Written by Fumo Verde
It is now the summer of 2007 and by most accounts the Iraq War isn’t turning out the way the Bush administration had planned, or at least that’s what Democrats, the mainstream media, returning vets, the late great Pat Tillman and, by most polls, 68% of the U.S. public say. The few dissenting voices before the invasion stated that winning the war would be easy; it’s winning the peace that really counts. So, what was the Bush Plan? Was it like the Marshal Plan?
In No End In Sight, Charles Ferguson brings us the people who were there to start the rebuilding of that war-torn country after their government had fell. General Paul Hughes was in charge of the total reconstruction. He still can’t believe how poorly and how deliberately the Bush administration took care of its promise to bring peace and democracy. Get ready for the real shock and awe.
Ferguson opens us up with a speech by Donald Rumsfeld where he thanks Pres. Bush for understanding what most Americans didn’t about this “not well known, not well understood, and very complex war.” To think he was talking about the American public. No End In Sight will open your eyes to see how badly the administration handled post-war Iraq and how that relates to the problems we have today.
When invading another country you would like the civilian population to be on your side. To this, humanitarian relief and aid are needed, referred to as “winning the hearts and minds.” During WWII, the allies had planned for the occupation of Germany two years prior to the invasion of Europe. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (ORHA) was set up by the Bush administration and were given sixty days to come up with a plan to reconstruct Iraq. Sixty days, that’s what you give your landlord when you’re going to move out of an apartment.
Article comments
1 - Tom W.
A little history is in order here...
The Marshall Plan wasn't enacted until more than two years after Germany surrendered. During that period hundreds of thousands of German civilians and prisoners of war died of starvation, disease, and violence.
American soldiers routinely used food to barter for sexual favors from German women, behavior strictly prohibited in today's military.
The reason Iraq has problems with water, electricity, and public health is because these services were utterly devastated for decades under Saddam, and it's simply not been possible for the U.S. to fight a war and rebuild a country almost from scratch.
The irony, of course, is that the U.S. military, the intelligence services, the State Department, and the United Nations are gigantic bureaucracies of the type favored by leftists everywhere.
Postwar Iraq stands as an example of how nations function when turned over to bureaucracies.
2 - bliffle
And "Tom W" comes in with the usual cowardly attempt to dodge the blame and shift responsibility for the Bush failures in Iraq. It's all somebody else's fault.