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By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Douglas Feith | Iraq | War — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I had the opportunity to be on a call for about an hour with former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, whose book, War and Decision has now come out. Feith spent the time talking about his book and the observations he makes in it.

Read on . . .

Much of the time was spent discussing the mysterious and mysteriously bad job the Bush Administration did in putting out its message concerning the nature and progress that had been made during the Iraq reconstruction. To be sure, there were serious problems during the course of the reconstruction effort, but even when things went well, the Administration did a poor job of getting that message out to the public and to the international community at large. As Feith pointed out during the call, this failure not only had an impact from a public relations standpoint, but also from a strategic standpoint; misinformation serves to influence future decisions negatively. The chances for the reconstruction effort in Iraq to fail are only augmented when genuinely correct information fails to make it to the public sphere and correct information supporting the reconstruction effort and the decision to take out Saddam's regime has indeed failed to make it to the public sphere. This includes most especially the findings of the Duelfer Report, which found that there were no WMD's but there were a number of "WMD-related program activities" that could be resumed quite quickly in order to achieve WMD possession. Of course, this bit of news would have offered more support for the decision to remove Saddam's regime, but for whatever reason, the Bush Administration did not push the position forcefully enough.

And even though there is significantly better news coming out of Iraq nowadays, the lack of a coherent public information campaign continues to ill-serve the reconstruction effort. Note, for example, all of the attention given to the surge and the very little information that has been given to the counterinsurgency strategy that has been implemented commensurate with the surge, something that was discussed during the course of the call. As a result of this lack of attention, anytime that some form of tactical alliance is established that is not necessarily dependent on an increase of American troops per se, observers argue that the formation of this tactical alliance represents some form of triumph of low political cunning that had nothing to do with the work of the American military, even though, in fact, the tactical gain made was a direct result of the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy. (This phenomenon is especially evident in some of the discussion of the "Anbar Awakening," which is oftentimes portrayed more as either an accident or a development which is, at best, temporary and entirely crass, instead of being portrayed as what it was--the direct and logically coherent result of the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy.)

Throughout the call, Doug Feith displayed a great deal of civility when discussing the arguments of people with whom he did not agree and who disagree quite vociferously with him. He made clear his belief that his book would not be the definitive answer to the question "what happened with Iraq," but rather, it was an effort to lend light to the debate while at the same time acknowledging and appreciating the efforts of others who might have an argument with Feith's positions to also lend light to the debate. In other words, Feith appreciated his critics, knew that he could learn from them and hoped that they would benefit from his observations as well.

This is why it is so strange to read articles like this one from Dana Milbank. I realize, of course, that Milbank's schtick is snark instead of reasoned argument and his value as far as the Washington Post is concerned is that he can write editorials that try to make people look bad, but even someone as unserious as Milbank could not have written his editorial without simply fictionalizing a whole host of Feith's positions and arguments. Contra Milbank's accusations, Feith never held himself out as being blameless during the course of our call and in fact, has put himself through a fair amount of scrutiny in which his views were strongly challenged and in which Feith discussed mistakes that he himself made during the course of his public tenure. In examining Feith's appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Milbank argues that Feith engaged purely in covering his own hide and claiming that he made no mistakes. This picture of self-righteousness is entirely at odds with the actual nature of Feith's appearance, which you can view here. To be sure, Feith put forth strong and passionate arguments during his CSIS appearance. He did the same during the course of our conference call and he did so during the writing of his book as well. But this should come as no surprise and someone like Milbank--who as I write, relies purely on snark rather than substance to advance his positions--is in no position to lecture others on forensics. Indeed, while there is no explicit admission of this in Milbank's editorial, it becomes clear upon a close reading of his words that Milbank hasn't even read Feith's book. All he says about the book proper is that  it has "a blood-red cover." A cheap and tawdry observation, and not just because despite all of the warnings to the contrary, Dana Milbank judged a book by its cover.

For those who are more serious than Dana Milbank--and one hopes that this would constitute approximately 90% of the population, no matter how cynical one's views of society's general erudition--one of the best things that Feith has done regarding his book has nothing to do with the book itself. Rather, it has to do with this website for the book. Note the many reviews that mention explicitly that Feith takes his own decision-making process to task in the book. Note as well that Feith has made it very convenient for critics to take him on substantively by offering a whole host of links to sources that he used in the writing of his book. Want to read the citations by chapter? Go here. Want to look up timelines, maps and charts? Go to the section conveniently titled "Timelines, Maps and Charts." Want to look at the documents and articles that Feith used? Go here. If Dana Milbank wanted, he could have actually read the book and then used all of the sourcing that Feith made available to the public to write the damning indictment that he so obviously and so desperately wanted to write. Instead, Milbank decided to wholly misrepresent a talk about the book and then draw gigantic and condemnatory conclusions from the caricature that he made up entirely on his own.

And people wonder why there was and is a need for an alternative media establishment in general and the Blogosphere in particular. (As mentioned earlier, Feith was quite civil towards his critics and gently chided me when I mentioned how much Milbank lacked intellectual seriousness. That's nice of him, of course, but I stand by my assertions.) In any event, Feith's work in making his sourcing available to the public is most valuable for scholars and will hopefully help lead to a more informed public viewpoint concerning Iraq. After all, no one can claim anymore that they do not have access to the evidence for his arguments and no one can make the excuse that they have neither the time nor the means to educate themselves about Iraq--an education that may very well involve challenging one's preconceived notions concerning the issue and conventional wisdom's many heretofore largely unanswered shibboleths.

I cannot claim that this is a full and complete accounting of my views regarding Doug Feith's book and work. It is not, for I have yet to read Feith's book myself. I am only judging the nature of the discussion that Feith had with those of us on the conference call, the nature of his appearance before CSIS and the way in which Feith has made himself available to public scrutiny and criticism. When I have the chance to read the book, I may very well disagree with large portions of it and if so, I will write about my disagreements. At the same time, it is worth noting my encounter with him and my impression of his commentary. I found Feith to be serious, sober-minded and impressive in his commentary and discussion. I don't expect to be 100% in accord with the arguments that he makes in his book, but I am sure that he knows that already and I remain at least as eager to read it as I was before the conference call began.