Andrew Bacevich, one of the more interesting thinkers around, has a good piece with some other cats proposing a independent, non-partisan commission "to evaluate the military experience of the past decade." They call for an examination of five particular aspects: The design of U.S. combat forces, the U. S. global military footprint, the national security apparatus, the civil-military gap and how top jobs have been filled.

This strikes me as a worthwhile proposal.

Meanwhile, I finally caught up with Professor Bacevich's essay on Albert Wohlstetter, which contains this memorable two-cushion shot in reference to the revolution in military affairs, or RMA:

Joint Vision 2010 stands in relation to the RMA as Tom Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree stands in relation to globalization: it is an infomercial-marketing disguised as elucidation.

This is harsh, but I think he captures it well. I never thought I would be a citizen of a country that endorsed torture. It still makes me sad to think about that.

I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved that America isn't, in the end, different; that its core moral principles, such as the prohibition of torture, are nostrums to be tossed aside at the whim of a few very scared and incompetent men; that the rule of law ends when it comes to presidential power, when he can simply order dipshit lawyers to say black is white; when no regret is ever truly expressed about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died under US occupation; when the architects of these strategic and moral disasters are given legal immunity and peddle books on talkshows defending and bragging of their own awful legacy.

By Rickisha Berrien
Best Defense department of catastrophic change

Here's how three former officials -- one from the world of intelligence, the second from the Pentagon, the third from the State Department -- see how the world has changed since 9/11.

--Former Acting Director of the CIA John McLaughlin, speaking at the commemorative event at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said he believes that within the last decade the intelligence community has faced the greatest period of change since the height of the Cold War. The decade before 9/11 was characterized by an emphasis on peace, and in the years before the attacks the ranks of the intelligence community were cut by about 23 percent. After the attack, McLaughlin says that it became evident very quickly that the war would be an intelligence war. This new kind of war necessitated key changes within American intelligence. First, within the last decade we have had unprecedented integration of intelligence and the U.S. military, providing us with new and powerful capabilities that we didn't possess 10 years ago. This new integration culminated in the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Second, since about 50 percent of the intelligence community today was hired after 9/11, we now have an intelligence workforce that has been trained and socialized during a time of war. This has not been the case since the time of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, during World War II. We do not know the ramifications that such change will have on the community in the years to come.

--Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, addressing the same event, called a decade free from a domestic terror attack an "incredible achievement." The United States has succeeded in many areas in our War on Terror: al Qaeda is on the run and state sponsorship of terror organizations has greatly diminished. However, two major national security challenges still lay ahead of us: the emergence of new nuclear-armed states and the rise of China. Though we have had limited positive accomplishments in curtailing the nuclear threat, there is still a long way to go. Both Iran and North Korea are still rogue nuclear threats that the United States has yet to deal with successfully. Furthermore, the expansion of the Chinese military looms as an underappreciated threat to American influence in the Pacific. Edelman noted that the bipartisan defense panel on the Quadrennial Defense Review that he took part of last year came to the conclusion that "the ability of the United States to operate in the Western Pacific in the face of some anti-access and area-denial capabilities that China has developed has been called into question". This undercuts the ability of the United States to maintain the balance of power in Asia and Europe as it has since WWII.

--Former Counselor of the U.S. Department of State Eliot Cohen discussed whether the war on terror was indeed a war, and if so, what kind? He questioned the term itself, arguing that the U.S. government made a mistake by "casting this very broadly as a war on terror, which would be a little like the United States declaring war on dive bombers after Pearl Harbor. Terror is the tactic, not the enemy."

Few people know the ins and outs of the Bush Administration as well as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who is flat-out disgusted with the evasions and elisions in Donald Rumsfeld's new book. Here he explains why:

By Bob Woodward
Best Defense guest columnist

On page 527 of his memoir Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld recounts what he says was an exchange on Oct. 14, 2003 with Condoleezza Rice who was then Bush's national security adviser. She apologized for a flap over Iraq policy at the time.

