Perle of non-Wisdom

Alec Rawls at Error Theory posts on some comments made by Richard Perle on the O'Reilly factor and reproted on Newsmax. The essence of these odd comments is that the U.S. should have turned Iraq over to an Iraqi government in exile right after we beat Saddam and that our failure to do (1) is the leading cause of the current insurrgency and (2) is Colin Powell's fault.

Perle's remarks places significant distance between postwar policies and neo-conservatives like himself who have backed the war and have been championed in the Bush administration by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and Vice President Cheney.

Perle told O'Reilly the idea of a military occupation was not the Pentagon's original plan.

Alec:

Perle's claim is that if we had not stayed on as occupiers, the insurgency would never have taken place! How is that different from blaming 9/11 on America? ...If we had left, Iraq would simply have been overrun. This idiot has been an architect of U.S. policy? Brrrrrr.

Perle's intent is to exculpate Rumsfeld and the Pentagon (and himself) for the condition of Iraq, while blaming Powell and State.(Why would any sane person want to escape "blame" for one of the great successes and good deeds of all time?) I am certainly sympathetic to blaming State for bad things and crediting Defense with good, but in this case the "bad" thing isn't bad, and if Perle is to believed, it looks like we owe Powell and State some credit for keeping us fully committed in Iraq.

Sounds right to me. It hard to fathom Perle being silly enough to spout this nonsense in public. Let's give him the newly minted EagleSpeak "Dodo" award.