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<p>Well, that’s not entirely true. He did get a huge boost in ratings during the first year or so. The “rally around the flag” effect is long documented and understood by policymakers and political scientists alike.</p>
<p>Bush’s press was awfully positive at first, too. But when it gets to four years and there’s a civil war and ethnic cleansing and urban warfare, the reputation takes a hit.</p>
<p>Also, there have been so many well-sourced books showing what a horrible job they did preparing for the aftermath. That’s something I just don’t understand – Why did they hire people with the correct ideology but no skills to run things after the invasion? An Army officer I know who is over there now goes absolutely nuts when he recounts his dealings with the wet-behind-the-ears conservative ideologues with no experience and skills who were put in charge of the Iraqi financial markets, food distribution systems, etc.</p>
<p>UCLAri - There were plenty of folks – with strong foreign policy credentials, including people from his father’s and Reagan’s administration – who gave warning before the war regarding many of the things that have come to pass. </p>
<p>So, no, they didn’t know what the outcome would be. But they did have alternative scenarios laid out, from people who were their political friends. And why did they do such a lousy job planning for what were absolutely forseeable problems?</p>
<p>My take: because what we got is exactly what they wanted.</p>
<p>The only exception (besides Bush not getting the adulation he expected): </p>
<p>They were counting on the war helping the Republicans stay in power forever, given the huge gerrymandering by the last Congress, and the reluctance of voters to switch governing parties mid-war. A war against terrorism really never ends. It remains to be seen whether they’ll manage to escalate the war enough between now and 2008 to scare the voters into staying with a Republican.</p>
<p>Unless conditions drastically improve, the war is over as a plus for politicians supporting the war. Majorities now agree it wasn’t worth fighting and most people (as established by polls) don’t trust Bush in general.</p>
<p>There was a bit of a bump in public support after the president changed his rhetoric a bit in response to advice from some political scientists. <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902792.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902792.html</a> But events on the ground have undergone further development and all the purposive rhetoric in the world is not going to make such a difference unless reality changes.</p>
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<p>Sure, and just as many people foresaw a positive outcome. Others basically said, “We have to do it, consequences be damned.”</p>
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<p>This isn’t an administration exactly known for being open-minded to criticism or different opinions…</p>
<p>But there’s no real evidence to suggest that the Bushies thought we had to do it [for reasons of security], consequences be damned.</p>
<p>If they were so concerned about security, why out a covert agent? As the US Attorney scandal suggests, there’s good reason to believe that decisions by this adminstration are made primarily for the benefit of the Republican party and its re-election chances, not the general welfare or the common defense.</p>
<p>And…why be so unwilling to correct the course? Why keep ignoring the predictions of people who have been right all along in favor of those who have been wrong?</p>
<p>And as (I think it was) momfromme points out–if they really thought our national security was at stake in this war, why would they have dismissed effective people in order to put incompetent cronies in so many key positions? In the matter of civilian employees, why was the war treated primarily as an opportunity to dole out plums?</p>
<p>I never said that politics is always clean, or even intelligent. But I tend to err on the side of the international relations literature I’ve learned from, as a lot of it is the driving foundation for many of the decisions being made in these administrations and the State Dept.</p>
<p>As for ousting an agent, that’s an easy answer: politics.</p>
<p>Exactly. This war is all about politics and patronage. Security is at best a dim third.</p>
<p>I don’t think I agree, conyat. The Bush folks, at least some of them, thought they were trying to serve security goals. For me a lesson is to never underestimate the power of self-delusion and group think (particularly when other, noncollective goals, are also served).</p>
<p>Again, I don’t agree. Nor did I say that.</p>
<p>The Libby scandal does not tell us WHY Bush chose war in 2003. It tells us how he handles a war scenario once he’s in it. Exclude all data post-2003, and then you get a more interesting and realistic model of how Bush decided to enter war.</p>
<p>I wasn’t implying that you agreed that the war was all about politics. But I did strongly agree with your assessment as to why our national security was deliberately endangered by the administration in the Plame matter. And for me, it’s not much of a stretch to believe it would be deliberately endangered in other ways for the same reason.</p>
<p>Momforme, I’ll buy that at least some of the Bush folks thought that security was at stake. Certainly, many of the neocons with no real war experience were probably very easily gulled. But not the people at the very top who were calling the shots.</p>
