Where Was Cheney's Plan B?

In his Jan. 14 PBS Newshour interview, Vice President Cheney said that he "underestimated...the extent of which the Iraqi population had been beaten down by Saddam Hussein," adding that "we thought that the Iraqis would be able to bounce back fairly quickly once Saddam was gone or the new government established and step up and take major responsibilities for governing Iraq." When asked for the source of that miscalculation, he said "Well, we didn't have that good of intelligence, I don't think, with respect to sort of the state of affairs inside Iraq. A lot of that had been wiped out over the years. Saddam Hussein was so brutal, killed so many people, slaughtered so many innocents, that it had a lasting effect on Iraqi society that was greater than I expected."

This seems to me to be revisionism at its finest. My understanding it that there were plenty of people at the State Department who warned that Iraqis should not be expected to be able to take over major government functions, that there was likely to be a power vacuum, that more troops would be needed to supply security and the delivery of basic services, and that it would take time for Iraqis to develop the capacity for self-governance. I don't think the problem was an absence of good intelligence; the problem was that the administration had decided it was only going to listen to those who already agreed with what they thought was going to be the case and rejected the opinions of those who disagreed with them.

But even if the intelligence was bad regarding the Iraqi's ability to establish a new government, is that any excuse for the failure of American planning? Only fools make major plans based only on a best-case scenario. Even the most minor businesses have contingency plans and backups in case things go wrong. Where was this administration's backup plan? Why assume that in a project as complicated as reconstituting an entire national government would go exactly as those in charge of the operation would hope? If there was any doubt as to the nature of the operation, wouldn't it be incredibly stupid not to plan for other scenarios, even worst-case scenarios? In a project this complicated, wouldn't common sense dictate going in with the resources to deal with the most adverse set of circumstances instead of the minimal resources needed to deal with an ideal situation?

But such has always been the case with this administration. There is no Plan B except to make Plan A work. They believed that the way to eliminate the national debt is to cut taxes and "grow the economy." And if it doesn't work? Forget the idea of paying down our debt and then cutting taxes when it might be safer to do so. Plan A will work, and the possibility that it might leave us worse off isn't enough to have a contingency plan.

I can only speculate as to why this administration never has a backup plan. Perhaps it's because making sure things will work would actually make demands on government resources that they don't want to face. Going into Iraq with enough troops would prove too costly and conflicted with their tax cut mantra--never mind that doing it wrong would cost us far more in the long run. Paying off the debt before trying out their tax cuts wasn't as politically popular as cutting taxes now--never mind that running up more debt would leave us in a far more vulnerable position if the economy turned sour.

This administration hasn't just been irresponsible. It has been reckless. And those that run it have refused to take responsibility.

On another note, Cheney also said in the interview that "I think the tax packages we passed in '03, for example, produced 52 months - uninterrupted months of job growth.

"We've run into trouble recently, obviously, beginning in '08 because of the financial crisis, as well as the recession, but those are not U.S. problems alone. Those are global problems, those are problems that have affected nations and economies all over the world; that's not something that is just a U.S. problem."

First, it's hard to link economic growth to the tax cuts as effect and cause. Clinton raised taxes coming out of a recession, and we had more economic growth than this administration got with its tax cuts. Second, Cheney conveniently omits, or just doesn't realize, that those 52 months of job growth did nothing for most Americans. The job growth was by all accounts anemic for an economy coming out of a recession. And those years of "growth" did not move median salaries. The only ones who benefited were those at the top.

And yes, the economic problems today are global; but many economists trace their sources to the US. Foreign banks bought the securities based on mortgages in the US that never should have been sold and which assumed that US housing prices would never go down. So Cheney refuses to acknowledge that a fair share of the global economic crisis was inextricably linked to what was going on in the US.

But at least those packaging securities based on the false assumption that US housing prices would never go down show that this administration wasn't the only entity that lacked a Plan B.