| 04 November 2006 NeoCons I set out this morning to capture the down-and-dirty politics at the microcosm level of Big Pink. Oh, it is a brutal struggle! The Old Guard on the board aloof, having tried everything in their long years of service, and now reduced to doing precisely nothing, except the anomalous acquisition of a billiard table for the West Party Room on the rooftop. That is the scandal de jour, and try though I might, I could find nothing about it in the Washington Post or the New York Times. I found plenty on John Kerry's botched joke about the President, and information about the Colorado Preacher and his gay massages and methamphetamines he threw away without using. There was nothing about the billiard table. The Big Pink reformist coalition needs to spin the table, and advance our agenda on replacing the hot-water pipes and the roof-garden. I decided to draft a press release and see if I could get it into the Sunday cycle. It must be late in Afghanistan if it is early in Arlington. I got an e-mail from a pal who is nearing the end of his tour there. The picture from Iraq with the troops holding the banner saying “Hep us, Jon Kerry, we is Stuk in Irak,” is the most forwarded picture on Yahoo this week. My friend quoted Senator Kerry in one of his more profound utterances. In 2004 he was interviewed by Rolling Stone, and said he voted for the war but “didn't think the Administration would (screw) it up so much.” My friend provided a link to a Vanity Fair article that is going to be in the January edition on the newsstands: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true¤tPage=all I clicked on through it and found it fascinating. The NeoCons are cutting and running on the Administration, and their bitterness is quite astonishing. They are trying to distance themselves from disaster, and their accusatory fingers all point to the Chief Decisioner and his inner circle. I had a conversation with one of my sons yesterday that echoed what the NeoCons were saying. We had lurched from a discussion on college football and into the War. My son is thinking about getting into the world of programmatics, after experiencing the hurly-burly of the analytic life. He thinks there may be a future in being able to “follow the money.” I blinked at that, since he actually apparently noticed that the big break in my career came when they threw me into the money pit, where we piled up the millions in programmatic piles to make the budget submission. The experience brought me to the realization that policy is actually made by money, and not vice versa. It takes a shrewd leader who understands his Program to seize control of it, and make it do what he wants. Most leaders in defense and intelligence find their Programs dense and intimidating, and are thus captured by the numbers and the people who make them up. My Dad learned a hard lesson when he was given a chance to be the CEO of a brick-building industry. He had heavy going in his first defense to the Board on his group's quarterly performance. A mentor from Corporate told him afterwards that if he did not understand his own books, his comptroller was robbing him of his autonomy. Not theft, actually, just little cushions that made life better in the money shop. That is essentially what happened in Iraq. The Joint Staff is very good at war, and very bad at peace. They know what things cost and how to move vast stores of things, though regrettably the actual process has been outsourced to Kellog-Brown & Root. The outsourcing was not Don Rumsfeld's problem. He inherited that notion of "efficiency" from the Clintons, and things were to far down the road to stop the process. What he could deny was the cost. When Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki came to him with the reasoned cost of what it would take to secure all the arms dumps, patrol all the crossroads and begin to make things work again, Rumsfeld cut him dead. It would cost too much to do that, and there were other things to Transform in the Program. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Paul Bremer was dismantling the institutions of the old order that kept chaos at bay: the Amry and the Police were disbanded in the policy of de-Baathification. The de-Nazification of Germany was apparently the model, but something was missing. The Nazis were banished with overwhelming force, and a permanent presence which only recently has begun to diminish. No one in their right mind wanted to go to Iraq, because it had become lawless and dangerous, and the billions that were slated to go to reconstruction wound up in the hands of the contractors that provided security. It is also how the bureaus and advisory positions of immense responsibility requiring great subtlety and cultural understanding came to be staffed by twenty-something apperachiks. I have great admiration for some of Don Rumsfeld's talents. His presence on the podium and confidence are undeniable. I think he may have been the right man for Transformation, but the wrong man for the War. At the end of the day, he will have ground the finest conventional fighting force in the world into the sand. The vehicles and weapons are worn out, not to mention the people. The existing program will have to accommodate an Army and Marine Corps that will have to be re-equipped from the ground up. We have outstanding kids in the field, the kind with the ironic good humor to paint the banner in response to John Kerry's botched joke. I salute them, and honor their courage and service. I have nothing but admiration for the conduct of our forces in the field. But as to the NeoCons in Vanity Fair, and their distaste for the consequences of the war they encouraged, I find myself filled with contempt, even if I wind up uncharacteristically agreeing with John Kerry. I cannot believe the Administration (screwed) it up this badly. You know the real word. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |