Bush's Enablers

In the New York Times yesterday, Brookings Institution analysts Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack published an op-ed entitled A War We Just Might Win, in which they argue, "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms." Billing themselves "as two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq," the authors declare that "there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008." The Bush administration quickly latched onto the op-ed to support its failing Iraq strategy, e-mailing the editorial to every White House reporter yesterday morning with the subject line "In Case You Missed It." Peter Wehner, the White House's departing director of strategic communications, told the Politico that the op-ed was "possibly climate-changing." Predictably, the administration's dead-end pro-war supporters hastily followed suit. The piece was praised in nearly every corner of the right-wing blogosphere. National Review, the flagship magazine of the conservative movement, convened a symposium of eight prominent war-backers, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and another Brookings analyst Peter Rodman, to praise the editorial. In propagating the New York Times column, the White House placed O'Hanlon and Pollack back in the familiar roles they've played throughout the entire Iraq war: establishment left-of-center experts providing political cover for the administration's misguided war policies.

WRONG ABOUT THE INVASION: In the fall of 2002, Pollack published The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, which warned that Saddam was extremely close to developing nuclear weapons. Slate's Chris Suellentrop described the book as turning "more doves into hawks than Richard Perle, Laurie Mylroie, and George W. Bush combined." In Oct. 2002, Pollack appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to discuss Iraq for her massive audience, where he pushed the false, but frightening, claim "that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire nuclear weapons and is building them as fast as he can." O'Hanlon participated in the pre-war fear-mongering as well. In a Dec. 31, 2002 op-ed, O'Hanlon argued that "Saddam Hussein may be poised to bring the battle to American cities via terrorism." "We've got to go to war by March, I think, if we're going to use the good weather," he told Fox News in Jan. 2003. Unfortunately, given the influence of the Brookings Institution, O'Hanlon and Pollack's support for the war helped push many skeptics towards supporting the folly of invading Iraq.

WRONG ABOUT THE SURGE: Though both scholars became more critical of the administration's handling of the war as the situation worsened over the years, both O'Hanlon and Pollack lent their intellectual and rhetorical support to Bush's push for escalation in Iraq in the winter of 2006. Pollack, who was consulted by the military about escalation plans, argued at the time, "[T]he president's plan is almost certainly the last chance to stabilize Iraq." On Jan. 14, 2007, O'Hanlon wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled A Skeptic's Case For The Surge, arguing that though the "surge" may be "too little, way too late...for a skeptical Congress and nation, it is still the right thing to try." O'Hanlon argued again in March 2007 that "rather than force a showdown with Mr. Bush this winter and spring, Congress should give his surge strategy a chance."

WRONG ABOUT STAYING THE COURSE: In their op-ed, O'Hanlon and Pollack concede that the alleged success they are seeing is only "in military terms" and that "we still face huge hurdles on the political front." This concession undermines much of their case for "sustaining the effort at least into 2008." Since the "surge" began, even Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has admitted that "there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq," only a political one. Additionally, O'Hanlon's own research in the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index contradicts his effort to portray the "surge" as successful. Just last week, on July 26, O'Hanlon's assessment argued that "violence nationwide has failed to improve measurably over the past 2-plus months, with a resilient enemy increasingly turning its focus to softer targets outside the scope of the surge." He also noted that "politically, there has yet to be significant progress in the legislation of any of the critical benchmark laws." When asked to respond to O'Hanlon's assertions of progress in Iraq, CNN Baghdad correspondent Arwa Damon replied that "most [Iraqis] that I've spoken to will not really say that they feel that the situation is getting better." By cherry-picking anecdotal signs of progress in order to justify continuing a war they supported from the beginning, O'Hanlon and Pollack overlook the fundamental problems of the continuing American presence in Iraq. Strategic Reset, a plan put forth by the Center for American Progress, addresses these fundamental flaws and calls for phased military redeployment from Iraq in one year. On MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, Strategic Reset co-author Brian Katulis called out O'Hanlon for writing a "propaganda piece" and "cherry-picking the facts on Iraq."