Re: Juan Cole on Rumsfeld’s memo
On Dec 4, 2006, at 3:19 PM, Steven L. Robinson wrote:
Elite opposition? You wouldn’t have known it from reading the
voices of elite opinion, especially the New York Times - among
others. The increasing ferocity of attacks on the Iraq state (esp.
Clinton’s Desert Fox operation) would have signalled to any
percipient observer that the days of the Baathist regime were
numbered and that the US would take steps to bring it about -
especially since it was clear that Saddam would not go voluntarily
and that he was not about to be overthrown from internal forces.
While elite leaders may have differed over the implementation and
the timing of the invasion, it is fairly safe to assume that there
was elite consensus and not dissension over the invasion.
Um, did you read what I said? Patrick Cockburn (who had a fellowship
in DC in the months before the war) writes in his new book, The
Occupation, that privately there was a lot of elite opposition, but
it wasn’t expressed in public. Which means that you wouldn’t have
read about it in the NYT in late2002/early 2003. That’s the whole
point of the story.
Doug