You're failing," Rumsfeld said.

"Don, you've made mistakes in your long career," she replied.

"Yes, but I've tried to clean them up," he said.

Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.

The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of his memoir.

For example, I reported in my 2004 book, Plan of Attack (p. 25), that at 2:40 p.m. on 9/11, with the smoke and dust still filling the Pentagon, according to the notes of two of Rumsfeld's top aides, Rumsfeld mused about whether to hit "S.H. @ same time," not only bin Laden. One note taker reaffirmed this in an interview with the 9/11 Commission, and said that "S.H." referred to Saddam Hussein. (p. 335 of Commission report, and p. 559 footnote 63). None of this is in Rumsfeld's book. But he does cite the aides' handwritten notes for other quotations he uses in his book to recount that day. (p. 343 of his book, and p. 759 notes 30, 31 and 32. The notes are of senior Rumsfeld aides Victoria Clarke and Stephen A. Cambone.)

On January 9, 2002, four months after 9/11, Dan Balz of The Washington Post and I interviewed Rumsfeld for a newspaper series on the Bush administration's response to 9/11. According to notes of the NSC, on September 12, the day after 9/11, Rumsfeld again raised Iraq saying, is there a need to address Iraq as well as bin Laden?

When Balz read this to Rumsfeld, he blew up. "I didn't say that," he said, maintaining that it was his aide Larry DiRita talking over his shoulder. His reaction was comic and we agreed to treat it as off the record. But Balz persisted and asked Rumsfeld what he was thinking.

"Yeah," Rumsfeld finally told us. "I wanted to make sure that -- I always ask myself, what's missing. It's easy for people to edit and make something slightly better. But the question is, what haven't we asked ourselves? So I do it all the time. I do it here, I do it in cabinet meetings or NSC meetings. It was a fair question."

"I don't have notes," Rumsfeld insisted. "I don't have any notes."  His memoir cites his personal handwritten notes dozens of time.

One of the important questions about the Iraq War has always been about when and who started the Iraq clock after 9/11. On page 425, Rumsfeld alleges that Bush on Sept 26, 2001 -- just 15 days after 9/11 -- called him to the Oval Office. "He asked that I take a look at the shape of our military plans on Iraq..."  Rumsfeld provides no footnote for this scene.

When I interviewed Rumsfeld at his Pentagon office on Oct. 23, 2003, Rumsfeld had a different story. "I do not remember much about Iraq being discussed at all with the president or me or the NSC prior to when the president asked me to -- asked me what I thought of the Iraq contingency plan -- that I believe was November 21st of '01." He was confident of the date because six days later he went to talk with the combatant commander for the region, Gen. Tommy Franks. "And I would not have waited long from the president asking me."

White House records and President Bush's recent memoir, Decision Points, support the Nov. 21 date. "Two months after 9/11 I asked Don Rumsfeld to review the existing battle plans for Iraq," Bush wrote, placing the request in November 2001 (p. 234)

The question of the date is not just a matter of whether something occurred on a Monday or a Thursday. On Sept. 26, 2001, the Bush administration was focused on Afghanistan. The first CIA team had just entered and the bombing had not yet begun. By his own account Rumsfeld was intensely trying to figure out how to begin the military aspect of Afghanistan War with bombing and inserting Special Operations teams.  

At a Camp David meeting on Sept. 15 -- eleven days before Rumsfeld says Bush made his first Iraq war plan inquiry -- Bush rejected going after Iraq. In fact, Rumsfeld himself writes, that "at the September 15 NSC meeting at Camp David days earlier when Iraq had been raised he [Bush] had specifically kept the focus on Afghanistan." (p. 425)

According to Rumsfeld, on Sept. 21, he and General Franks "drove over to the White House to present his initial operational concept" for Afghanistan (p. 370) and a more detailed approach was given to Bush on Sept. 30 (p. 373). It is inconsistent with everything known that in the middle of all that planning and anguish over Afghanistan, Bush would raise Iraq on Sept. 26.

