RUM TIMES:

The hawks fall out (Jim Lobe, 9/16/03, Asia Times)

Faced with the rising costs and complications of occupying Iraq, the hardline coalition around US President George W Bush that led the drive to war with Iraq appears to be suffering serious internal strains.

On the one hand, neo-conservatives, who were the most optimistic about postwar Iraq before the US-led invasion, are insisting that Washington cannot afford either to pull out or to surrender the slightest control over the occupation to the United Nations or anyone else.

To a rising chorus of calls by Democrats for Washington to invite the world body to take over at least political control of the transition to Iraqi rule in exchange for a commitment of money and peacekeepers, the neo-cons are urging the administration to send more US troops instead.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, is dead-set against deploying yet more troops to join the 180,000 now in Iraq and Kuwait. And while he, like the neo-cons, opposes conceding any substantial political role for the UN or anyone else, his preferred option is to transfer power directly to the Iraqis as quickly as possible, even at the risk that reconstituted security forces would be insufficiently cleansed of elements of the former regime's Ba'ath Party. [...]

he divide burst into the open recently when neo-cons outside the administration, seconded by Republican Senator John McCain, launched a concerted attack, centered in the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and other sympathetic media, on Rumsfeld's opposition to increasing US troops in Iraq.

"The choices are stark," wrote Standard editor William Kristol (a former top McCain adviser) and his frequent collaborator, Robert Kagan. "Either the United States does what it takes to succeed in Iraq, or we lose in Iraq."

Mr. Lobe writes a great deal of nonsense and is seemingly obsessed with the neocons, but this essay is more right than wrong and a far better analysis than most of what's going on with Mr. Rumsfeld. The one major piece of the puzzle he misses is that to the Secretary these wars have been more or less a sideshow, though an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that his theories work. His real mission at Defense from day one, and the final legacy he wants to leave behind as he comes to the close of a brilliant career, is the fundamental reorientation of the military, away from the heavy Cold War configuration it still labors under, towards a lighter, more mobile, more intelligent force structure.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 17, 2003 12:00 AM