The road not taken

A reader sends an excerpt from Peggy Noonan’s column on the new Bob Woodward book:

After Baghdad fell, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who appears to be the best friend of everybody in the world, went to the White House and advised the president to fill the power vacuum immediately: The Baath Party and the military had run the country. Remove the top echelon—they have bloody hands—but keep and maintain everyone else. Tell the Iraqi military to report to their barracks, he advised, and keep the colonels on down. Have them restore order. Have Iraqi intelligence find the insurgents: “Those bad guys will know how to find bad guys.” Use them, and then throw them over the side. This is advice that has the brilliance of the obvious, and not only in retrospect.

Mr. Woodward: “‘That’s too Machiavellian,’ someone said. The Saudi notes of the meeting indicate it was either Bush or Rice.”

It isn’t clear if “too Machiavellian” meant too clever by half, or too devious for good people like us. Either way it was another path not taken. The newly unemployed personnel of the old Iraqi government took to the streets, like everyone else.

The reader comments: “Could it be that neocon idealism went that far? Also, it must have been Rice, because I can’t see Bush using that word at that point.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 06, 2006 05:11 PM | Send