However, by Nov. 21, the United States had had unexpected success in Afghanistan and controlled half the territory. Thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters had fled the capital Kabul into Pakistan. If Bush were looking for another target -- and he clearly was -- that would be the time, not on Sept. 26.

Another key question: When did Bush finally decide to commit the United States to war? Rumsfeld writes, "Up until the very minute the president authorized the first strike [March 19, 2003] there was no moment when I felt with razor-sharp certainty that Bush had fully decided." He does describe a meeting Jan. 11, two months earlier, when he met at the White House with Cheney, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Rumsfeld quotes Cheney telling Bandar, "The president has made the decision to go after Saddam Hussein." In his book Rumsfeld adds, "Of course, Bush would not irrevocably decide on war until he signed the execute order." (p. 450)

Read on

Greg Mitchell has a good piece on a soldier who killed herself after being pressed to participate in torture as part of interrogations early in the Iraq war. The piece strikes me as credible.

I do think that until there is a complete investigation of what was done in our names, in part by the military but mainly by civilians involved in intelligence, that the stain will be with us, mentally, politically and socially. We need a truth commission. 

The above photo is taken from the burial service of Spc. Alyssa Peterson.

I've long thought that this country was knocked off balance by 9/11, and that instead of steadying us, as leaders should, President Bush and Vice President Cheney led the panic, and so intensified and lengthened the period of disequilibrium. The Iraq war was one result -- and also a cause -- of the length of this period, because the hundreds of billions of unnecessary spending led to a huge borrowing splurge by the federal government. Essentially China paid for the war, and our children and grandchildren are on the hook to pay it back.

Adam Weinstein offers some thoughts on all this, from the perspective of a vet who was in lower Manhattan on 9/11 and also knew one of the pilots killed by the 9/11 hijackers.

Richard Armitage is an unusual guy in Washington -- both candid and well-spoken. He also has a talent for making the right enemies. Now he of thick neck and broad shoulders has given an interesting interview to Prism, which is some sort of new publication at the National Defense University. 

Some highlights:

• At first, the U.S. government was able to keep Pakistani intelligence from meddling in Afghanistan. "The second surprise was frankly how successful we were for the first 4 years-almost 5 years-at keeping the ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence] relatively out of it. They were so shocked with the speed at which we invaded Afghanistan that I think the ISI felt it was only a matter of time until we prevailed." Armitage's timeline here suggests to me that Afghanistan started really falling apart when the ISI went back in. That's an interesting conclusion

• He says Bush and his war cabinet never formally considered whether to invade Iraq. "Never to my knowledge, and I'm pretty sure I'm right on this, did the President ever sit around with his advisors and say, 'Should we do this or not?' He never did it."

• The Bush administration didn't understand democracy and how to encourage it. "The Bush administration's push for votes as though voting equals democracy was wrong-headed because a vote is something that happens inside a democracy, but is not necessary for a democracy. You can have a democratic system without having people raise their hands and have a secret ballot. Loya jirgas to some extent are these."

• He believes Bush administration actions undercut the American position abroad. "It's harder and made more complex when we abuse the writ of habeas corpus here or when we torture people."

• Reading  he recommends, and why:  "Have you read the novels of Naguib Mahfouz? They're great, and through them all you get a couple of things, I think. First, the good humor of Egyptians; they have enormous good humor. Second, patience and long suffering, but you realize that at some point in time you can't joke something away. You can't outwait it. I would be afraid the tipping point is going to come, and particularly now that the strategic center of gravity in the Middle East has shifted to Riyadh and away from Cairo."

Alex Wong/Getty Images

A thoughtful reader of this blog advises me to drop the Bush bashing. He thinks it is unseemly and looks like a sop to my leftist readers (do you hear me over there in the amen corner?)

