That Doug Feith, eh? You almost have to admire his chutzpah. Having played such a large part in completely wrecking Iraq, he has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal laying out his new plan for world Utopia.

The big idea is the aggrandizement of the Civilian Response Corps “so the president can mobilize trained civilian volunteers the way he already can mobilize volunteers for the military reserve.” And it just so happens that CRC is in line to receive an additional $323 million, if Congress approves the budget Obama submitted last week.

Oh dear. It merits quoting Feith’s piece at length, to appreciate the lunacy:

The purpose here is to line up civilians with expertise in water systems, police training, road-building, judicial administration, and other relevant fields and prepare them for deployment abroad. When their services are needed, they could partner with our military forces.

Once it’s up and running, the Civilian Response Corps will likely be useful in the fight against terrorism. It will also give our government tools for countering the various problems that arise from territories not under effective sovereign control. These problems include piracy, drug trafficking and attacks against friendly governments.

Historically, when civilians have not been available for such work, it has fallen to U.S. military personnel. In Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, American soldiers and Marines have had to organize municipal governing councils, arrange for basic services (such as electricity), and manage hospitals. These tasks divert the military from its core combat-related missions and could be better done by skilled civilians.

Once it’s up and running, the Civilian Response Corps will likely be useful in the fight against terrorism. It will also give our government tools for countering the various problems that arise from territories not under effective sovereign control. These problems include piracy, drug trafficking and attacks against friendly governments.

While the Civilian Response Corps has received bipartisan support in Congress, legislators have raised some serious questions: Should the Corps be restricted to security-related missions, lest its resources get consumed in humanitarian projects for which there is infinite demand? Who should decide when and how to deploy it? A key, threshold query: Is the State Department’s bureaucracy capable of taking on large-scale operational responsibilities of the kind envisioned by the Civilian Response Corps?

The answer to that last question may be for Congress to direct the Pentagon to lend State a number of planners, especially some with experience in managing the military reserve. This could increase State’s capabilities and help ensure that the Corps’ operational plans are in sync with those of our military commanders.

The administration’s promotion of the Civilian Response Corps is of a piece with the appointment of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal as military commander in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Gates evidently wants to emphasize that U.S. forces in theater should transcend conventional thinking and design operations on the basis of military, political, economic and cultural considerations. All of this reinforces an important lesson of recent years: The president’s national security team is responsible for defining and achieving strategic victory, which is a far broader concept than military victory.

The neocon fantasy never stops giving. This is Bushian Global Democratic Revolution propaganda reconceptualized for the new Democratic dreamscape. Feith is proposing nothing less than a radical increase in civilian participation in aggressive nation-building across the world.

The most alarming bit is the section on out-civilizing the baddies in “territories not under effective sovereign control” — ie pirates on the Somali coastline, drug lords Mexico, anybody Americans don’t like anywhere.

No doubt the Civilian Response Corps can accomplish good things, but one cannot simply send in engineers and social workers to fix the world’s security problems without significant military support. And that’s the point.
This is nation-building with liberal twist: send in civilians to cultivate democracy, help the suffering, but send them with enough armed muscle to make sure locals know they can’t mess with us.

Feith is a dangerous and delusional man. In case anyone wants to take his wild schemes seriously, it’s worth recalling — lest we forget — his appalling record in post-invasion operations. On this matter, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote an informative, insider’s review of Feith’s self-exculpatory book War and Decision in TAC last year. Subscribers can read the whole thing, but here is a taste:

I also knew about incompetence with regard to post-invasion Iraq because I was immersed in it. For instance, after the first and only planning meeting for the post-invasion team–Gen. Jay Garner’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA)–at the NDU, people from both State and Defense who had attended came to me and said they were deeply concerned. Nothing of consequence had occurred except that everyone met. The situation worsened. I received a call from one of State’s ORHA members in Kuwait, waiting to enter Iraq, who reported that there were no plans, no supplies, no leaders, and no instructions. I then learned that our ambassador in Baghdad, Barbara Bodine, was virtually without resources to do her job. All this exquisite planning lay at the feet of the indomitable energizer bunny, Doug Feith.

Filed under: Iraq, Uncategorized, War