How can I say that about the team that led the combat phase of this war? I have not, I have said that about the President and his advisors who precipitated this action, not our professional military officers and NCOs who carried out such an effective combat campaign. Our "combat ready" forces demonstrated how combat ready they really are and they were truly effective. The issue remains the high command and the lies and disinformation used to justify this war. To that should be added their dedication to being "camera ready" in order to milk all of the credit for the success of our warriors and technologists from the people really deserving of that credit. The High Command is now waffling and in disarray due to the fact that none of the scripts they have prepared for the peace after the combat phase was over seem to apply. They were ready for the fact that some disorder was inevitable. They just had no idea that chaos could so quickly turn into organized gangs of looters with sophisticated planning capabilities and large caches of stolen arms. They would have understood that if they had read the history of warfare and bothered to study the problems of replacing a hard-line dictator like Hussein with nothing.

Of course dilettantes don't have to study the art they admire, they just have to know what they like. Perl and Wolfwitz and Cheney and Bush like swift victorious wars and our warriors gave them one, but they are swiftly demonstrating that they have no idea of what to do with it. The world does not correspond to their preconceptions and they are without an answer. Hundreds of thousands of formerly disenfranchised Iraqi citizens have armed themselves. Now they are grabbing everything they can and ruining their nation's infrastructure in the process. Predictable? Yes if your vision is not tied up in the image you are creating for the US public with all of the neat victory events. In a Presidency where image is everything only the image-makers matter, not the reality that they obscure.

Unfortunately the reality of the situation in Iraq really matters, it matters to the Iraqi people and to the people of the USA too. We are now in the mid-game of a process that many of us thought was ill advised. The endgame will have one of two types of outcomes. Type one will include all of those in which we lose influence in the Middle East. In any type one endgame the oil under those sands gets more expensive and harder to procure. Terrorism also gets harder to fight and the unity of the opposition to the USA and Israel is strengthened. Type two outcomes will include any and all endgames that deliver the prize of a peaceful and calm Middle East or at least one more inclined to be that way than when Iraq was suffering under Saddam. I leave it to you which type of endgame we will wind up with in the current scenario.

I am saddened by the destruction being visited on the Iraqi people by the peace without law. The principle of the rule of law was invented in that part of the world and now destruction in the nation of Iraq is worse due to lawlessness than it was due to our bombings. A certain amount of death was inevitable during the war but we had the opportunity to keep the peace without the destruction of civil order and we are losing it. Once that is gone and cynicism replaces respect for law and order the situation is fixed on an endgame of the type one class. Our dilettantes at the art of war are proving to be less effective at waging peace than they were at using our well-prepared warriors to win in combat. Of course there they used the guidance of professionals, in waging the peace they kept the professionals from the UN out of Iraq. That arrogant choice is proving to be both unwise and deadly for the Iraqi people and destructive toward our hopes for a lasting peace in Iraq.
If you wish for anything hard enough you just may get it, Bush's Neocon advisors wished for a destabilizing event in the Middle East, and Bush gave it to them. Now Iran is propagandizing like crazy in Iraq and their propaganda is not friendly to us. Saudi Arabia is about to lose its 85 year-old king, and when they do the 79 and 80 year-old successors will not last long. The instability in Iraq feeds the hopes of those in Saudi Arabia that an end to the house of Saud is possible. There are fifty Billionaires among the 9000 males in the Saud family and they have the money of the Saudi people. I suspect that the Saudi People want it back. It will clearly get harder to sustain the House of Saud in power if Iraq becomes an Islamic Republic, a distinct prospect once we leave, and we will have to leave eventually.

Nothing about this moment in history points to the damage done by our dilettantes at the art of war as the ongoing looting by organized gangs in Baghdad. Lawlessness will make us more hated in Iraq than Hussein ever managed to be with his strict and unjust rule. The future is ever opaque, but I cannot believe that these unpracticed purveyors of image will succeed in stopping what has started in Iraq due to their arrogance and miscalculation. I hope I am wrong, for if I am not we may lose our tenuous hold on the hope for peace in the Middle East. That will bring chaos upon our nation and Israel that none of the people who will suffer under it deserve.

All of this is happening because a few dilettantes at the art of war believed that the use of our military power was the important part of changing Iraq into a Democracy. That in spite of history that tells us the contrary is always true. Freedom and Democracy must be built from within any nation and people must sacrifice in order to attain and keep their freedoms. Otherwise cabals of powerful people will seize the reins and establish the rule of fear in place of the would-be Democracy. That is the history of Democracy and we need to be as aware of it as the people of Iraq will soon become. We have a lot more freedom than they will any time soon, and we have a lot more to lose. God bless and keep you all safe in these times of dilettantes at war and incompetence at making peace.