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Fiasco
In Fiasco, Thomas Ricks says the war on Iraq and subsequent occupation was ill-conceived, incompetently planned and poorly executed. I have no quarrel with that. What dismays me is that anyone expected any different. All wars are full of incompetence, mendacity, fear, and lies. War is big government, authoritarianism, central planning, command and control, and bureaucracy in its most naked form and on the largest scale. The Pentagon is the Post Office with nuclear weapons.
If this war has been worse on these scores than others, and I have my doubts, we can at least be thankful that the scale of death and destruction has been smaller. At the Battle of the Somme there were a million casualties and 300,000 deaths over the course of a few months. If we remember previous wars more fondly this is only because those wars we won. Incompetent planning and poor execution are not fatal so long as the other side plans and executes yet more incompetently.
Is this a suggestion to put the current war in context? Not at all. It is suggestion to put government in context.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on August 2, 2006 at 07:10 AM in Current Affairs, Economics, History | Permalink
Comments
"The Pentagon is the Post Office with nuclear weapons."
I've always wondered why more people don't see this. Perhaps, it might be worse, as one of the aims of military training is to rebuild people that join it into authortarian-loving semi-automatons. While this may be necessary in some way to run the military, it may not result in an ideal mix of personality types that is necessary for democratic freedom.
"Is this a suggestion to put the current war in context? Not at all. It is suggestion to put government in context." You must have noticed that war is in many ways, anti-economic. Its a throwing up of the hands, saying something like "We cannot come to a contract. Your terms are unacceptable. And I must have this."
It is truly the ultimate expression of bad government. I don't think it tarnishes all government, but it should stand as a 'worst case scenario'
Posted by: mickslam at Aug 2, 2006 8:44:00 AM
I always found it amusing how liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith find the military so corrupt and inefficient as to be unworthy of support. The military has the most straightforward task in government: capture the flag! On that basis alone we should expect everything else the government does to be more corrupt and inefficient, though there aren't lots of NYTimes stories on poor planning and mismanagement in, say, schooling, or housing. It seems that people readily sacrifice means for ends and intentions.
Posted by: eric at Aug 2, 2006 8:45:23 AM
This war looks particularly fiasco-ish because unlike the World Wars, in which both sides were vast incompetent bureaucracies of slaughter, in this war only one side is. The insurgency is demonstrating non-bureaucratic warfare to us -- warfighting by actual individual intiative, unconstrained by central planning and its associated rigidities and ineffiencies, but contrained by price and other such market signals. It's horrifying, it's inhumane, and it can hold its own against a vastly bigger opponent.
Unless the centrally-planned war machine can retool itself into something more efficient -- and lacking market price signals you can be sure that it can't -- we can expect it to keep spending billions to keep up with its opponents expenditures of mere thousands. Unsurprisingly, private military contractors (mercenaries with better branding) are filling in the gaps in a lot of places; expect to see more of that.
Posted by: Grant Gould at Aug 2, 2006 9:06:52 AM
Did the military act poorly in this situation? As I recall the WAR was over very shortly. It's the occupation that is causing all this strife. What does that prove? Our nuclear post office is not good at policing?
Posted by: ben at Aug 2, 2006 9:06:55 AM
The initial military campaign was successful, wasn't it? The subsequent occupation has been a tragedy, however. Why? Perhaps the occupation government was too soft? Maybe a harsh dictatorship should have been imposed rather than a weak democracy? I don't even pretend to know. Just hypotheses.
Posted by: Pavel at Aug 2, 2006 9:09:47 AM
You are confusing incompetence with limited capabilities. Historically, unless one side had an overwhelming force and vast resources, conflicts could wipe out significant portions of both sides.
Now, the root causes of conflicts are another matter. Greed, power-lust, ancient hatreds, et al, were the most common causes. The Romans were an effective fighting force and created a successful empire, especially by today's standards. But the very vastness of their empire eventually outstripped their capability to govern it and corruption and collapse followed.
The U.S. has the same advantages in conflict as the Romans did and is quite effective in its use of military force to achieve military objectives. The breakdown occurs with the civilian aspect of government trying to pretend that a military action can be followed by "negotiated" restructuring. The Romans lasted as long as they did and were as successful as they were because they simply imposed the rules and were intolerant of dissent. After a period of time, the indigenous population was "assimilated" and became "Romans."
The reason the U.S. government plays by stupid post-conflict rules is that the U.S. press tries to make people believe that anything else is "evil". Well, war is inherently evil, but often unavoidable. Ask the Israelis.
