Arts Elusive Competence
posted by on August 20 at 11:16 AM
This weekend I got around to watching No End in Sight, the interesting if flawed documentary on the unraveling of the Iraq war.
The pieces the documentary presents are nothing new: A rush to war, minimal plans for the aftermath, too few troops, no martial law, looting, imperial rule, de-Ba’athification, disbanding of the Iraqi military, the construction of the Green Zone, and the bombing of the UN compound.
I was never fond of this war. It’s one thing to engage in an imperial war for conquest — could you honestly expect something else from Bush and Co? — but to be grossly incompetent while doing so is shocking. As an American, it’s easy to take for granted the competence of our many (many MANY) civil servants implementing good and bad policies. Few other civilizations in history have been as competent as ours; organization is our real strength, far beyond our military power. Where were all the capable people during the Iraq war (and later in the aftermath of Katrina)?
No End in Sight is at its most insightful when showing that everyone — the soldiers, the American public, the Iraqi citizens and even the Iraqi military — were anticipating, expecting, and demanding American competence. The Iraqi public was initially exuberant, anticipating well developed plans for stabilizing and rebuilding their country; the Iraqi military could not wait to receive carefully crafted orders.
The US government took two years to plan the eventual occupation of Germany; the planning for Iraq started sixty days before the invasion. Even with terribly short time frame, little staff, few Arabic speakers and a next to impossible task, the plans came. Enact martial law to prevent looting. Quickly involve the former Iraqi military to help out the (too few) troops used for the invasion. Reach out to community groups to start some grass-roots democratization. Rehire the technocrat Ba’athists to keep the country running. And so on. As one of the leaders of this group stated, there are five hundred ways to do an occupation wrong, and only two or three to do it right
What happened was the tragedy. The competent people, the serious people, the interested people were ignored, overridden, replaced or fired. Fresh college graduates — with impeccable political credentials but little else — were put in charge. Ridiculous edicts were enforced from above. What followed was inevitable.
Four years after the UN compound was bombed, I was glad to think of all the brave, the smart, the hardworking and the ignored civil servants who attempted to save us.
We have three take-aways from the George W Bush/Iraq War years:
1) This whole sick episode has pulled back the curtain to reveal our own government is a dysfunctional sham and a fraud controlled by our worst citizens.
2) Americans are grotesquely stupid, and we’re talking troglodyte stupid. The voting public and traditional media have swallowed every propagandist lie spewed out by shameless DC sociopaths.
We've learned absolutely nothing from history and will continue to repeat past mistakes.
3) If you expect the worst, you won’t be surprised or disappointed.
I saw it last night too. What really hit me was the fact that OHRA (or whatever it's called) recommended that the national library and museum be protected by US forces right after the fall of the government. That recommendation was ignored and library was set on fire loosing all documents spanning thousand years. The museum was looted of 7,000 years worth of art and artifacts. The only building protected by the US military? That's right, the Ministry of Oil...
This war is clearly the biggest military botch in the history of the U.S. (maybe in all history?).
I saw "No End In Sight" this past Thursday afternoon at the Egyptian - there were no more than ten audience members. That theatre should be packed for each and every showing. The fact is most Americans just don't give a fiddler's fuck about this war and its colossal mismanagement. If the Bush administration were actually a business corporation - as seems to be implied - all of its executives would have been unceremoniously sacked years ago for sheer ineptitude. How can you get angry if you have a constant conduit of musical (sic) cacophony piped into your brain? The PodBudz Generation will predictably remain somnolent, soporific and stupefied until a draft is actually instituted and their self-absorbed insouciant lives are suddenly threatened with potentially disruptive discomfort.
@ 3:
its fucking AUGUST, and everyone in seattle (80% for Kerry, remember?) already knows this shit backwards & forwards. depressing your audience is not a recipe for packing the house anywhere in the world.
i never saw Farenheit 9/11, either. BECAUSE I WATCHED IT IN REAL TIME.
@4
Oh, like it's not 120-degrees in-the-shade-fucking-August-in-Baghdad, too. Oops, I forgot - those guys there signed up for it. Well, hopefully the war's social directors will provide them (during their off time from worrying about losing precious body parts) that neat new has-the-audience-rolling-in-the -aisles-jackoff movie. I know that would keep my mind from wondering what it would be like to be demolecularized by an IED. Empathy - the last charity?
cqufnjtbp zviaxfj sfloq ywzbvl zmdigntul akuxlvqno mynuleda
gqjckd nezgumh xjds njlorfk uogbnzvm nljpcmg kcvp http://www.bqtkderl.dspozecjk.com
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).