The Belgravia Dispatch: Zilmer's (Duty-Bound) Verbal Contortions

September 14, 2006

Zilmer's (Duty-Bound) Verbal Contortions

Major General Richard C Zilmer: "For what we are trying to achieve out here I think our force levels are about right...Now, if that mission statement changes — if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight — then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here.."

I'll resist the temptation to "translate" that comment, but readers may wish to. Note I certainly don't hold this tangled verbiage against Zilmer, as he is forced to tip-toe gingerly over a verbal minefield to avoid contradicting his boss.

MORE: Tony Snow: "As a matter of fact, the central mission to the United States is to train Iraqi forces so they can do the job. They get better intelligence. They know the people who are there. It is their country. And it's their obligation and responsibility."

No Tony, it's really our "obligation and responsibility". You break it, you own it. But the United States is risking essentially abdicating that responsibility, amidst a sea of collosal missteps, bitter recriminations, unleashed historical forces increasingly beyond the occupying forces control, sheer incompetence, and an exhausted war council denuded in the public eye as abjectly discredited. I suspect Bush's final act will be to simply pretend he has to will to persevere in Iraq, via stock speeches and a continued ultimately inadequate troop presence, while likely presiding over the loss of the war (if a more serious successor arrives too late to resuscitate the effort). He's so deluded, however, that he'll think he won it. Just like we don't torture. Faith and ideology will have trumped empirical evidence, again.

Posted by Gregory at September 14, 2006 03:37 AM

Comments

How on earth did the idiotic "You break it, you own it" meme gain any traction? We found it necessary, in 2002 and 2003, to "break" Iraq. We could then have exited immediately, but our administration chose instead to stay, to the great benefit of the vast majority of Iraqis.

And now this moral choice is not only being cast as giving us an extra moral obligation, not only using a puerile analogy, but undermining the obvious point that, unless they wish to be a chattel state forever, the Iraqis indeed must "do the job".

Posted by: sammler at September 14, 2006 08:52 AM | Permalink to this comment

It may be difficult for you to understand the concept of moral responsibility for your actions, if you look to the US office of the President for moral leadership, because the present Bush Administrations leads strongly the philosophy of no moral responsibility, no accountability, and everything is for sale to the highest bidder.

Fortunately, there are actual moral leaders available, both living, and dead, and actual moral teachings.

Posted by: dhamas at September 14, 2006 10:15 AM | Permalink to this comment

I think the 'meme' gained traction because it's a very good shorthand way of saying that the US has an obligation (moral but practical in the realpolitik sense) to ensure that a fledgling government in Iraq gets an honest chance to take root. Not to mention an obligation to restore civil order and civil structures - which, coincidentally, goes hand in hand with fulfilling the first obligation.

Plus, the 'meme' is also a great way to infuriate the gung-ho types who believe - or act(ed) like someone believes - that blasting Saddam out of power and leaving the Iraqis to pick up the pieces in the wake is a non-puerile way to conduct grown-up foreign policy - and that the administration overrode that impulse and decided, what the hey, let's stay on for a while.

Cheers,

Posted by: Rofe at September 14, 2006 01:51 PM | Permalink to this comment

How on earth did the idiotic "You break it, you own it" meme gain any traction?

Colin Powell popularized that as the "Pottery Barn" rule of foreign policy.

Eventually, Pottery Barn put out a disclaimer saying that customers were welcome to browse, Pottery Barn understands that accidents happen, and please come to our stores, where, if you break it, *we* own it.

However, as a moral/ethical guideline it obviously resonated.

Or, viewed another way, it is not in the enlightened self-interest of the US to leave a failed Iraqi state.

Posted by: Tom Maguire at September 14, 2006 02:41 PM | Permalink to this comment

How on earth did the idiotic "You break it, you own it" meme gain any traction?

it was part and parcel of the sales pitch for the Iraqi war. (When you justify a war by citing the "suffering of the Iraqi people" you do have an obligation to make life better for them.)

