Sunday, December 04, 2005
'Planlessness followed ...,' Part II: OK, I'm on official rant roll on the Iraq they-didn't-plan front. But the NYT has a list of 2005's top 10 books, one of which is George Packer's 'The Assassins' Gate.' Here's an excerpt about the lack of occupation planning, from a review by Fareed Zakaria:
"Packer, who was in favor of the war, reserves judgment and commentary (about the occupation) in most of the book but finally cannot contain himself: 'Swaddled in abstract ideas . . . indifferent to accountability,' those in positions of highest responsibility for Iraq 'turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one,' he writes. 'When things went wrong, they found other people to blame.' "
Packer is also quoted as saying: "The Iraq war was always winnable ...it still is. For this very reason, the recklessness of its authors is hard to forgive."
"Packer, who was in favor of the war, reserves judgment and commentary (about the occupation) in most of the book but finally cannot contain himself: 'Swaddled in abstract ideas . . . indifferent to accountability,' those in positions of highest responsibility for Iraq 'turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one,' he writes. 'When things went wrong, they found other people to blame.' "
Packer is also quoted as saying: "The Iraq war was always winnable ...it still is. For this very reason, the recklessness of its authors is hard to forgive."