<p>I just have a hard time believing that the priorities could change so quickly. That we go to war for reasons of security, then in the blink of an eye decide patronage and re-election are more important than national security. By Occam’s razor, it makes more sense to believe that patronage and politics were always the driving factors.</p>
<p>The only way to reconcile the patronage in civilian hiring with a belief that security was the top priority is to accept that those making the decisions are so blindly partisan that they think being a Republican operative or donor automatically makes a person an expert in everything. That some kind of divine fiat makes a party loyalist more qualified to run a stockmarket or rebuild a nation’s hospitals than people who have already done it successfully. </p>
<p>I just don’t believe that they are that delusional.</p>
<p>People often have mixed and even contradictory goals and priorities. Goals can get sorted out if there is a rigorous decision process that uses evidence with great care. But from what we know, the policy process in the Bush WH was not not of that sort.</p>
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<p>Well, keep in mind that a president can’t carry out his policies if he’s not in office, so elections do end up becoming important. </p>
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<p>It can be in the middle, y’know…</p>
<p>Sorry, can you explain what you mean by “in the middle”?</p>
<p>I really don’t see another explanation. Either you think that the person you put in place is the best person for the job or deep down you don’t want the job filled by the best person. </p>
<p>They don’t have the option to say that a better person wasn’t available because in many cases, they fired or rejected the competent people to make way for inexperienced, incapable loyalists. Case in point: the hospital rebuilding, where the world’s leading expert was fired to give his job to an adoption social worker who made a fiasco of it.</p>
<p>Abe Lincoln was one of the fiercest critics of the Mexican War - I guess in the eyes of certain people, that makes him a traitor/defeatist.</p>
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<p>What does one have to do with the other? Should pro-lifers, instead of criticizing the decision of Roe v. Wade, instead, help out the mothers who are struggling to raise their children or children who are in foster care?</p>
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<p>“Faulty intelligence” - yeah right. Leading up to the war, there were ample doubts about the “intelligence” - where members of the intelligence services basically debunked or, at least, put serious doubts on the claims presented by the Bush administration (interesting how the Wash Post and LA Times were able to do this, and not the NY Times, but we all the know the reason for that).</p>
<p>Aluminum tubing, yellow cake, Ansar Al-Islam, the Downing Street Memo, etc. - rationales for the war - were all debunked prior to the invasion.</p>
<p>The administration’s attempt to use Ansar al-Islam, the Kurdish group affiliated with Al Qaeda was simply laughable (not to mention the Downing Street Memo which was rather a poor forgery) since Ansar was a sworn enemy of Saddam and was under OUR protection under the “no-fly zone” in Northern Iraq.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget Cheney (who, btw, has made many fraudulent claims) who, prior to the invasion, “visited” the CIA HQ nearly a dozen times, the administration putting things back into speeches (such as Powell’s before the UN) that were already dismissed by the CIA as not credible and the Bush/Cheny and cabal mentioning 9/11 with Saddam so often that at one point, 70% of the US pop. believed Saddam had something to do with 9/11 (Cheney, btw, still makes that claim today).</p>
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<p>So the leading Democrats were a bunch of pansies - so what else is new?</p>
<p>And the 30 other nations included “powers” such as Bulgaria and Caribbean island nations (most of which were beholden to the US for reasons other than Iraq).</p>
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<p>We already know that it is a disaster. </p>
<p>Iraq was once a secular Muslim nation. </p>
<p>Presently, the pop. (that which hasn’t fled) has been radicalized and the “democratic” govt. is beholden to militias associated with the radical cleric al-Sadr or militias with strong ties to Iran.</p>
<p>Even if there was the justification of simply getting rid of Saddam - this administration has handled the invasion/war in a totally incompetent way (not surprising for a President who values loyalty over competency).</p>
<p>I find it absolutely hilarious that the adminstration kept talking about how the military commanders were in charge of troop levels even though the administration totally derided General Shinseki for stating that force of several hundred thousand was required for the occupation of Iraq.</p>
<p>This, btw, is the same administration that also tried to do Afghanistan “on the cheap” - whereby the lack of US forces during the Battle of Tora Bora allowed bin Laden and his cohorts to escape into Pakistan.</p>
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<p>I’ve come to the sad conclusion that they are. Look at Katrina if you have any doubts.</p>