Posted by: Bruce Hall at Aug 2, 2006 9:31:44 AM
The military has the most straightforward task in government
Sometimes it does, and when it does it usually does pretty well. But if you think that the military's current 'occupation' task in Iraq is straightforward, you haven't been paying attention.
Posted by: bbartlog at Aug 2, 2006 9:57:06 AM
Always wryly amusing to see the libertarian pov on such things as war, pestilence, famine et al. As usual, you deflect from the important issue here. The real tragedy of this war is not that it was badly managed but that it occurred at all.
Posted by: martin at Aug 2, 2006 10:00:13 AM
After Kuwait was liberated we were able and willing to return the country to its people. There was no possibility of an insurgency or guerrilla warfare in Kuwait in the aftermath of the conflict. The Kuwaitis dealt harshly with anyone who collaborated with Sadam.
Amazingly the US was able to collect enough money from Japan, Germany, and Kuwait to pay for the war. According to some reports we turned a profit of several billion.
Had the US employed similar tactics in this war (adequate forces and an immediate turnover of the country to prepared Iraqis) the outcome might have been much better. Notably, Jay Garner attempted to transfer power to the Iraqis and hold fast, free elections.
However, the neocon/libertarian fanatics inside the Bush administration had other ideas. They insisted on turning Iraq into a free-market paradise irrespective of Iraqi feelings on the subject. Jay Garner was fired and replaced by Paul Bremer who promptly cancelled elections (already scheduled) and tried to turn libertarian fantasies into facts on the ground. "Fiasco" is a nice way of describing the consequences.
A useful point is the role of Open Borders ideologues in the Iraqi disaster. Grover Norquist (Jack Abramhoff's buddy) apparently was deeply involved. Max Boot has been a consistent cheerleader for war and mass immigration. See the links below.
My overall thesis is this. Only a administration crazy enough to think that Iraq, of all places, could be turned into a model free market liberal democracy, would ever delude itself into thinking that mass third world immigration could ever be beneficial.
See the links below. Palast may be a flake. However, his quotes of Jay Garner are dead on.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0318-01.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Garner
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/adventure_capitalism.php
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Aug 2, 2006 10:14:58 AM
Milton Friedman, in a recent interview, argued that perhaps the key mistake of the occupation period was not setting up a private oil industry in Iraq with shares of common stock distributed to the people of Iraq. I agree. This would have provided an economic incentive for the populace writ large to work against terrorists, because terrorist activities can be expected to reduce the profitability of the oil industry. This would also have 100% laid to rest the completely false argument the the US went into Iraq to steal their oil. Did we steal Kuwaiti oil at the conclusion of DESERT STORM? Of course not; not only did we give Kuwait back its country and oil, but we put out all the fires that Sadam set in their oil fields.
Posted by: jim at Aug 2, 2006 11:02:50 AM
Alex Tabarrok: It's true that people tend to put a vaguely warm fuzzy gloss on all past wars, even notably nasty stupid ones (occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, anyone?), but I think there's more to it than that. Few remember WWI very fondly, even those who delight in the centralized economic control that it helped usher in. Romanticization is helped quite a lot when a war is seen as something we couldn't easily avoid, a brave necessity even if a costly one. WWII more warmly remembered than WWI, Korea than Vietnam...
Peter Schaeffer: Whether or not it would've been crazy to try to turn Iraq into a free market model, that doesn't seem to be what the occupation has actually done; the economy doesn't seem to be especially free. It is sufficiently underreported that I mostly see the symptoms rather than the causes, but for example, note the occasional reports of things like shooting incidents occurring in queues for gasoline. It's not hard to guess back from the queues to the cause, price controls on gas; but I, at least, had to read a number of queue stories before I finally found a story which mentioned yup, price controls on gas. (Given people's critiques of microeconomics and homo economicus, it's fairly amusing when reasoning backwards from simple-minded micro turns out to be a more reliable guide than news stories. And given the appeals of invasion/occupation supporters to historical analogies to WWII and post-WWII occupations, I'd've hoped that even if the occupiers refused to learn from the Wirtschaftswunder, some pundits would remind them; but in a world where Wikipedia's entry doesn't mention Erhard's repeal of price controls, perhaps that's too much to ask.)
Posted by: Bill Newman at Aug 2, 2006 11:02:53 AM
Alex,
Whether this is or is not a fiasco cannot really be definitively answered at this point. Certainly it is no fiasco for the people of Iraq who were periodically butchered, tortured, chemically purged (remember the Kurds in the North), and raped by Sadam and his sons and other assorted members of this Manson-like cult.
Certainly it is no fiasco if the lesson of Iraq is what prevailed upon Libya's strong man to give up his weapons of mass destruction.
