Planning? We don't need no stinking planning.

The oh so many regular readers of this blog know that I have written a lot about the horrendous lack of planning for the the post-war period in Iraq. For anyone who has not been a regular reader of this blog, you can find links to most of my previous posts on post-war planning here. And, believe it or not, those lengthy posts do not come close to discussing all the issues.

This post will not finish the job, but it will present excerpts from a recent interview which sum up some of the major failings of Bush, Cheney, Rumskull, Wolfowitless, etc.

On July 8, 2005, Robert Merry was a guest on The Diane Rehm Show. Before discussing what Merry said in this interview, I will discuss Merry's background. According to this biography,

Mr. Merry was born March 5, 1946, in Tacoma, Washington. He received a bachelor’s degree in editorial journalism from the University of Washington, where he served as editor of the campus Daily and won two major awards for student journalism. Following three years in the Army, when he served as a language-qualified counterespionage agent in West Germany, he received a master’s degree from Columbia University‘s Graduate School of Journalism.

Mr. Merry began his career at the Denver Post, where he covered the Colorado Senate and local politics. After two years at the Post, he became a national political correspondent for the now-defunct National Observer, a Dow Jones newspaper. When it folded in 1977, Mr. Merry moved to the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal. During nine years at the Journal, Mr. Merry covered a wide range of subjects.

Merry went from the WSJ to Congressional Quarterly "in 1987 as Managing Editor and in 1990 was promoted to Executive Editor. He became President and Publisher in January 1997." For those of you not familiar with Congressional Quarterly, here is part of the magazine's mission statement:

Congressional Quarterly publishes world-class information and insight on government and politics. The company has built a reputation for accurate, comprehensive and nonpartisan reporting on more than 50 years of experience.

CQ has the largest news team covering Capitol Hill. More than 100 reporters, editors and researchers keep readers updated in print and online on a weekly, daily and real-time basis. CQ's readership includes 95 percent of the members of Congress, top academic and media outlets, and leaders in business, nonprofit organizations, government affairs and the executive branch.

The point here is that Merry cannot be accused of being Michael Moore or Paul Krugman or Al Franken.

And with that established, let's get to the interview. Merry has written a book, Sands of Empire : Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition. Iraq is discussed in the book, and it was discussed with Diane Rehm. Specifically, the topic of planning for the post-war period was discussed:

Q: But then, Bob, how do you explain the extraordinarily poor planning that went into their thinking before the war?

A: I think those may be among my most harsh passages in the entire book because I essentially say that the only explanation is it was ideological planning–you basically create the pattern that you want the world to be in and then you fit the policy to coincide with that particular pattern, even though it bore no relationship to reality.

Q: So you’re saying that basically they were building the war in Iraq not based on the reality of what this country had and could put forward to move into Iraq–not only to take down Saddam, but to reshape that entire society--and did so without fully planning how to do it.

A: I have a catalog of expressions on the part of these people, including the Vice President and Wolfowitz and many others in the administration, indicating that they really did not know what they were getting into. They didn’t understand the force of culture. They didn’t understand the sectarian nature of Iraq. They didn’t understand the history that we’re now grappling with. But it wasn’t very hard to find this history–books have been written, historical references were rampant in the period leading up to the Iraq war. They seemed to ignore all those things. If they had just gone back and looked at the experience of the British during the end of and after World War I. Winston Churchill, who was responsible for all this at the time, called Iraq “an ungrateful volcano.” I think that’s a very apt phrase–it applies to today.

(emphasis added). Does that seem a bit harsh? If you want some evidence to back up Merry's conclusions, check out my previous posts on the subject. You will see that the people ultimately responsible are Bush and Rumskull. At the very least, their abysmal failure in this regard constitutes criminal negligence, but that explanation will be made later.