Today we learn that the vaunted reconstruction projects in Iraq are falling apart due or working incorrectly. This has nothing to do with terrorism or destruction by our “enemies”, whoever they may be. It has everything to do with incompetence and corruption. A sample:
The dates when the projects were completed and deemed successful ranged from six months to almost a year and a half before the latest inspections.
But those inspections found numerous instances of power generators that no longer operated; sewage systems that had clogged and overflowed, damaging sections of buildings; electrical systems that had been jury-rigged or stripped of components; floors that had buckled; concrete that had crumbled; and expensive equipment that was simply not in use.
Curiously, most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect.
A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating.
At the same time we hear that a consensus is building that Iraq is not comparable to Vietnam, because it’s far worse. Not worse in terms of death yet, but worse in its long term effects:
“In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam,” said former defense secretary William S. Cohen. “The geopolitical consequences are . . . potentially global in scope.”
About 17 times as many U.S. troops died in the Vietnam War — the longest war in U.S. history — as have been lost in Iraq, the nation’s third-longest war. Also, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the debate over it has not convulsed American society to the extent seen during the Vietnam conflict. However, Vietnam does not have oil and is not in the middle of a region crucial to the global economy and festering with terrorism, experts say, leading many of them to conclude that the long-term effects of the Iraq war will be worse for the United States.
“It makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk,” said retired Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald, a veteran of the Vietnam War. The domino theory that nations across Southeast Asia would go communist was not fulfilled, he noted, but with Iraq, “worst-case scenarios are the most likely thing to happen.”
Iraq is worse than Vietnam “in so many ways,” agreed Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a retired Army officer and author of one of the most respected studies of the U.S. military’s failure in Vietnam. “We knew what we were getting into in Vietnam. We didn’t here.”
…
In strategic terms, the Vietnam conflict was understood even by many of its opponents as part of a global stance of containment, a policy that preceded the war and endured for 15 years after Saigon fell, noted retired Army Col. Richard H. Sinnreich, a veteran of two Vietnam tours of duty. “I’m not sure we can count on a similarly prompt strategic recovery this time around,” he continued. “Bush’s preemption strategy was controversial even before Iraq, and the war itself has been so badly mismanaged that even our allies doubt our competence.”
Gary Solis, who fought as a Marine in Vietnam and more recently taught the law of war at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said he is hearing more such discussions. “Most of my military acquaintances agree that the issues in our departure from Vietnam will pale beside those that will be presented by an Iraq withdrawal,” Solis said.
This set me to thinking about the widely debated question of whether Bush has a solid lock on the title of Worst President Ever. It is hard to imagine that anyone could not only be so wrong about everything, but could also make every facet of every disastrous policy come out so wrong. In the case of Iraq, the situation is so bollixed up that it is impossible to even define success, never mind achieve it. For the first time we are fighting a “war” in which we unable to identify the enemy. Still, the fact that the war was a disastrous mistake didn’t necessarily preclude them from doing a competent job at putting up buildings. But that was far beyond them, as has been any other tangible success (other than lining the pockets of their friends, and maybe that’s the point) in any other policy area.
Will future historians be able to find anything of any consequence in which Bush has been successful by any reasonable measure? I admit to bias, but I can’t think of a thing.
