Comments on: Russia Policy: Making a Virtue out of Ceding the Initiative

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:18:31 +0000

I agree with Jonathan about the failure to hold the CIA responsible after 9/11. It was one of his real mistakes, perhaps his worst. I think his other mistakes were, not asking for a $2/gal. additional gasoline tax to fund the GWoT, and not immediately beginning the expansion of the Army & Marines toward a goal of at least 90 combat brigades (we are about 60 right now).

I’ll bet that there are no Democrats who agree with me on this list.

By: Ginny

Ginny — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:09:50 +0000

As far as clearing Augean stables, every year we hear that education is failing in America (another security crisis in the making – along with the cause of unhappy and stunted intellectual lives). Again, Bush made an attempt that seemed better than those of previous presidents. Again, the results do not inspire confidence; reforms are sabatouged by inertia as much as bad policy (and bad philosophy).

If Obama wanted to (and I don’t see that he interprets these crises thoughtfully nor has much desire but to encourage the worst in these institutions), with all the goodwill among these groups he might be bringing into office, inertia is likely to prevail.

Jonathan the silver lining of some kind of catastrophe may be that will – but it may also be too late.

By: Marty

Marty — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:38:22 +0000

I agree with Jonathan. It was and is inconceivable that George Tenet was not told to resign or be fired no later than mid-day 9-12-01—I still don’t understand why Bush kept him, he wasn’t even a Bush appointee or a Republican, and look at his subsequent fine advice about Iraqi WMD (“A slam-dunk!”). Maybe Tenet had some dirt on Bush or someone close…

History will record that Bush’s biggest flaw was he was too nice, too loyal to subordinates who failed him—Tenet, Casey, Rumsfeld–contrast with Lincoln or FDR, say.

I,too, have little confidence McCain would master the beast at Foggy Bottom, but I am quite sure Obama would never even be aware there’s a problem.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:28:58 +0000

We made mistakes. We may not have a substantial policy in this area. In other areas we have bad policies. What else is new.

There are two main questions here. One is what to do next. The other is how to improve our foreign-policy decisionmaking. On what to do next, we are at least finally doing something, which in this situation seems to be much better than doing nothing. Whether we are doing the right things isn’t yet clear, but I think it’s clear that we had to act and that acting late is better than not acting.

How to improve the poor performance of our foreign-policy apparatus, particularly the bureaucracies, is a huge problem. I suspect we would have been in better shape now if Bush had fired the top management of the CIA after 9/11. The State Dept. is another Augean Stables, but I don’t know if Bush could have cleaned it out even soon after 9/11. He tried in his own way to do something about both of these bureaucracies, but he failed. I don’t think it’s conceivable that Obama would do a better job, and I am not optimistic about McCain.

The central problem is not that someone screwed up but that our govt institutions are not up to their tasks. I hope that it won’t take a catastrophe to create the political will for effective reforms, but I suspect that nothing substantial will be done unless we do suffer a catastrophe.

By: zenpundit

zenpundit — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:39:19 +0000

Heh.

We have two possibilities here, both highly negative reflections on the Foreign Service, CIA and the Department of Defense.:

a) We greenlighted the Georgians in Ossetia while misreading Russia’s likely response, it’s military capabilities and it’s determination while grossly overestimating those of the Georgians or the willingness of our European allies to do anything to help if things went astray.

b) We were caught completely off guard by either the Georgians, the Russians or both.

By: jimbino

jimbino — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:27:00 +0000

It seems the major mistake the Russians made was to forget to announce beforehand that they had found Georgia to be harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction.