Lounsbury: Reconstruction Articles: indictments of the CPA

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June 22, 2004

Reconstruction Articles: indictments of the CPA

The Washington Post has been running a rich series on the "reconstruction" of Iraq, which I find rather confirmatory of my own observations and explanatory of why reconstruction has been such an abject failure.

In the current edition, the following article has some interesting gems:

An Educator Learns the Hard Way
Task of Rebuilding Universities Brings Frustration, Doubts and Danger
washingtonpost.com
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56414-2004Jun20?language=printer
Second of three articles

The article focuses on a certain John Agresto, responsible for the "reconstruction" of the university system. Without meaning to sneer, the naivete recorded rather explains the failures.

A few quotes: "Like everyone else in America, I saw the images of people cheering as Saddam Hussein's statue was pulled down. I saw people hitting pictures of him with their shoes," said Agresto, the former president of St. John's College in New Mexico. "Once you see that, you can't help but say, 'Okay. This is going to work.' "

Well, I should hope some minority in American paid attention to the wider context, which was there, of vast and deep distrust for the US and ambiguous feelings regarding the toppling of "their president" by a foreign army. Fool.

Although he notes:
""I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality," Agresto said as he puffed on a pipe next to a resort-size swimming pool behind the marbled palace that houses the occupation authority.

"We can't deny there were mistakes, things that didn't work out the way we wanted," he added. "We have to be honest with ourselves.""

This is perhaps the key to understanding why he and his ilk when so wrong:
He knew next to nothing about Iraq's educational system. Even after he was selected, he did not pore through a reading list. "I wanted to come here with as open a mind as I could have," he said. "I'd much rather learn firsthand than have it filtered to me by an author." He did a Google search on the Internet. The result? "Not much," he said.
...
None of that fazed him. He assumed, he said, that Iraq would feel like a newly liberated East European nation, keen to embrace the West and democratic change. "

Blindness and hubris, fundamentally misunderstanding the situation and the problem. It strikes me the idiotically misplaced, utterly ahistorical analogies with the Cold War and Eastern Europe indeed informed most of the CPA-Iraq ideologues understanding of Iraq. It is little wonder they failed to understand what was going on around them, and failed to respond in practical manners.

It rather does behoove one, I would add, to learn something of the country you are trying to remake, if only to understand what the real basics you are working with actually are, so as to avoid the silly idiocy of believing some selective, distorted TV images, and thinking like a naive fool that your invasion is going to be like Praque 1989. The differences should have been obvious to anyone who knew even a modicum about the history of the region, never mind the culture and the religion. Leaving aside, however, the Islamic versus outsider issue, one need only look to the rather more ambivalent Russian attitudes compared with Eastern European to understand Eastern Europe, under a foreign empire's domination, was/is in no way a sociological model for understanding a post-Sadaam Iraq.

This particular passage amused and annoyed me, I may add:
"While acknowledging American mistakes, Agresto aimed some of his most pointed criticism at Iraqis. In his view, the Americans toppled a dictator and prepared the ground for democracy, but Iraqis have not stepped up to build on that start.

"They don't know how to be a community," he said. "They put their individual interests first. They only look out for themselves.""

Well, no shit. There has not been a community and a modicum of reading regarding Iraqi sociology would have taught him that Iraqi society has remained highly tribalized, and indeed regreseed along those lines in the 1990s. A modicum of preparation, rather than trying to "learn" on the ground, wrapped in a bubble.

I would like to note I consider this statement to be pure rubbish and deeply hypocritical:
"Had it been someone different than Agresto, the possibility of that would have been so much better," said Keith Watenpaugh, an assistant professor of Middle East history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., who traveled to Baghdad last year to assess Iraq's university system. "The politics of the occupation were so divisive, and the American academy felt so disempowered by the way things were happening, that when such political creatures like Agresto came asking for things, it was too difficult to put aside those politics. If the administration had really been committed to rebuilding Iraq's education structures, they wouldn't have sent Agresto."
Emphasis added.

