Learning from our mistakes

In the current issue of Foreign Affairs James Dobbins, who served as Assistant Secretary of State Under both Clinton and George W., argues that we need to stop the blame game and look at the underlying reasons why we lost Iraq. Dobbins argues that we all are to blame. We, the voters, elected those - both Democrat and Republican - who went into and have conducted the war ineptly. Bushies "emphasized inspiration and guidance from above and loyalty and compliance from above" rather than fostering a climate of structured debate and disciplined dissent. The Democrats sat on their hands. We need to accept these facts and learn from them.

Dobbins stresses the need for hard behind-the-scenes work - the blocking and tackling I have spoken of earlier - to promote democracy, rather than the flashy world of voters displaying their purple thumbs.

His concluding section (note the use of the word 'competent'):

THE FAULT IS NOT IN OUR STARS

By January 2009, nearly everyone responsible for launching and directing the war in Iraq will have left office. Sorting out who did what will then become a job for historians. In choosing successors, however, Americans should insist on leaders who will foster debate and welcome disciplined dissent. These leaders should be surrounded by advisers chosen primarily for their relevant experience and demonstrated competence, not their ideological purity and partisan loyalty.

Leaders of this caliber, supported by more competent and professional staffs, will make better use of existing structures for policy formulation and implementation. These structures can be strengthened by the establishment of an enduring division of labor for postconflict stabilization and reconstruction among the national security agencies and by the building of a cadre of senior career officials with experience across the national security establishment.

The "war on terror" should be reconceived and renamed to place greater emphasis on its police, intelligence, and diplomatic components. The U.S. Army should continue to improve its counterinsurgency skills, with a particular emphasis on training, equipping, and advising others to conduct such campaigns. The United States should avoid allowing al Qaeda and its ilk to dictate its alignment in any particular dispute, should take sides when necessary based on an objective calculation of national interests, and should directly engage U.S. troops in local civil wars only in the rarest of circumstances. "Preemption" should be retired from the lexicon of declared policy, democratization should be pursued everywhere as a long-term objective in full recognition of its short-term costs and risks, and nation building should be embarked on only where the United States and its partners are ready for a long, hard, and expensive effort. Above all, Americans should accept that the entire nation has, to one degree or another, failed in Iraq. Facing up to this fact and drawing the necessary lessons is the only way to ensure that it does not similarly fail again.