The Hell of Good Intentions Read online

  70. See Ellen Mitchell, “Top General in Afghanistan Says Taliban Fight Has ‘Turned the Corner,’” The Hill, November 28, 2017, at http://thehill.com/policy/defense/362205-top-us-general-in-afghanistan-says-taliban-fight-has-turned-the-corner; and Andrew Bacevich, “Still Waiting: A Harvey Weinstein Moment for America’s Wars?” TomDispatch, December 10, 2017, at www.tomdispatch.com/post/176361/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_a_country_addicted_to_war/.

  71. See Paul McCleary, “U.S. Has ‘Turned the Corner’ in Afghanistan, Top General Says,” Foreign Policy, November 28, 2017, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/28/u-s-has-turned-the-corner-in-afghanistan-top-general-says/.

  72. See Shawn Snow, “Report: US Officials Classify Crucial Metrics on Afghan Casualties, Readiness,” Army Times, October 20, 2017, at www.armytimes.com/flashpoints/2017/10/30/report-us-officials-classify-crucial-metrics-on-afghan-casualties-readiness/; and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Afghan War Data, Once Public, Is Censored in U.S. Military Report,” The New York Times, October 30, 2017.

  73. See Noah Shachtman, “Gates Has a Long, Loooong Record of Firing Generals,” Wired, June 11, 2010, at www.wired.com/2010/06/gates-has-a-long-record-of-firing-generals/.

  74. See Thom Shanker, “Concern Grows Over Top Military Officers’ Ethics,” The Washington Post, November 12, 2012.

  75. These audits are available at www.sigar.mil. See also Andrew deGrandpre and Alex Horton, “Here Are Six Costly Failures from America’s Longest War. No. 1: Cashmere Goats,” The Washington Post, August 22, 2017.

  76. He added: “We also don’t appreciate and enforce personal accountability in the U.S. government. It takes a hell of a lot of screw-ups for someone to get fired. And I dare anybody to show me somebody who’s gotten fired in Afghanistan for wasting 100 million dollars, 300 million dollars, or failing to accomplish a program he or she was given.” See Priyanka Boghani, “‘Nobody’s Been Held Accountable’ for Wasteful Spending in Afghanistan, Says U.S. Watchdog,” Frontline, October 9, 2015, at www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/nobodys-been-held-accountable-for-wasteful-spending-in-afghanistan-says-u-s-watchdog/.

  77. See Sapna Maheshwari, “10 Times Trump Spread Fake News,” The New York Times, January 18, 2017, at www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/business/media/trump-fake-news.html?_r=0.

  78. See Ruth Marcus, “When All News Is ‘Fake,’ Whom Do We Trust?” The Washington Post, December 12, 2016.

  79. See “From the Editors: The Times and Iraq,” May 26, 2004.

  80. See Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Great Terror,” The New Yorker, March 25, 2002; and Daniel Lazare, “The New Yorker Goes to War,” The Nation, May 15, 2003.

  81. Miller’s coauthor on several of these articles, Michael Gordon, remains in a prominent senior post at the Times. On Miller’s departure, see Katharine Seelye, “Times and Reporter Reach Agreement on Her Departure,” The New York Times, November 9, 2005.

  82. In 2010 Goldberg published an alarming cover story suggesting that Israel was likely to launch a preventive strike on Iran’s nuclear program within a year. See his “The Point of No Return,” The Atlantic (September 2010). The deadline passed, and no attack occurred, but Goldberg recycled the same warning in a 2012 Bloomberg View column, saying, “I’m highly confident that Netanyahu isn’t bluffing.” Goldberg seems to have been taken in by a well-orchestrated Israeli campaign to convince the United States that it was prepared to use force, in order to persuade Washington to impose harsher sanctions on Iran and either reject or toughen up the agreement capping Iran’s nuclear program. See Daniel Sobelman, “Signaling Credibility in IR,” unpublished ms. (2016), which describes the Israeli effort in detail.

  83. See especially Eric Hananoki, “Where Are the Media’s Iraq War Boosters 10 Years Later?” Media Matters for America, March 19, 2013, at www.mediamatters.org/research/2013/03/19/where-are-the-medias-iraq-war-boosters-10-years/193117.

  84. See Bill Keller, “My Unfinished 9/11 Business,” The New York Times Magazine, September 6, 2011; also Stephen M. Walt, “How Not to Learn from Past Mistakes,” Foreign Policy, September 12, 2011, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/09/12/how-not-to-learn-from-past-mistakes/.

