Very interesting.

Respected conservatives agree with 'clueless lefties'
September 30, 2004

My Sept. 16 column, "Bush's ideological blinders led to ill-advised war in
Iraq," attracted numerous e-mails from as far away as Missouri, Texas,
Maryland, Colorado and even Canada. The responses ran 2-to-1 negative.

I was informed that I am part of "the pacifist, ivy-covered world of
academia," which produces "lies and half-truths" and "corrupts students'
minds with politics instead of objectively teaching fact." I learned that I
am "treasonously stupid" and am "yet another clueless leftie sheltered from
the real world by the walls of academia who rants how Bush made a mistake."

Most respondents assumed that because I and other academics have criticized
Bush policies, we must all be left-wing radicals who hate America (or in
other words, "Democrats"). A typical letter read: "Strength is all the
terrorists understand, not anti-American mutterings by a few so-called
intellectuals. The Democrats have lost the House, the Senate, soon the
White House, and soon the Supreme Court. Wake up, you're out of touch with
the country."

Another e-mail read: "If you and your kind had not spent so much time
blaming America first for the attacks on our country, your views would have
gotten much more play at the White House, and in public as well."

But those who assume that the administration's critics are all Democrats
or "clueless lefties" are wrong. I'm a registered Republican who twice
voted for Bush's father.

And it was no foaming-at-the-mouth leftie who wrote: "In 2003, the United
States invaded a country that did not threaten us, did not attack us and
did not want war with us, to disarm it of weapons we have since discovered
it did not have." These are the words of arch-conservative Pat Buchanan.

Many esteemed Republicans who supported the initial decision for war in
Iraq have been harshly critical of the mismanagement of the occupation.
Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
recently used the word "incompetence" to describe the administration's
postwar reconstruction efforts. Sens. John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Lindsey
Graham publicly reject the administration's rosy predictions of success,
and conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. has expressed second thoughts
about the wisdom of going to war.

A major policy paper has just come out calling the Iraq war a distraction
from the fight against al-Qaida and advocating our complete withdrawal from
Iraq by next January. The report is titled: "Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S.
Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda." This
was not produced by Howard Dean, but by the CATO Institute, a libertarian
think tank.

One of the most damning critiques is by the well-respected scholar Larry
Diamond in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. No bleeding heart liberal,
Diamond is a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford
University. He served as a senior adviser to Paul Bremer's Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad from January to April 2004.

Diamond decries the administration's unwillingness to send in enough troops
from the beginning, its utter failure in providing basic security for the
Iraqis to this day, and its general cluelessness about Iraqi society and
history. His article, "What Went Wrong in Iraq," details a series of ill-
fated decisions that were infected by what he calls "hubris and ideology."

Diamond writes that "Throughout the occupation, the coalition lacked the
linguistic and area expertise necessary to understand Iraqi politics and
society, and the few longtime experts present were excluded from the inner
circle of decision-making in the CPA."

So if the "area experts" were not being consulted in the decision-making
process, which was the point of my previous column, then who was? Peter
Galbraith offers some answers in the Sept. 23 issue of The New York Review
of Books, in his article "Iraq: The Bungled Transition." According to this
former U.S. ambassador and expert on post-conflict societies, "Republican
political connections counted for far more than professional competence,
relevant international experience, or knowledge of Iraq. In some cases, the
quest for political loyalists meant dismissing qualified professionals who
had already been recruited."

Ideological blinders have indeed shaped and constrained our policy in Iraq,
and also in the war against those who really did attack us. And it's not
only "clueless leftie" academics who understand this.

Atlas is assistant professor of political science and director of the
Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College.

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