, were really barriers to an invasion that did not have politically acceptable solutions.
If you take the Bush &Co. causus belli rhetoric at face value: i.e. that we were there to bring democracy, hearts and flowers, and that the only permissible end state was a fully-democratic, US-allied, Israel-friendly, free-market Iraq, then the "original sin" theory is operational. No, this end-state, victory condition, whatever you call it, was NEVER going to happen. If that's what you wanted out of the invasion, you were never going to "win".
If you assume that the unspoken causus belli objectives many of us suspect were the real cause: regional hegemony, bases, favorable business deals with a pliant despot (a.k.a Chalabi), then the outcome becomes more like 50-50. Given a phenomenal run of luck - ALL the breaks go the right way ALL the time - you pull it out. Miss a few, wind up with less. Miss a bunch, crapout.
If you begin with a "worst case" approach: you'd accept a mildly despotic strongman or soft partition, indifference to Israel, weak alliance with the U.S., you might even now get away with it, maybe a 10% chance with the strongman, more if you are willing to accept just the Kurds as your ally...you can make a lot of mistakes, maybe as many as we did, and still get half or more of what you wanted.
The problem was and still is that the nimrods who came up with this idea are STILL in the game for the big money, making throw after desperate throw in hopes that they won't lose their and our and our kids' mortgages, car titles and life insurance down the rathole they've already flushed this catsick.
Sorry. We're still pretty much fucked.
Bush's base is down to the microcephalic CHUDs who still believe in the "more rubble, less trouble" school of foreign policy.
I saw the trailer, and it does look horribly coherant. The problem is for me watching this is like watching any other war porn. It shows a bunch of pleasant white men in good suits sitting quitely in rooms making bad decisions and stupid choices that will butcher many of my Army brothers. It would be like a snuff film where I know all the victims personally.
Why would I want to see that?
So well stated it deserves repeating.
True...true
"The Bush/Iraq war wasn't merely a bad idea. It was screaming yellow bonkers. It had no chance - none - of creating a positive situation. Ever. It is complete nonsense to claim "the invasion could have succeeded" if only competents had been in charge. Why? Competent people would never have invaded Iraq in the first place.
The tragedy we see today was a foregone conclusion. It was predicted again and again, by genuinely sober, reasonable people. The war supporters - all of them - were the hysterics. They wern't "idealists." They were naive, pie-in-the-sky types. After all, it was Richard Perle and David Frum who penned a book called "An End to Evil" - an utterly insane notion, as Anatol Lieven noted."
To put it shortly: An invasion by an army led by a philosopher-king, with a back-up force of arabic-speaking muslim peacekeepers moving in and doing the peacekeeping with the US Army in "hammer-of-God" mode and a well thoughtout restoration plan with lots of cash-incentives and a ten-year perspective would have had a pretty good chance.
In 1991, the realists' reason we didn't go in was that the country was considered to be ungovernable without a strong hand like Saddam. The Kurds didn't want to be part of it, the Shiites would win a fair election, and the Sunnis woldn't accept Shia rule. Partition would lead to 3 weak countries that would be pawns of the regional powers. We tried to encourage a coup, unsuccessfully. (As a condition of the 1991 alliance, we agreed not to invade, but apparently full-scale invasion had been ruled out before the agreement.)
So what changed in the "objective situation" that gave even a properly executed occupation a chance of success? The same sort of people (Shia with grudges) would have won a fair election. Even if we had found a competent strongman (no, not Chalabi), how wold we go about installing him under the glare of the media?
If inadequate size of the invasion force was the "misstep" they're thinking of, they're wishing for a pony. One of the reasons the decision to invade was jammed through, was that the cost was low-balled. The military resources would be no strain. The cornucopia of oil riches was going to pay for everything. If the administration had been honest about the costs, people would have asked a lot of questions, perhaps enough to prevent the whole project. They would have examined the claims about WMD and AQ connections more closely. Doing it on the cheap was essential to the marketing effort.
I'm inclined to repect the opinions of the guys on the panel, if only because I'm a sucker for credentials. But I just don't see the basis for their position.
No.
That whole line of reasoning is false -- it's like claiming a rape or drive-by shooting could have had a happy result
if it had just been done more expertly.
These people are criminals, and that is all they are -- end of story. Committing crimes is what they do.
I think this pretty much describes the kind of fantasy scenario in which there was a "window of opportunity". But as Corner Stone points out, a "philosopher-king" wouldn't have invaded in the first place, those araba speaking peace keepers exist only in the imagination, just like the 450,000 soldier occupation force.
But most importantly, the window of opportunity debate sets us up for a future failure. Because the problem in Iraq was not implementation. It was that the Iraqi's didn't want us there and were prepared to fight to make us leave. Its their country, they have nowhere else to go and we do. Iraq was simply never worth the cost of taking and holding it. Eventually they will drive us out if we don't leave of our own accord.