American academy felt disempowered? Oh poor whinging ineffectual babies. Bloody twit: at least Agresto is honest - a fool but honest - this whinging twit would have me believe he would have let go of his attachment to "the Academy" (one of those idiotic pomposities that I so despise from this kind of academic), and his politics to work on Iraq? I should think not.

Agresto was a mistake, to be sure, for his lack of background in the region and his idiotic lack of preparation on that, but his past fights with "The Academy" strike me as irrelevant except to highlight the self-indulgence and navel gazing.

Now, more naivete:
Agresto, who was inside the palace and heard the blast, assumed that the attack would provoke widespread revulsion at the taking of innocent life, and would rally popular sentiment against the insurgency and in favor of the goals of the occupation.

"What I expected was the Mothers March for Peace or the Don't Kill Our Kids movement or somebody to come out and say: 'Stop this. We want democracy,' " he said. But that never occurred. Iraqis held funerals and went on with life. U.S. troops erected even larger concrete blast walls in front of the gate.

When he asked Iraqis working for the CPA why there was not more outrage, he sensed apprehension. Everyone he talked to was too scared to condemn the insurgents in public.

"I saw people still afraid," he said. "I saw how easy it was to speak against the Americans and how dangerous it was to speak for democracy and liberty."

The aftermath of the bombing led Agresto to rethink some of his most fundamental assumptions about the American effort to transform Iraq. Suddenly, a goal that had appeared attainable seemed so far from reach. Perhaps, he concluded, U.S. planners should have settled for something less than full democracy.

A mother's march for peace? Well, that has some entertainment value - although it sadly displays how much he and his ilk have been living in a fantasy world disconnected from the realities of Iraqi society,

He reasoned that the occupation's chief goal should have been to restore security, and only later to begin other work in earnest.

"We're trying to establish a democratic government without a democratic people," he said. "I don't know how possible that is."

Here, here at least we have some realism. It is not possible, is the answer, first one has to create the conditions necessary. .

Now, perhaps a dose of realism:

"Later in the meeting, Agresto distributed copies of a revised education law written by the CPA that included the rights document. He said the CPA had decided not to promulgate the law and instead was giving it to the ministry with the hope that it would be approved by the university presidents and the minister. The changes would have more legitimacy, Agresto figured, if they were enacted by the new minister, rather than the occupation authority."

Well, at least a tiny bit of realism regarding what they can achieve.

Now regarding the prior article,

Mistakes Loom Large as Handover Nears
Missed Opportunities Turned High Ideals to Harsh Realities
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54294-2004Jun19?language=printer
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01

Bloody long and very much worth reading, although if you have been reading my ranting about my experiences with the CPA since May of 2003, none of this is a surprise.

Some key items

First, this one line summary: "The ambitious, 15-month undertaking stumbled because of a series of mistakes that began with an inadequate commitment of resources and was aggravated by a misunderstanding of Iraqi politics, religion and society in occupied Iraq, these participants said."

Well ain't that beautiful. What truly irritates me, however, as this was painfully obvious a bloody year ago, and to anyone with the least sense, the combination of an occupation administration that knew literally nothing and had no resources, was a recipe for disaster (although I note we had the usual suspects in the mindless cheerleading camp try to pimp that idea everything was going fine off of some senseless neo-Con journo morons quick trips through safe zones. Indeed, let me point out the importance of "loyal criticism and its utility over mindless sycophantic cheerleading. Should the USG morons have heeded well placed criticisms, they would have avoided massive errors.

But more on this later.

"We blatantly failed to get it right," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who served as an adviser to the occupation authority. "When you look at the record, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that we squandered an unprecedented opportunity."

Squandered is bloody right. Nothing had to be this bad. Not even after the looting, but again, the current Administration's blind mendacity, its extreme preference for sycophants over skilled and pragmatic operators is deadly. Martin Wolf had it right, opposition to this Administration is a duty for anyone who cares about competency. I am not pleased with the concept of a Kerry White House, but I would rather have the occasion to vote out a mediocre Kerry than suffer through the disasters these incompetent fools are wreaking out of pure blind hubris.

I note this is rich: U.S. reconstruction specialists commonly complain of ungrateful Iraqis. What the fuck these idiots think the Iraqis should be grateful for I don't know, but certainly merely toppling a dictator is not enough, the motherfuckers in Iraq know bloody well that toppling dictators does not make the fucking pie in the end, so no reason to congratulate the Chef for simply having bought the motherfucking ingrediants, he's gotta fucking make the pie in order to fucking congratulate him. Mindless idiots, these stupid fucking American "reconstruction" idiots in the CPA, full of their bloated farts of empty pompous "liberation" posturing.

In many ways, the occupation appears to have transformed the occupier more than the occupied. Iraqis continue to endure blackouts, lengthy gas lines, rampant unemployment and the uncertain political future that began when U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad. But American officials who once roamed the country to share their sense of mission with Iraqis now face such mortal danger that they are largely confined to compounds surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wire. Iraqis who come to meet them must show two forms of identification and be searched three times.

Emphasis added. I rather think that says all there really needs to be said about this "liberation."

The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans has been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.

These are successes? Five fucking million? And replacing Sadaam on the currency?

Most telling:
About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.

Incompetence.

Pure and simple. Incompetence.

And these people sneered at the UN. With more potential resources they have done a far worse job and squandered vast amounts of political capital.

And of course, my fucking steel project is still fucking stuck.

Yeah, that pisses me off still. But beyond the personal angle, rather emblamatic of who these incompetent fools can't get out of the fucking starting gate.

AS for the political system and that shining beacon of democracy that would transform the region (in their masturbatory dreams of course, naive idiots), well we're going to have an Egyptian style "democracy" as a I long predicted, if not a civil war (I note al-Hayat reports this AM 22 June 04 that Turkey has warned the Kurds not to move into Kirkuk or face consequences).

Of course the following is not surprising at all in the context of the abject failure of the CPA. : On the eve of its dissolution, the CPA has become a symbol of American failure in the eyes of most Iraqis. In a recent poll sponsored by the U.S. government, 85 percent of respondents said they lacked confidence in the CPA. The criticism is echoed by some Americans working in the occupation. They fault CPA staffers who were fervent backers of the invasion and of the Bush administration, but who lacked reconstruction skills and Middle East experience. Only a handful spoke Arabic.

What I always found strange, I may add, is that although I knew a goodly number of CPA Staff, and knew they desperately needed persons like myself, no one tried to recruit me. Now, I am sure it was really quite clear that I am no partisan of Ibn Bush, that I was highly critical of what was going on, however one should think that my skills, language and business, would have been of some interest to an Administration that was grappling with an ever deteriorating situation and, to be frank and perhaps a bit arrogant but I think accurate, desperately needed people like me.

Now, maybe I would have said no. Maybe not. I certainly am glad I did not get all covered up in the shit so far, but I find it strange, bizarre that I was never approached, not even obliquely. I need not even have been that good, in the final analysis, considering what a cock up things have been, to have added some value, I can not but assume that not being a partisan, that being a critic (and of course they don't know about this site) was a show stopper.

Ideology over all.

Now this little piece on Bremer, it is rich. In an interview last week, Bremer maintained that "Iraq has been fundamentally changed for the better" by the occupation. The CPA, he said, has put Iraq on a path toward a democratic government and an open economy after more than three decades of a brutal socialist dictatorship. Among his biggest accomplishments, he said, were the lowering of Iraq's tax rate, the liberalization of foreign-investment laws and the reduction of import duties.

Well, since Iraq is not on a path to democratic government, but sliding dangerously between trumped up democracy masking authoritarianism and open civil war, looks like point one down, "Ambassador" Bremer. An open economy. Well, insofar as no law truly obtains, I suppose I don't even know how to judge this "accomplishment" since I doubt it will survive intact. Lowering the tax rate is an accomplishment? He clearly exists in the same la la land that the rest of his sycophantic incomptetent stooges do, when they think such things really fucking matter at this fucking stage, or that will survive whatever emerges from this mess. Same for liberalization of investment laws and import duties. Bloody idiocy. Bloody self-regarding un-realistic idiocy. It is truly stunning how stupidly removed from reality these idiots are.

As to this, let me quote the following
Several current and former CPA officials contended that key decisions by Bremer favored a grandiose vision over Iraqi realities and reflected the perceived prerogatives of a military victor. Critics within the CPA also faulted Bremer for working to advance a conservative economic agenda of tax cuts and free trade instead of focusing on the delivery of basic services. "There was this grand idea that we were going to turn Iraq into a model nation, a model democracy, with an ideal constitution and an ideal economy and an ideal military," said a State Department official who spent several months working for the CPA. "It was just naive."
Emphasis added:
Indeed. indeed, indeed.

On the underlined part, well, I will say, I like low and stable taxation, I like open and free trade and I think that the overall "grandiose vision" would have been a fine thing to achieve, in an ideal world.

The problem I have had, and always had with their idiotic transformation talk and bloody idiotic self-indulgent political messianism is that this had no relationship with what could have been realistically achieved under the best of conditions, given Iraqi society, given economic realities and given the resources. One does not "transform" societies - that is bolshevism and these idiot Neo-Cons and their so called "conservative" supporters are engaging in right wing bolshevism when they engage in such bloody nonsense.

There was no way that any of these reforms were going to take when the country was prostrate and without services. I, I may add, ranted on about this throughout the summer, fearing, as I think they have done, that they have by their bolshevism managed to discredit many fine reforms, and went too far beyond what Iraqi social consensus would support. There will be a backlash, mark my words, and these self-indulgent twits have discredited necessary reforms.

Naive and stupid.

Now, on staffing:
The CPA also lacked experienced staff. A few development specialists were recruited from the State Department and nongovernmental organizations. But most CPA hiring was done by the White House and Pentagon personnel offices, with posts going to people with connections to the Bush administration or the Republican Party. The job of reorganizing Baghdad's stock exchange, which has not reopened, was given in September to a 24-year-old who had sought a job at the White House. "It was loyalty over experience," a senior CPA official said.
Emphasis added.

My experience more or less. What to say about this other than this is purely incompetence. Deep and bloody incompetence.

Mind you, I happen to know that they have more or less simply translated American rules and documentation into Arabic with little to no regard for the local context, and despite a fine model next door in Jordan for a reasonable Arab framework for an exchange (although I believe later inputs have included Jordanians).

Now let me quote the following in whole:
Economic Miscalculations
The Daura Power Plant in southern Baghdad was supposed to be a model of the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq. Bombed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and neglected by Hussein's government, the station could operate at no more than a quarter of its rated capacity, leading to prolonged blackouts in the capital.

After CPA specialists toured the decrepit facility last summer, they vowed to bring it back to life. German and Russian firms were hired to make repairs, and it was placed atop a list of priority projects intended to achieve a 6,000-megawatt goal for national electricity production. More power, Bremer hoped, would improve the economy and daily life enough to reduce violence and stabilize Iraq.

Today, the Daura plant is indeed a model -- of how the U.S. reconstruction effort has failed to meet its goals.

The German contractors fled for their safety in April. The Russians departed in late May, after two of their colleagues were shot to death by insurgents as they approached the plant in a minivan.

Inside the facility, parts are strewn on the floor, awaiting installation. Iraqi technicians in blue coveralls lounge around, smoking cigarettes and waiting for guidance. In the turbine room, graffiti on the wall reads: "Long Live the Resistance."