His heart is in the right place, and so I promised to think on his note. I have. But what I keep coming back to is this: I think President Bush's decisions were so disastrous that we will be paying for them for years, particularly with Iraq. So I am inclined to keep pointing out the costs of what may have been the worst set of foreign policy decisions ever made. But I'd like to hear from readers: Is it time to put a moratorium on exploring why Bush may have been the worst president? Best post on this wins a free signed copy of any one of my books. If you've already got the complete set, then you can have my extra copy of Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory. 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

I asked my old Washington Post colleague Brad Graham, whose new book on Donald Rumsfeld is just about out, to explain to me the difference between Rumsfeld and his successor, Robert Gates. Specifically, as some astute readers asked here the other day, why when Rumsfeld poses questions it is meddlesome micro-management, while when Gates does it he is being Churchillian?

Here is Brad's reply:

It does appear that Gates, who after succeeding Rumsfeld seemed bent on setting himself apart from his predecessor in approach and tone, has in some ways come to mirror him. The micromanaging and the overruling of the military chiefs are just a couple of examples. Indeed, as Ryan Henry, who worked under both Rumsfeld and Gates, told me when I was writing the biography, the longer Gates has served, the more he has come to understand why Rumsfeld was the way he was.

But in personal style, Gates has remained distinctly different from Rumsfeld, and this has been a key to his success. He has shown little of the arrogance, the dismissiveness, the discourtesy of his predecessor. He has managed to convey firmness and decisiveness without being overbearing and offensive. Most significantly, he has restored a measure of accountability without breeding deep resentment and making himself unpopular. While Rumsfeld in six years fired only one top official (Tom White), Gates in two-and-a-half years has already removed six (Harvey, Pace, Fallon, Wynn, Moseley and McKiernan). And yet Gates has none of the bullying, domineering image that Rumsfeld seemed to cultivate. Rather, he has demonstrated an ability to exercise strong civilian leadership with reason and just cause.

Significantly, too, Gates has brought a sense of balance to a Pentagon that Rumsfeld had kept in a swirl. His lack of flare and self-promotion have been a relief after the theatrics of his predecessor. In the Rumsfeld tradition, Gates has persisted in prodding the military to think outside its box. But he has taken a quieter approach and, at the same time, refocused the military transformation process. He talks less about what might be needed for future wars, placing more emphasis on current needs and on how to wage unconventional warfare better.

You didn't ask, but the question of Rumsfeld versus McNamara also may be of interest, since McNamara is the only other Pentagon leader whose term rivals Rumsfeld's for controversy. Both Rumsfeld and McNamara came to the Pentagon from the corporate world exhibiting arrogance and impatience, and both showed similar characteristics in office: keen analytical minds, insatiable appetites for data, predilections for new methods and approaches for problem solving. McNamara may have been more soullessly analytical, and Rumsfeld more intuitive, but both sought tighter civilian control of the military and ordered reappraisals of U.S. strategy. Both also brought with them contingents of civilian aides who shared their determination to shake things up and a propensity to clash with the Joint Chiefs. And both became embroiled in unpopular wars.

Where they differed most notably was in how they ultimately viewed their own tenures. Despite his public cheerleading for the Vietnam War, McNamara privately became dubious about its wisdom and effectiveness while still in office. In later years, he increasingly recognized that he had failed as defense secretary because of mistakes he and others had made in Vietnam. By contrast, Rumsfeld did not leave office doubting his handling of the Iraq War. He has acknowledged no major missteps or shown any remorse on the subject to date. Asked in my final interview with him last fall whether he harbored any regrets, Rumsfeld sounded tired of such queries. "Oh, that's the favorite press question," he quipped."

I hate the fact that my country's leaders panicked after 9/11 and embraced torture. It saddens me to watch this.