I'd like to know exactly how I let them down. I am not one of the ones who chose to have the Mafia run the nation. I am also not a member of the Supreme Court and have never done election recounts in Florida. I resisted this idiotic scheme with every legal means at my disposal. I don't have any individual guilt. Now if you want to talk collective guilt, then I would say that the guilt begins where I suggested it does: electing the Mafia. However, I see no way one can extend any collective guilt to the American people once the fun and games began. Failures to adequately resource this fandango, which of course resulted in putting the troops even more in harm's way, ain't the fault of the American people. Place the guilt where it belongs: Bush, et al and the military leadership.
I personally subscribe to the "original sin" thesis, if for no other reason than my firm belief that even those born on third base don't always get away with everything. Iraq blew up in the boy-king's face specifically because it was a stupid thing to do. It was destined to fail. Another reason I am in the "original sin" camp is because if one accepts the "window of opportunity" thesis, one is effectively absolving Bush and laying the blame on his subordinates for not making lemonade out of his lemons. I'm not inclined to ever let Bush off the hook.
Ross also makes a good point. If "window of opportunity" becomes accepted wisdom, odds are we will never learn the proper lessons from this blunder. And we will have closed the circle with Vietnam, where the military blamed the politicians and vice versa, with neither camp never really considering that maybe it shouldn't have ever been.
If we'd provided security (starting with preventing the looting), kept the lights on, and funneled resources into Iraqi firms instead of politicians and militias, we'd at least look like good guys. Soldiers handing out candy to the kids, and all that. But we look like another Mongol invasion, despite our losses and the best efforts of some fine and able people to police the place.
But even if we'd done a picture perfect job with those things, it's debatable whether there was ever a political "window". We tried going the eight grade Civics route, which predictably led to the present situation, combining the worst features of partition and civil war. The best chance would have been a relatively clean General or an exile with the connections and mojo to run the place. But Charles de Gaulle types don't come along every day. Even that would have been a hard sell with important Shiites like Sistani. And possibly the basis of some criticism by Democrats. The purple fingers made a better election stunt (for the only elections that mattered, in the US).
Early on, some of the war-fluffer trolls on blogs wrote themselves an escape clause that went "if these ungrateful camel drivers don't take advantage of the wonderful chance we're giving them, they deserve everything that happens". But if you're a zookeeper and you starve the animals and open all the cages you can't go "No one would have predicted that the tigers would eat the antelopes."
Ya, I hear that.
Henry,
The Mongols were known for the competence of both their military campaigns and their civil administration.
I just assumed they were thuggish in other ways. It certainly isn't a flattering comparison that our invasion has produced more wear and tear on the natives than the Mongols racked up.
Hulegu Khan surrounded it, then opened the dikes that flooded behind the Caliph's ranks, trapping them for slaughter. The Mongols drowned or stabbed or arrowed to death the entire lot.
Then they moved on the city. For seven days, they killed every person they could ferret out of the neighborhoods. The caliph himself was wrapped in a rug and trampled to death by the horsemen of the horde. They strangled the other his other sons, save one who they bonded as a slave on the steppe.
The city so reeked of offal spilt from the guts of massacred Moslems, the Mongols moved their camp to evade the stench and disease.
The one reason why few buildings of the Caliphate's Baghdad remain is because the Mongols burned the city to ash. This dealt a blow so psychologically devastating to the world of Islam that it is recalled with great weeping to this day.
The very strife between the Shi'i and the Sunni is often phrased in the same catastrophic terms that recollect the perfidious Shi'i help given to the Mongols during the sack of Baghdad.
The entire swath of Islam east of the Nile was spared two years later only because of a different collection of Turk steppe warriors, the Mamelukes from Egypt, who defeated the Mongols in one of the most important battles in the history of man, Ain Jalut.
Comparing the US occupation of the Green Zone to the coming of the Mongols is as gross an exaggeration as it would be possible to make. It does grave disservice to the memory of the Mamelukes and the ferocity of the Mongols. And if Juan Cole really was so idiotic to make such a comparison he should have his head examined.
A PFC from the Arkansas Army National Guard has more time in Iraq than Juan Cole ever shall. This is probably for the good of Iraq.
You libelled Prof Cole on an earlier thread by accusing him
of anti-semitism, on shockingly thin evidence. If you want
to pick a fight with him, go ahead and repeat your accusations
directly to him, and put your real name on them. This
unsubstantiated anonymous sniping is despicable (and
incidentally, it's another tactic straight from the Karl Rove
playbook).
I gather from your comments that you don't like Cole. Otherwise, they're gibberish.
