Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca, Catherine Whitney

one—especially not ours.
     
    THE COALITION OF THE DWINDLING
     
    Can you call it a coalition when it’s just you and one other guy? Let’s compare Bush senior’s coalition in 1990 with his son’s. The phrase “go it alone” takes on new meaning with Bush junior.
    In March 2003, as we were gearing up for war, the White House published a list of forty-eight nations that were participating in the Coalition of the Willing. Forty-eight seems like a big number, until you look at the list and the troops numbers. Most of them contributed fewer than a hundred soldiers. Now, even that coalition has become the Coalition of the Dwindling. We’re down to twenty-three nations, totaling less than fifteen thousand troops—half of those from Great Britain. And the dwindling continues. Here’s the real picture (as of this writing):

    United States:
140,000 troops
Great Britain:
7,200 troops
All others:
7,000 troops

    You might call that a coalition. I call it an American war.
    If you want an example of what an actual coalition looks like, take a look at the Persian Gulf war. Bush’s daddy had it right:

    United States:
550,000 troops
Saudi Arabia:
118,000 troops
Turkey:
100,000 troops
Great Britain:
43,000 troops
Egypt:
40,000 troops
United Arab Emirates:
40,000 troops
Oman:
25,500 troops
France:
18,000 troops
Other nations:
40,000 troops

    One thing you notice right away—in addition to the sheer numbers—is that the gulf war coalition drew its strength largely from the Arab world. They were our allies. Name one Arab nation that signed on for the current Iraqi war. Instead of bringing the Arab world together, the war has sparked a rise in violence across the region, our intelligence agencies report. The best recruiting tool for the jihadists is the war in Iraq.
     
    DOESN’T ANYBODY HAVE A PLAN?
     
    Bush and company had a fantasy that we could bring democracy to Iraq and it would cause a domino effect in the Middle East. Suddenly every Arab nation would embrace democracy. What were they smoking ?
    Condi Rice said the problems are “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Well, it’s an awfully long time to be in labor.
    Today, they don’t even talk about establishing democracy anymore. Mostly they talk about how we can pull our finger out of the dike without causing a tsunami.
    The war in Iraq has already exceeded World War II in the length of the conflict. Where’s the plan?
    After the 2006 election, Bush fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but you have to wonder if it was in recognition of the mess we were in or just political expediency. How many fired people do you know who are given elaborate ceremonies praising their years of service?
    Before he left office, Rumsfeld leaked the contents of a memo he’d sent the President several weeks earlier, perhaps anticipating the need to shore up his legacy. In the memo he called for a new direction, then gave a laundry list of alternatives. It was too little, too late.
    The long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group, led by Bush senior’s old pal James Baker, left the President with the choice of embracing it and admitting failure, or ignoring it and doing nothing. Can you guess which he chose? This is a President incapable of admitting failure.
    Let’s apply some common sense here. If the head of a car company was losing money like crazy on its latest model, you wouldn’t hear the CEO say, “The solution is to build more cars. We have to support our investment.” Not if he wanted to keep his job. He’d better have a new plan—and I mean now .
    Remember Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule, “You break it, you own it”? Boy, that’s pretty bad news. The way things are going in Iraq these days, we own a pile of crockery. There is no electricity, no infrastructure, no security for citizens, the government is a joke. What there seems to be plenty of is violence. I heard there was an update on the Pottery Barn rule: “ We broke it, you own it.”
    Let’s face