Secondly, if you don't fix it, there is no guarantee that the threat used to justify an won't quickly re-emerge. Perhaps even more importantly, just leaving chaos in our wake would cause problems for our allies in the neighboring countries -- and the likelihood of neighboring countries allowing us to stage troops in their country for the next war is significantly reduced.

**************

what we may be looking at is more "defining deviancy down" -- the right wing is realizing that Iraq is an ongoing disaster for which there is no solution available in their limited repetoire of "acceptable actions." So, rather than admit failure as the reason for withdrawal, they are simply going to redefine success in order to do so. In this world view, the fault lies not with the US for failing to secure Iraq after we took it over -- the the fault of the Iraqis themselves The the fact that we resisted efforts by Iraqis on both the local and national levels to organize themselves through the creation of militias (armed "Town Watch" groups) and holding local and national elections is a fact that has been relegated to the memory hole for right-wingers. Its all the Iraqis fault, because they didn't act like good American....

Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 14, 2006 02:41 PM | Permalink to this comment

How on earth did the idiotic "You break it, you own it" meme gain any traction

Also, it is strategically necessary. If we just decided after the invasion to leave, one of four things would have happened.
First, a new strongman would have reemerged, along the lines of Saddam. Second, the country would have devolved into Afghan style chaos. Third, it would have Balkanized. Fourth, the regional powers(Saudi, Iran, Syrian, and Turkish) would have stepped in to help or hinder their favorite or most hated group as the case may be.
If any or several of things happened, the war would have been even more of a strategic failure than it is at this point in time.

Posted by: jon at September 14, 2006 06:24 PM | Permalink to this comment

Uh-oh, Jon. Now you're stuck.

Iraq was broken, and rapidly devolving into the chaos that many are trying (admirably) to stop. Remember the 90's? All those anti-US fly-zone enforcement mini-protests. The starving children, the bathist of the month speakers? All the rage amongst the progressive student organizations.

Given that, at what point would we have been compelled to act anyways, given the language we pushed for in the 1998 UN and US resolutions? And given your brilliant analysis above about the 4 choices of inaction? Oops - you've said to much.

Or were you prepared to deploy the usual charade of platitudes, and apologize later?

Thanks for reminding us.

Posted by: Tommy G at September 15, 2006 01:00 AM | Permalink to this comment

Tommy G.,

Admit it, you were fooled, and became a cheerleader for mass murder.

Posted by: NeoDude at September 15, 2006 06:12 AM | Permalink to this comment

In defense of the "break it/own it meme"...even shabby politcal hacks on either side could agree that a creating failed states in not in the US interest.

Posted by: centrist at September 15, 2006 05:55 PM | Permalink to this comment

NeoDude,

For anyone with eyes to see, The Iraq of the late 90's combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. Let's Review: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.

One might have thought, therefore, that the President's decision to put an end - at last - to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. and U.S. resolutions, but as some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Except that here in BDS la-la land, as Mr. Mahone and others have so aptly identified, you don't need to explain yourselves. You simply trot out 10-second accusations and hit 'post' - as if declaration simply made it so.

Fortunately for those of us on the right side of this issue, you're not in charge of anything that matters.

Posted by: Tommy G at September 17, 2006 03:38 AM | Permalink to this comment

TommyG, what do you think of the idea that Zarqawi was operating in kurdistan where Saddam had no influence over him?

At the time we invaded, we were claiming iraq was an imminent threat. Now you say it was already collapsing. If only we'd know then what you know now -- we could have ignored iraq until after the collapse and then walked in without much opposition. It would have saved us a lot of bombs and a lot of iraqi casualties, and saved us a few US casualties too. Just move in and restore order without needing to fight a war at all. Just do security and reconstruction and set up a democracy for them -- they'd have welcomed us with flowers and cheering and so on.

But somehow we thought we needed to invade and use up a lot of ordnance. We just didn't understand. Sad.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 17, 2006 05:54 AM | Permalink to this comment