Around the time of the invasion, I was reading the NYT, WaPo and Cole, among several sources. There were glaring differences of interpretation and sometimes of fact. I remember thinking that one or the other would be very wrong, and in the case of the papers, probably dishonest. I'm lazy and hate to go to the trouble of revising opinions and distrusting something I read every day, so I hoped Cole would be off base. I'm afraid it didn't turn out that way.
Or not, as today's NYTimes would suggest:
Report Finds Dire Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq
"AMMAN, Jordan, July 30 — Poverty, hunger and public health continue to worsen in Iraq, according to a report released today from Oxfam International, which demands more humanitarian aid from abroad and calls on the Iraqi government to immediately decentralize the distribution of food and medical supplies.
The report, a compendium of research from the United Nations, the Iraqi government and non-profit organizations that Oxfam works with or funds, offers little original data, but it provides one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of the humanitarian crisis within Iraq, and what it describes as a slow-motion response from Iraq’s government, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union.
The report states that as many as four million Iraqis are in dire need of help getting food, many of them children; 70 percent of the country now lacks access to adequate water supplies, up from 50 percent in 2003, and 90 percent of the country’s hospitals lack basic medical and surgical supplies.
One survey cited in the report, completed in May by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, found that 43 percent of Iraqis live in “absolute poverty,” on less than $1 a day."
The obvious conclusion is that you are full of it.
As for the thing that nobody's talking about, it's probably because after six years of Bush's BS, only a serious Kool-aid drinker believes a word coming out of his administration.
He's a pubic figure. He has inserted himself into a public discourse. I am not a public figure.
Tell you what, I'll just address him in Arabic. Since he will have no idea what I'm saying, because his verbal Arabic is notoriously bad, I can't imagine I'll be pulled into court anytime soon.
Perhaps he could sue in Iraq and visit the country he's an "expert" about for the first time.
The irony is that there are many real experts on 20th century Iraq in academia. No one consults with them about what they think.
So what ? Various people have spread a lot of dirt about
Prof Cole - in particular the charge of anti-semitism.
He has responded to such charges and defended himself -
quite convincingly in my opinion. I think it's pretty
feeble and even cowardly to peddle this kind of dirt while
hiding behind a pseudonym, on a forum that Prof Cole doesn't
frequent. If you've got a problem with him, say it to his
face.
Just to be clear, I understand that some people have good
reasons for posting under a pseudonym. I just observe
that certain rhetorical tactics are pure noise
when used under a pseudonym - notably the "trust me because
I was there" and the "here's the dirt on this guy".
He got tenure, so what do I know? He didn't get a job at Yale, so what do they know?
Being married to an academic in the humanities, I can tell
you that comeptition for academic jobs is really really tough.
There are often as many as 150 qualified applicants for
each position. Getting tenure means a hell of a lot.
Not getting a particular job means just about nothing at all.
Except for the very few acknowledged academic superstars -
Nobel prizewinners and similar - getting a job needs hard
work, talent, perseverance, and often a bit of luck as well.
For all your claims about your own experience, it doesn't
sound as though you have the slightest understanding of
this.
What any of that has to do with 20th century Iraq, of course, is the question. And seeing as he knew nothing about al Qaeda on September 10th, 2001 prepared him well as a public intellectual for September 11th, 2001.
At one point, he compared al Qaeda to a creepy California UFO cult. Not a high moment in "informed comment." To put it mildly.
It's OK, Richard. If you can find meaning in his work, fair enough. He doesn't write his blog for scholars or area researchers, and certainly not for anyone who has spent any time in Iraq.
He's one of those instant experts on the region and terrorism and salafistic movements who have been created since 9/11. The right wing blogs have their "experts," too.
It's ok. Enjoy him.
I spend a few minutes every morning checking Cole's blog. I don't do it for the excellence of his Arabic or because he's the most knowledgeable academic on modern Iraq. It's a good quick summary of the day's happenings.
I do occasionally remember that he was dispensing accurate news and commentary at a time when the NYT Times had Judith Miller, girl reporter extraordinaire, on the front page discovering huge caches of WMD. So I tend to trust Cole, within the limits of a one-person blog format. And now I tend to wonder how much of the NYT's accurate reporting is a loss leader to build up credibility for the next deception. These are the fine folks that sat on an exposive story about government surveillence because they didn't want to "affect the outcome" of the 2004 election. Hello?
The Yale matter doesn't make that university look good. When it blew up, there was a wave of trolls on liberal blogs gloating about the outcome. According to Yale, or its self-appointed spokespersons, Cole begged them for a job and they nearly gave him one. But in checking him out, they discovered that he's an evil crypto-Nazi, so they withdrew the offer, shuddering with horror at how close they'd come to soiling themselves by employing an anti-semite. The obvious problem is that years of Cole's postings are archived on his site, or in the Wayback Machine, and were available to the Yalies long before the job offer. So it looks like they made the offer in bad faith, intending to publicize its withdrawal as a means of smearing Cole.
