A Revolt against Broken Forms of Government

A Revolt against Broken Forms of Government:

Most of what has been written about this week's Iraq Study Group report has concentrated on Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton's big policy critique of America's historic humiliation. And quite right too. It was a shatteringly critical verdict and it left George Bush looking more than ever out of his depth at his White House press conference on Thursday.

Less attention has been focused on an important subtext of the report. Consider this example: 'The US military has a long tradition of strong partnership between the civilian leadership of the department of defence and the uniformed services. Both have long benefited from a relationship in which the civilian leadership exercises control with the advantage of fully candid professional advice, and the military serves loyally with the understanding that its advice has been heard and valued. That tradition has frayed, and civil-military relations need to be repaired.'

Or take - and reflect on the full implication of - this one-sentence observation a little further on: 'Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimises its discrepancy with policy goals.' Or this: 'A lack of coordination by senior management in Washington still hampers US contributions to Iraq's reconstruction.'

The ISG report is a repudiation of the Bush administration's foreign policy. But it also repudiates the way the Bush administration works internally. Nowhere is this more resonant than in what it says about the Pentagon. For it was the Pentagon that ran the administration's Iraq policy, and the senior civilian officials - Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith - who did things their own way and marginalised any service chiefs who disagreed with them.