I can still remember when it was the bad guys who tortured people in the movies. Here's the test I think is useful for judging abuse: What would I think of this being used against captured U.S. military personnel? Or kidnapped reporters?

Atrocities happen in war -- got it. We have the military chain of command and justice system to handle those violations. So the goal should be to go after those who crossed the line and made torture official policy. That was wrong, and I think illegal. 

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Today I ran into an expert on Iraq who argued that I am being too optimistic, that a civil war is inevitable. He agreed that American troops are the glue holding the place together, but said that the American people will demand they be withdrawn, no matter what the possible consequences.   

Tim Boyle/Getty Images

I thought some of the surge-era deals in Iraq would unravel but I didn't think that would begin happening this quickly. It's only March 2009, and already Awakening fighters are fighting U.S. soldiers in the streets of Baghdad.

Anyone who tells you that the Iraq war is over should be forced to memorize this paragraph from the Sunday edition of the Washington Post:

As Apache helicopter gunships cruised above Baghdad's Fadhil neighborhood, former Sunni insurgents fought from rooftops and street corners against American and Iraqi forces, according to witnesses, the Iraqi military and police. At least 15 people were wounded in the gunfights, which lasted several hours. By nightfall, the street fighters had taken five Iraqi soldiers hostage.

That is Iraq 2009. Does it sound peaceful to you? Does it seem like the political questions vexing Iraq have been solved?

Here is a quote of the day:

If they don't release Adil Mashadani, all the Awakening in Iraq will rise up like our uprising today," he [a local Awakening Council spokesman] added."

Along with the bombings in west Baghdad lately, the street fighting  over the weekend doesn't quite form a trend. But it points toward one possible series of events. That is, the Maliki government is putting the screws to the Awakening movement (for those who just arrived, that's a mainly Sunni group of about 100,000 people, many of them former insurgents, who in late 2006 and 2007 arrived at ceasefires with the U.S. military presence in Iraq). The American plan was to integrate about 20,000 members of Awakening groups into Iraqi security forces, and help the rest find other work. Meantime, the Baghdad government was supposed to take over the payments to the groups, which when I last checked totaled about $30 million a month.

But the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government never really liked the idea. Indeed, the first deals were cut by U.S. officials behind the back of the Iraqi government. So Maliki's guys are:

• Arresting some leaders of the "Sons of Iraq" (the American term for Awakening forces)
• Attacking others
• Bringing only 5,000 of the ex-insurgents into the Iraqi security forces
• And stiffing others on pay, with some complaining they haven't been paid in weeks or even months

I think Maliki's gambit is to crack down on the Sunnis while American forces are still available in sufficient numbers to back him up. This is a turning into a test of strength, Sunni vs. Shiite.  

There's more. If the Awakening fighting spreads, I wouldn't be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia re-emerge. I've always thought the Sunni Awakening forced him to go to ground, because he didn't want to be the only guy taking on American forces. But if the Sunnis are on the attack again, it might be game on for him as well. I am reminded of Ambassador Ryan Crocker's worry, expressed in my new book and elsewhere, that the future of Iraq was something like Lebanon. That is, it has a government, but it is shaky, and there is violence in the streets, with some political parties having armed wings that are outside the control of the government.

The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid calls this all "potentially worrisome." When Shadid begins to worry, we all should. He's the guy who back in early 2004 used to encourage me to take taxis around Baghdad.

Proven provider John McCreary of NightWatch fame is even more emphatic:

This is a pre-cursor of the second round of the Sunni-Shia civil war to follow."

Question of the day: What should I say the next time someone tells me the surge "worked"?

ALI YUSSEF/AFP/Getty Images

Is there any difference between the plan for U.S. troops levels in Iraq that President Obama unveiled recently and this plan that General Petraeus presented to Congress back in 2007? My guess, looking at the general's envisioned drawdown, is: A little, but not much. (Remember that the plan for a post-2010 "non-combat mission" calls for two combat brigades, re-named advisory units.) 

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