  85. See James Carden and Jacob Heilbrunn, “The Washington Post: The Most Reckless Editorial Page in America,” The National Interest, January/February 2015.

  86. “An Unfinished Mission,” The Washington Post, May 4, 2003.

  87. Jackson Diehl, “What the Iraq War Taught Me About Syria,” The Washington Post, March 31, 2013.

  88. Subsequent editorials falsely described Iran as actively seeking a nuclear weapon and falsely attributed Iran’s decision to divert some of its stockpile of enriched uranium to an accusatory speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (the diversion had actually taken place several years before Netanyahu’s speech). See Matt Duss, “Washington Post Editors Get Mixed Up on Iran’s Nuclear Program,” http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/04/09/1838431/washington-post-iran/?mobile=nc.

  89. Marc Thiessen, “A Dark Winter of Ebola Terrorism,” The Washington Post, October 20, 2014; see also Louis Jacobson, “Could Terrorists Use Ebola to Attack the United States?” Politifact, October 23, 2014, at www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/oct/23/could-terrorists-use-ebola-attack-united-states.

  90. On Williams, see Elliot Hannon, “NBC Suspends Brian Williams Without Pay for Six Months,” Slate.com, February 10, 2015, at www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/10/nbc_news_suspends_brian_williams_for_fabricated_stories.html. On O’Reilly, see Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt, “Bill O’Reilly Is Forced Out at Fox News,” The New York Times, April 19, 2017.

  91. After a pioneering career as a White House correspondent, the eighty-nine-year-old Thomas was fired after she was recorded saying, “Jews should get out of Palestine,” and “go home” to Europe. For an eyewitness account, see Paula Cruickshank, “42 Seconds That Sullied Helen Thomas—and New Media,” Real Clear Politics, July 31, 2013. Clancy was fired after a Twitter exchange in which he accused an online critic from the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies of being “part of a campaign to do PR for #Israel … Nothing illegal—but PR not HR: Human Rights.” Nasr was dismissed for a single tweet expressing sympathy after the death of the Hezbollah cleric Sayyed Fadlallah. Despite apologizing for her tweet and clarifying that she sought only to acknowledge Fadlallah’s support for women’s rights and opposition to honor killings, Nasr was promptly terminated.

  92. See Gabriel Sherman, “Chasing Fox,” New York Magazine, October 10, 2010; Elias Isquith, “Phil Donahue’s Vindication,” Salon.com, July 10, 2014.

  93. See Art Swift, “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low,” Gallup Organization, September 14, 2016, at www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx.

  94. Full disclosure: I helped draft the text and recruit signatories for the ad.

  95. Yingling’s original article—which he forthrightly chose not to publish anonymously—was “A Failure in Generalship,” Armed Forces Journal (May 2007). See also Paul Yingling, “Why an Army Colonel Is Retiring Early—To Become a High School Teacher,” The Washington Post, December 2, 2011; and Ricks, The Generals, pp. 441–44.

  96. Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011).

  97. Michael Crowley, “Iran Contrarians,” The New Republic, February 10, 2010; and Daniel B. Drezner, “Your Humble Blogger Was So Wrong,” Foreign Policy, August 30, 2010, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/08/30/your-humble-blogger-was-so-wrong/.

  98. See Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, “Iran’s Presidential Election Will Surprise America’s So-Called ‘Iran Experts,’” Huffington Post, June 6, 2013, at www.huffingtonpost.com/flynt-and-hillary-mann-leverett/iran-presidential-election_b_3431154.html.

  99. For example, the Leveretts were too pessimistic about the Obama administration’s ability to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.

  100. In particula
r, picking fights with political opponents does not seem to have hurt many neoconservatives.

  101. See Kelley Vlahos, “Washington Doesn’t Forgive Whistleblowers,” The American Conservative, July 30, 2014.

  102. Hoh’s story has a happy ending, as he was eventually appointed a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for International Policy. See www.ciponline.org/about-us/experts-staff/matthew_hoh.

