Slate has devised an interpretation from The Rise of the Vulcans to explain the overconfidence of neocon Paul Wolfowitz on the issue of Iraq. It posits that Wolfie's accuracy in judgment in the early 1980s made him think he was infallible. Particularly, he believed Iraq would quickly become a Jeffersonian democracy awash in oil, it would make peace with Israel, and serve as a beacon to the rest of the Mideast, while American power would be displayed for all to see. This would "drain the swamp" from which terrorists arise. Reality however tells a far different story, as we see each day.
He suggested way back that Iraq may attempt to seize oil fields in the region, which it did in Kuwait. I do not agree completely that Iraq was `preordained' or predisposed to try and grab the region's oil. I also think this could have easily been averted with some simple diplomacy. For many reasons, which I will not get into here it was not. April Glaspie was the infamous ambassador at the time, and she screwed up, as is commonly known. I don't give much credence to Wolfowitz's early analysis and predictions in the early 1980s. I think that the Wolfie's positions back then were not as prescient as the writers mentioned in the Slate piece make them out to be.
From Slate, Timoth Noah:
Origins of Wolfowitz's Overconfidence
A theory about why he was wrong about Iraq.
According to the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz habitually "belittled" the threat posed by al-Qaida prior to Sept. 11. In one much-quoted passage from Clarke's new book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, Wolfowitz complains at a White House meeting, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because [the] FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."
Why did Wolfowitz trust his own judgment over the findings of the FBI and CIA? Why, similarly, did Wolfowitz blandly assume that post-Saddam Iraq would quickly get back on its feet? Slate editor Jacob Weiberg last fall offered a plausible explanation for the overconfidence of the Pentagon hawks (including Wolfowitz):
The assumption that events will conform to a preconceived model is a failing to which neoconservatives are notably vulnerable. Part of this may be Marxist residue that never quite washed off.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2097963/