Weigel goes on and on and raises points like this that make one wonder how he keeps arguing for the “justness” of the Iraq war;  this recognition of the “primary failure [comprehensive blueprint]”  would seem to disqualify the initial “go-ahead” for the operation in March 2003.  Many many voices were warning against this for this very reason.  Colin Powell was one,  but he , like Tenet,  was FAR too silent.  He repeatedly told Bush “If you break it [Iraq], you OWN it”,  and was eventually pushed out. 

The primary failure of American policy-planning is summarized neatly by the New York Times’ Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor in a fine book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq: “What was missing was a comprehensive blueprint to administer and restore Iraq after Saddam was deposed, and identification of the U.S. organizations that would be installed in Baghdad to carry it out.” That lack of a strategic blueprint for post-Saddam Iraq reflected, even as it led to, other errors.

But Weigel doesn’t dare see how this failure might just be grounds for rejecting the “ill-planned” course.  The administration willfully and (for me,  stubbornly and selfishly and so , ultimately,  a combination that unleashes enormous evil)  embarked and pushed and lied and covered up to get what they had decided would be their course. 

Weigel:

American analysts and policymakers also miscalculated badly in imagining the degree of damage done to the fabric of Iraqi civil society by more than twenty-five years of Baathist totalitarianism.

Apparently Weigel dismisses all of the testimony of people who knew the forces opposing the administration’s plans,  which would turn his above analysis into :

American analysts and policymakers (who happened to be the ones that Bush and Co. decided would be the “representative voice” of those analysts and policymakers)  also miscalculated badly. 

A great many didn’t miss this at all, Mr. Weigel. 

More from Weigel:

The third error to which bad planning led us was the lack of adequate resources allocated for post-Saddam reconstruction in Iraq.

Or perhaps was that funneling massive amounts of money IN CASH to favored “recipients” /Contractors which has mysteriously fallen into some use OTHER than reconstruction.  Simply more of the , at best,  massive ineptitude of this administrati on to handle ANYTHING,  and at worst,  the money got to WHO and WHERE they really wanted,  and it WAS NOT, in fact,  for reconstruction,  but for “favored people” in “favored places”.  Disgusting.   

Wiegel sounds so pathetically similar to the likes of William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Georgie boy in his analysis of “what went wrong”

Weigel’s point for the whole article?  Cavanaugh sums it up like this: 

Weigel argued that Catholics should defer to the president’s judgment on whether or not this war, or any war, met the just war criteria.

Utterly amazing,  and truly disheartening coming from someone (Wiegel) associated with the church in America (or any country for that matter).

Cavanaugh:

Weigel’s argument on this point was two-fold: 1) the president has access to privileged information, and 2) the president, by virtue of his office, exercises a “charism of political discernment” not shared by leaders of the church. The Commonweal editorial wonders whether all the mistakes that Weigel points to in his recent article undermine his claim of the special charism enjoyed by the president. Commonweal remarks that, in retrospect, the Catholic bishops’ charism in matters of war and peace looks pretty darn good compared to that of the president.

On point one:  Yeah,  much of which he conveniently “didn’t share with us”;  that which didn’t buttress their arguments.

Cavanaugh apparently has the same feeling:

Weigel’s argument here is self-defeating. In the case of the Iraq war, the more he insists on point number one, then the more point two is proven false. If the president did indeed have access to privileged information, then he either misinterpreted that information or deliberately lied about it to make a case for the war. This conclusion seems inescapable, given what we now know about how pre-war intelligence was handled.

As to what this “charism of political discernment” is in Weigel’s mind,  it also sounds blasphemously suspect,  as in implying that “political discernment” is rightly aligned with “universal values and good”  as opposed to that of discernment by Christ’s body.

Cavanaugh:

Why a Christian should assume that the president of a secular nation-state would be so formed – much less enjoy a certain “charism” of moral judgment – is a mystery to me. “Charism” is a theological term denoting a gift of the Holy Spirit. To apply such a term to whomever the electoral process of a secular nation-state happens to cough up does not strike me as theologically sound or practically wise.

To be “so formed”.  This formation is appallingly absent as operating assumptions of the church in America. 

Source: FIRST THINGS: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life