  103. After Irving “Scooter” Libby was convicted of lying to the FBI and to a grand jury regarding his role in exposing the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a veritable “who’s who” of influential insiders—including Henry Kissinger, Leonard Garment, Donald Rumsfeld, Eric Edelman, Christopher DeMuth, Leon Wieseltier, Robert Blackwill, and many more—wrote letters to the presiding judge, urging clemency. See Sidney Blumenthal, “The Libby Lobby’s Pardon Campaign,” Salon.com, June 7, 2007. A few years later a similar campaign may have helped David Petraeus secure a plea bargain after admitting that he had given his mistress classified information and lied to the FBI about it. See Andrew V. Pestano, “Report: Government Elite Officials Wrote to Keep Petraeus Out of Prison,” UPI, June 9, 2015, at www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/06/09/Report-Government-elite-officials-wrote-to-keep-Gen-Petraeus-out-of-prison/6141433857287/.

  104. Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014), p. 106. Ironically, Summers has ignored his own advice of late, accusing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin of making “irresponsible” statements about tax reform and at one point tweeting that Mnuchin “may be the greatest sycophant in Cabinet history.” Summers’s “insider status” is probably safe, however, and he may no longer aspire to hold a top job in Washington. If so, then criticizing a fellow “insider” carries fewer negative consequences.

  6: HOW NOT TO FIX U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

  1. See Patrick Porter, “Tradition’s Quiet Victories: Trump’s National Security Strategy,” War on the Rocks, December 22, 2017, at https://warontherocks.com/2017/12/traditions-quiet-victories-trumps-national-security-strategy/; and idem, “Why U.S. Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security 42, no. 4 (Spring 2018).

  2. “Trump’s Inauguration: Full Text of New President’s Speech,” BBC News, January 20, 2017, at www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38697653.

  3. In a presidential debate in 2016, Trump said that the Saudis were “people that push gays off buildings” and “kill women and treat women horribly.” See Adam Taylor, “Trump Once Denounced Saudi Arabia as Extremist; Now He’s Heading There to Promote Moderate Islam,” The Washington Post, May 19, 2017.

  4. Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie, and Nathan McDermott, “80 Times Trump Talked About Putin,” CNN.com, March 2017, at www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-timeline/.

  5. An expression of this view was Trump’s speech in Poland in July 2017, when he warned darkly of the threat from “radical Islamic extremism” and said “the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” See “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland,” July 6, 2017, at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/06/remarks-president-trump-people-poland-july-6-2017.

  6. Trump’s chief political strategist, former Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon, believed that the Judeo-Christian world was in great peril from a multifaceted and growing threat from Islam, whether in the form of increased immigration or violent extremism. See Paul Blumenthal, “Steve Bannon Believes the Apocalypse Is Coming and War Is Inevitable,” Huffington Post, February 8, 2017; Frances Stead Sellers and David A. Fahrenthold, “‘Why let ’em in?’: Understanding Bannon’s Worldview and the Politics That Follow,” The Washington Post, January 21, 2017; Daniel Kreiss, “Trump, Breitbart, and the Rejection of Multicultural Democracy,” Medium.com, January 29, 2017; Steve Reilly and Brad Heath, “Steve Bannon’s Own Words Show Sharp Break on Security Issues,” USA Today, January 31, 2017; and Nahal Toosi, “The World According to Breitbart,” Politico, November 28, 2016.

  7. See the controversial op-ed by National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster and White House Economic Council director Gary Cohn, “America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone,” The Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2017, at www.wsj.com/articles/america-first-doesnt-mean-america-alone-1496187426. Despite its title, the central theme of the essay is the zero-sum nature of international politics and the conditional nature of U.S. support for other countries.

  8. “Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” at www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly/.

  9. Barack Obama had removed Flynn from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for managerial failings, and Flynn joined Trump’s campaign team in 2016.

  10. Anton’s views on Trump’s agenda can be found in his article “America and the Liberal International Order,” American Affairs, March 2017. On Gorka’s questionable qualifications, see Andrew Reynolds, “Stop Calling Him ‘Doctor’: The Academic Fraud of Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s Terrorism ‘Expert,’” Ha’aretz, April 27, 2017; Daniel Nexon, “Sebastian Gorka May Be a Far-Right Nativist, but for Sure He’s a Terrible Scholar,” Foreign Policy, March 17, 2017, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/17/dr-sebastian-gorka-may-be-a-far-right-nativist-but-for-sure-hes-a-terrible-scholar-trump-radical-islam/; and Mitch Prothero, “The Hungarian Rise and Fall of Sebastian Gorka,” Buzzfeed, April 26, 2017, at www.buzzfeed.com/mitchprothero/how-a-trump-adviser-failed-upwards-from-hungary-to-the?utm_term=.yxRY298V5#.svnlZ69jQ. Gorka was not the only example of an early Trump hire with dubious qualifications; see Jeff Stein, “Ezra Cohen-Watnick: Inside the Rise of Trump’s Invisible Man in the White House,” Newsweek, April 13, 2017, at www.newsweek.com/ezra-cohen-watnick-donald-trump-devin-nunes-russia-barack-obama-wiretap-susan-583904.