An alternative story is that some of their big donors heard about the appointment and threatened to withold money. This puts Yale in the whorish position of taking a bribe to reject the otherwise best qualified faculty member, because their endowment is a higher priority than educating students. It does send a message to other universities that some controversial appointments are best avoided, and apparently Yale is willing to sacrifice some reputation for academic integrity to send that message.
Cole's story is that they approached him. He had no complaints about not getting a final offer and no criticism of Yale. IOW, he behaved like a traditional Ivy League gentleman. Yale went out of their way to pull a sleazy megative marketing stunt.
And I'm inclined to give Yale the benefit of doubt. I spent some post-graduate time there and left with a good opinion of the place. The job description for my next gig included death benefits, and I remember assigning them to the U. Yale was in my will for several years, and could be again.
Oh, come on. This is Yale. I fenced against Yale. I have friends at Yale. It's a bureaucratic, but meritocratic, haunt. There's a multi-department search committee at Yale, like all other important research institutions, that gins up a list of names. They then winnow the list to a few during the vetting process.
There is absolutely no scholarly reason to have hired Cole as a professor of modern Middle Eastern history. His research always has primarily involved Baha'i topics related to the 19th century.
My theory has always been that he wanted the gig (who wouldn't?), was named by a member of the committee, but the consensus was that his CV neither fit the course nor that his academic track record was of the Yale cut.
I don't think questions about his alleged anti-semitism, the poorly written and researched blog entries or the influence of some nefarious rightwing cartel of professors entered into the conversation.
That said...
When Michael Oren notices something that I independently noticed, I tend to take note, because Oren is a very fine scholar. We both detected a creepiness in Cole's blogging about politics and the region that would have reflected poorly in a classroom, and especially in a classroom that's housed in the very birthplace of Middle Eastern studies in North America.
I think what particularly concerned me were published reports that Jewish students of his at Ann Arbor thought they had to conceal their religion from him. I realize all too well the curious nature of young people's thoughts, and the dragons they perceive they need to slay, but no student should ever need to conceal her ethnicity or religion because of a palpable perception that her professor's politics or biases have colored his views.
I hope that this isn't so, but it's stuck with me.
Hmmm. On my understanding of the precedents in US libel
law, true statements are not libel, whether or not the
subject is a "poblic figure". That distinction only comes
into play when the statements are false.
You are misstating the facts of the hiring procedure. Cole was up for a joint appointment, so there were two votes in separate departments, followed by a final vote. He got through the first two and was rejected on the third. Before even the first two votes they had ample opportunity to decide whether his views were acceptable. For tenure decisions, I've seen Deans and department Chairs figure out who wasn't going to make it well ahead of time and help them arrange positions at another institution. This avoids the embarrassment of a formal rejection. They could have taken care of the situation with one call to Ann Arbor. But they didn't. It looks like they set him up for maximum embarrassment and gave the matter maximum publicity.
I don't remotely know enough about the subject to say if he was academically qualified. But that wasn't the issue. They didn't say that after discussion they thought they didn't need a faculty member in his narrow specialization. They said he was an anti-semite.
How is his supposed "creepiness" relevant. Are you saying that it makes him fair game for libel?
I've seen reports that he does an excellent job of letting students on both sides of controversies express themselves in class, but keeps the discussion orderly. I've also seen reports that Jewish students felt they were fairly treated in class participation, grades and recs. I've never seen reports that he made Jewish students uncomfortable. Did any of them cite a specific statement he made? Did any of them report him for harassment?
The standard legal doctrine is that truth is a defense to libel. So in pointing out that he's a public figure and therefore fair game, you appear to be boasting that you're free to make dishonest statements about him. Is that really what you want to convey?
Did these 'published reports' also say that he had a vast stockpile of WMD's in the steam tunnels? Perhaps a mobile biological weapons lab in the parking lot?
Truth is always a defense against libel, but another defense is that of opinion said about a public figure, which the US Supreme Court has been unwilling to truncate for purposes known to those justices.
Should he feel so impugned, Juan Cole should be getting himself to a public court to fight this alleged defamation at the hands of The New Republic, Michael Oren and several of his former students.
Why hasn't he done so?
However the law of libel applies, you spread a lie about Cole's opinions. Your claim was that that he called for a religious test for public employment or refusal to recognize accomplishments, and you have been unable to come up with an example. Based on Cole's other writings, I doubt there is one. Instead of retracting the lie, you boast that you can escape tort liability for it. it's certainly clever, but there are standards other than cleverness.