Andrew Bacevich’s Essay — “Washington in Wonderland” — Synopsizes Our Policy Madness in Iraq — but His Diagnosis May Mask the True Psychic Culprits — Profit and Insider Advancement

© 2015 Peter Free

 

19 June 2015

 

 

Professor/Colonel Andrew Bacevich has an excellent eye for nation-weakening idiocies

 

Consider what he published yesterday:

 

 

A week ago, I appeared on a network television news program to discuss American policy in Iraq and in particular the challenges posed by ISIS.

 

The other guests were former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and current CEO of a Washington think tank Michelle Flournoy, and retired four-star general Anthony Zinni who had once headed up United States Central Command.

 

[A]pparent disagreement on specifics masked a deeper consensus consisting of three elements:

 

* That ISIS represents something akin to an existential threat to the United States . . . .

* That if the United States doesn’t claim ownership of the problem of Iraq, the prospects of “solving” it are nil . . . .

* That the exercise of leadership implies, and indeed requires, employing armed might . . . .

 

Here are some of the things they chose to overlook:

 

* ISIS would not exist were it not for the folly of the United States in invading . . . Iraq in the first place; we created the vacuum that ISIS is now attempting to fill.

* U.S. military efforts to pacify occupied Iraq from 2003 to 2011 succeeded only in creating a decent interval for the United States to withdraw without having to admit to outright defeat . . . .

* For more than a decade . . . the United States has been attempting to create an Iraqi government that governs and an Iraqi army that fights . . . those efforts . . . have failed abysmally.

 

Now, these are facts.

 

[A]nyone proposing ways for Washington to put things right in Iraq ought to display a certain sense of humility.

 

But that would assume a willingness to engage in serious self-reflection.

 

It should require more than clinging to policies that have manifestly failed.  To remain willfully blind to those failures is not leadership, it’s madness.

 

© 2015 Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington in Wonderland: Down the Iraqi Rabbit Hole (Again), TomDispatch.com (18 June 2015) (reformatted excerpts)

 

 

Our Iraq policy is “madness” — unless, the real motive is insider profit and self-advancement

 

I do not think that our leaders are insane. Nor do I think that they are stupid in the low IQ sense.

 

They are just profiting themselves and their corporate masters via the pursuit of constant war.

 

 

Pertinent here is Robert Reich’s theory about “anticipatory bribery”

 

In regard to power people’s self-interest, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has said that:

 

 

In the 1970s, only 3 percent of retiring members of Congress went on to become Washington lobbyists. Now, half of all retiring senators and 42 percent of retiring representatives become lobbyists.

 

This isn’t because more recent retirees have had fewer qualms. It’s because the financial rewards from lobbying have mushroomed, as big corporations and giant Wall Street banks have sunk fortunes into rigging the game to their advantage.

 

Anticipatory bribery undermines trust in government almost as much as direct bribery. At a minimum, it can create the appearance of corruption, and raise questions in the public’s mind about the motives of public officials.

 

Another form of anticipatory bribery occurs when the payment comes in anticipation of a person holding office, and then delivering the favors.

 

© 2015 Robert Reich, The Growing Trend of ‘Anticipatory Bribery’, Moyers & Company (09 June 2015)

 

 

Notice that

 

Panetta, Flournoy, and Zinni formerly held positions that depended upon the good will of the national security (Military Industrial Complex) which floated them high.

 

This subtly clarity-corrupting phenomenon — of “go along to get along” — is the subject of Professor Michael Glennon’s book, National Security and Double Government (2015), reviewed here.

 

 

The moral? —  Accurate self-reflection has a hard time competing with the urge toward self-advancement and profit

 

Delusion (Professor Bacevich’s “madness”) seems to be the result in many of us.

 

Which ultimately leads to Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s related observation — made in his 1894 essay, “On Patriotism” — that:

 

 

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.