A hawk questions himself as his son goes to war

Sometimes it takes the imminent possibility of personal disadvantage for pro-war people to pause to consider war's realties. Regrettably, it rarely seems to take the form of conspicuous compassion for the victims, but as with the previous post, I suppose one must be thankful for even tiny mercies.

"Eliot Cohen is a neoconservative, and a member of the Project for a New American Century; he's the author of Supreme Command; and he has a son going to Iraq as an infantry officer." -- Metafilter

"I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat 'Phase IV' -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the 'real' war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.

"I did not know, but I might have guessed."

Eliot Cohen is Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
Washington Post