The CPA intended for the Daura plant to be producing more than 500 megawatts of power by June 1. But the best it can do at the moment is 100 megawatts -- half of its output of last summer.

"We were supposed to have improved," said Bashir Khallaf, the plant director. "But we have gotten worse."

The failure to fix Daura and other plants, coupled with sabotage attacks on power lines, have renewed the debilitating blackouts that plagued Iraq last summer. The situation is not much better for other services. Attempts to fix water-treatment plants and oil refineries also are far behind schedule, forcing the country -- which has the world's second-largest oil reserves and two large rivers -- to import gasoline and bottled water. Recent attacks on fuel convoys and pipelines have depleted stockpiles, resulting in lengthy gas lines.

Several CPA officials said the Bush administration has long underestimated reconstruction costs. In its war planning, the administration devoted $900 million to reconstruction despite reporting by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations that depicted a far greater need. In the first months of the occupation, an additional $1.1 billion was committed by the White House. It was not until September that the administration asked Congress for billions more.

No news here, just a sad illustration of the errors.

Although the $18.6 billion reconstruction aid package was approved by Congress in November, the Pentagon office charged with spending it has moved slowly. About $3.7 billion of this package had been spent by June 1, according to the CPA. Many projects that have received funding have slowed or stopped entirely because Western firms have withdrawn employees from Iraq in response to attacks on civilian contractors.

CPA officials contend the money should have been earmarked and spent far sooner. Had that happened, they argue, the CPA could have retained much of the goodwill that existed among Iraqis after the U.S. invasion and possibly weakened the insurgency.

"The failure to get the reconstruction effort launched early will be regarded as the most important critical failure," said one of Bremer's senior advisers. "If we could have fixed things faster, the situation would be very different today."

Not very different, too many fuck ups.

By starting late, the adviser said, the CPA got "caught in a security trap." More than $2 billion of the aid package will be spent hiring private guards for contractors, buying them armored vehicles and building secure housing compounds, CPA officials estimate. "If we had spent this money sooner, before things got bad, we could have spent more of it on actually helping the Iraqi people," the adviser said.

Because many of the 2,300 projects to be funded by the $18.6 billion are large construction endeavors that will involve foreign laborers instead of Iraqis, they will result in far less of a local economic boost than the CPA had promised, another senior official involved in the reconstruction said. The projects were chosen largely without input from Iraqis.

"This was supposed to be our big effort to help them -- 18 billion of our tax dollars to fix their country," the senior reconstruction official said. "But the sad reality is that this program won't have a lot of impact in it for the Iraqis. The primary beneficiaries will be American companies."

Well, wasting tax payer dollars. Why not? The whole cock up has been a waste, why go for any novelty value by stopping pissing away on the electric rail now?

On Sadr and political confrontation:
The sympathy for Sadr today at the Rafidain station -- on Fridays, officers pin his picture to their uniforms before going to the mosque -- suggests that the odds of getting the police to resist the cleric's militia have not improved. The scope of the confrontation could have been smaller, according to several CPA officials, had U.S. forces moved against Sadr in August, when an Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for him. Instead, they allowed him months to build support for his anti-occupation views.

By April, with the CPA's internal polling showing 80 percent of Iraqis holding positive views of Sadr, the CPA should have sought a political solution, the officials contend. At the very least, they argue, CPA strategists and military commanders should have realized that many Iraqi security officers would side with the cleric.

"The Americans misunderstood us," Kadhim said. "We will fight for Iraq. We will not fight for them."

I doubt moving in August would have been much better, but certainly when your data tells you your opponent is massively popular and you are hated or at best regarding with moderate dislike, you might want to adjust strategy.