  11. See Nancy Cook, Josh Dawsey, and Andrew Restuccia, “Why the Trump Administration Has So Many Vacancies,” Politico, April 11, 2017, at www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-white-house-staff-vacancies-237081; and “Trump: No Plans to Fill ‘Unnecessary’ Unfilled Positions,” Fox News, February 28, 2017, at www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/28/trump-no-plans-to-fill-unnecessary-appointed-positions.html.

  12. See Laura Koran, Aaron Kessler, and Joyce Tseng, “Map: Trump Continues to Leave Key State Department Posts Unfilled,” CNN.com, December 8, 2017, at www.cnn.com/2017/12/07/politics/trump-ambassador-vacancies/index.html.

  13. See Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman, and Glenn Thrush, “Trump Removes Stephen Bannon from National Security Council Post,” The New York Times, April 5, 2017; and Robert Costa, Abby Phillip, and Karen DeYoung, “Bannon Removed from Security Council as McMaster Asserts Control,” The Washington Post, April 5, 2017.

  14. Scaramucci resigned after giving an indiscreet and vulgar interview to the reporter Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. See “Ryan Lizza Revisits His Phone Call with Anthony Scaramucci,” The New Yorker Radio Hour, August 3, 2017, at www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/ryan-lizza-revisits-his-phone-call-with-anthony-scaramucci.

  15. NSC staffers Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Rich Higgins, and Derek Harvey were all dismissed during the shake-up. See Rosie Gray, “H. R. McMaster Cleans House at the NSC,” The Atlantic, August 2, 2017, at www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/hr-mcmaster-cleans-house-at-the-national-security-council/535767/.

  16. “Trump Says NATO Not Obsolete, Reversing Campaign Stance,” Reuters, April 12, 2007, at www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-nato-idUSKBN17E2OK.

  17. See Rosie Gray, “Trump Declines to Affirm NATO’s Article 5,” The Atlantic, May 25, 2017, at www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/trump-declines-to-affirm-natos-article-5/528129; Robbie Gramer, “Trump Discovers Article 5 After Disastrous NATO Summit,” Foreign Policy, June 9, 2017, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/trump-discovers-article-5-after-disastrous-nato-visit-brussels-visit-transatlantic-relationship-europe; and Louis Nelson, “Trump
Publicly Commits to NATO Mutual Defense Provision,” Politico, June 9, 2017, at www.politico.com/story/2017/06/06/trump-nato-article-five-239632.

  18. See Peter J. Dombrowski and Simon Reich, “Does Donald Trump Have a Grand Strategy?” International Affairs, 93, no. 5 (2017), pp. 1026–30.

  19. See Thom Shanker, “Defense Secretary Warns NATO of ‘Dim’ Future,” The New York Times, June 10, 2011; “Remarks by President Obama and President Komorowski of Poland in a Joint Press Conference,” June 3, 2014, at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/03/remarks-president-obama-and-president-komorowski-poland-joint-press-conf; and Ayesha Rascoe and Yeganah Torbati, “Burden Sharing Woes to Cloud Obama’s Trip to NATO Summit,” Reuters, July 6, 2016, at www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-summit-obama/burden-sharing-woes-to-cloud-obamas-trip-to-nato-summit-idUSKCN0ZM2KX.

  20. In June 2017 Trump told reporters, “Because of our actions, money was starting to pour into NATO.” In fact, pledges to increase defense spending preceded Trump’s tirade at the NATO summit and were largely a response to perceptions of a growing threat from Russia. See Ryan Browne, “NATO Members to Increase Defense Spending,” June 29, 2017, at www.cnn.com/2017/06/29/politics/nato-members-increase-defense-spending/index.html; and Robbie Gramer, “Thank Putin, Not Trump, for NATO’s New Defense Spending Boost,” Foreign Policy, June 28, 2017, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/28/thank-putin-not-trump-for-natos-new-defense-spending-boost-transatlantic-relations-military-europe/.