Certainly it is no fiasco for the security of the US to have Sadam in prison rather than exporting "how to" terrorist techniques and funding.
Certainly it is no fiasco to have Sadam no longer paying off the families of suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Israel.
Certainly, the issue of whether this is a FIASCO in total, not at the margin, is unclear to me.
Posted by: jim at Aug 2, 2006 11:14:11 AM
From CNN today:
"Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday he foresees Iraqi forces taking over security in all 18 Iraqi provinces by the end of the year."
Is it really the time to scream FIASCO????????????
Posted by: jim at Aug 2, 2006 11:23:15 AM
Don't blame the military for civilian incompetence and mendacity.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Aug 2, 2006 11:37:54 AM
An interesting question with regards to this issue is, whether private contractors actually are more efficient planners and executers of wars and if they are, whether the outcome would be better if wars were left to the markets?
Given the many externalities of wars, one could argue for some level of government intervention in order for marginal cost and marginal benefit to align, but given the inefficiency of the governmental system the market would also be given a role.
Posted by: Bo at Aug 2, 2006 11:56:13 AM
Yes, Haliburton would fight this war much more efficiently (ahum).....
Modern states were created in large part BECAUSE fighting wars was so ineffective (and inefficient) without it. I really wish you guys would remember that the efficiency of markets over governments is an IF.... THEN... statement. I really don't see how the IF part holds up here.
Posted by: Zaoem at Aug 2, 2006 12:05:23 PM
Fiasco. Also see the lead comment.
Posted by: Damien at Aug 2, 2006 12:12:25 PM
Wow. 16 comments and amazingly 16 geniuses. I don't understand why everybody that posts on blogs is an expert that understands why so and so politician did this, why so and so central banker did that, what so and so needs to do to solve some 100 year old war between god knows how many factions. Why can't you people discuss, not preach.
After a year and a half of reading blogs, I've decided that you know-it-alls waste my time by crowding out the commenters that can actually add something to the conversation. To hell will giving voice to the common man, you're all freakin' emotionally needy idiots.
Posted by: cb at Aug 2, 2006 12:18:16 PM
The suggestion Milton Friedman proposes for Iraq oil is what was tried in
Russia. It ended up with a few individuals - institutions -- buying
the shares at rock bottom prices and the entire oil
industry being owned by a few firms. It provided
essentially no gain to the bulk of the population
originally issued the shares.
It may or may not be the best way to privatize, but
I do not think the results are what he, or you, have in mind.
Posted by: spencer at Aug 2, 2006 12:18:45 PM
Don't compare Iraq to Kuwait, then blame all the subsequent difficulties on how Iraq was handled. Kuwait's leadership was ousted, then put back into place, all we had to do was get rid of the Iraqi's. Iraq the government was the problem, and there is no easy was to determine true Baathists from those that went along for the ride, which is why you have a lot of half assed measures.
Alex is on the right track in his analysis, what is a "fiasco"? It all depends on what you expected, if you expected the Saddamists, Baathists, and Terrorists to toss their hands up in the air the second we went into Iraq, then it is a Fiasco, if however you expected a bit of attrition, then it is anything but.
Posted by: Phillip at Aug 2, 2006 12:21:15 PM
Alex said:
"Incompetent planning and poor execution are not fatal so long as the other side plans and executes yet more incompetently."
This applies to *any* group conflict, not just governmental ones. Business, sports, etc.
Posted by: cllam at Aug 2, 2006 12:34:57 PM
Alex wrote: "a million men died over the course of a few months"
Not true. There were a million casualties. Typically this would mean 200K dead and 800K wounded. Still horrible. And, such a waste. The British took a whole 50 square kilometres away from the Germans.
,dave
Posted by: Dave Barnes at Aug 2, 2006 12:49:30 PM
According to the Wikipedia page, there were about 310,000 men killed or missing.
Posted by: Brandon Berg at Aug 2, 2006 1:19:35 PM
The reason the Pentagon is NOT the Post Office (with or without nuclear weapons, is that the employees of the Pentagon have good reason to fear for their lives if they have to serve with incompetent colleagues.
It's different incentives, which produce much different outcomes.
And as for the failure of Iraq, anyone know of anything like Kasserein Pass, Monte Cassino, Anzio, Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Guadalcanal....? Now there were fiascoes.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Aug 2, 2006 1:36:08 PM
Spencer raise an interesting example of privatization in Russia. Perhaps the shares could be contractually tied to property. This would also be a good idea to the extent that oil production, refining, etc. create externailities to air, water, land, etc.
Posted by: jim at Aug 2, 2006 1:37:26 PM