I shall quote this section as well, in extenso, for it is both amusing and appalling to me:

Out of Touch

Life inside the high-security Green Zone -- what some CPA staffers jokingly call the Emerald City -- bears little resemblance to that in the rest of Baghdad. The power is always on. Shiny shuttle buses zip passengers around. Outdoor cafes stay open late into the night.

There is little effort to comply with Islamic traditions. Beer flows freely at restaurants. Women walk around in shorts. Bacon cheeseburgers are on the CPA's lunch menu.

"It's like a different planet," said an Iraqi American who has a senior position in the CPA and lives in the Green Zone but regularly ventures out to see relatives. "It's cut off from the real Iraq."

Because the earth-toned GMC Suburbans used by CPA personnel and foreign contractors have become a favored target of insurgents, traveling outside the Green Zone -- into the Red Zone that defines the rest of Iraq -- requires armored vehicles and armed escorts, which are limited to senior officials. Lower-ranking employees must either remain within the compound or sneak out without a security detail.

Although the CPA has tried to bring Iraqis into the CPA headquarters for meetings and other events -- there has even been an "Iraqi Culture Night" in the Green Zone -- the inability to mingle with Iraqis has isolated the Americans. "We don't know the outside," the senior adviser to Bremer said. "How many of us have gone out to buy a bottle of milk or a pair of socks?"

Instead of building contacts at social events in the city, CIA operatives in Baghdad drink in their own rattan-furnished bar in the Green Zone. Instead of prowling local markets, CPA employees go to the Green Zone Shopping Bazaar, where the most popular items are Saddam Hussein memorabilia.

Limited contact with Iraqis outside the Green Zone has made CPA officials reliant on the views of those chosen by Bremer to serve on the Governing Council. When Brahimi, the U.N. envoy, asked the CPA for details about several Iraqis he was considering for positions in the interim government, he told associates he was "shocked to find how little information they really had," according to an official who was present.

The CPA official who got around the most was Bremer, who travels with an entourage of private guards, most of them former Navy SEALs, equipped with helicopters and a fleet of armored vehicles.

Bremer's willingness to travel and to work 18-hour days has won him respect within the CPA. The chief criticism of his tenure within the former Hussein palace that serves as CPA headquarters was that he failed to recruit enough seasoned diplomats with experience in the Middle East.

In the final days of the CPA, many officials have succumbed to bitterness. Some blame military commanders for not asking for more troops to stabilize the country. "They had enough soldiers to ensure that Saddam's men didn't come back to power, but there were nowhere near enough to make the country safe enough for us to do our work," a CPA reconstruction specialist said.

Military officials say CPA personnel spend too much time in the 258-room headquarters. "Nobody has any idea what they do back in that palace," a senior Marine commander in Fallujah said recently. "We certainly don't see any results."

Several veterans of other reconstruction operations characterized civilian-military relations in Iraq as the worst they have encountered. "It has been poisonous," the reconstruction specialist said.

The other major conflict within the occupation bureaucracy has set the legions of young staff members chosen for their loyalty to the Bush administration against older, more liberal diplomats from the State Department and the British Foreign Office. Several of the diplomats said they regarded the young staffers as inexperienced and eager to pad their r�sum�s during three-month tours.

These diplomats singled out the Office of Strategic Communications as unsuccessful in its efforts to disseminate information to Iraqis. Instead of creating an all-news television station that would compete with other Arab broadcasters that the CPA deemed anti-occupation, the communications office, with several employees straight from Republican staff jobs on Capitol Hill, set up a channel that aired children's programs and Egyptian cooking shows.

"It didn't put any effort into communicating with the Iraqi people," a British CPA official said. "Stratcom viewed its job as helping Bush to win his next election."

If the underlined sections are not a complete and utter indictment of this effort as deeply corrupted by short termist facile politics, by temporizing and incompetence, by idiotic sycophancy in the face of a clearly world-imporant event, then I do not know anything.

June 22, 2004

Reconstruction Articles: indictments of the CPA

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