Grading on a Curve for the Wrong Test
15 July 2007 12:01 am by Taylor Marsh
Grading on a Curve for the Wrong Test
Expert guest post by Winslow T. Wheeler, Director Straus Military
Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
 |
President George W. Bush’s report to Congress on Iraq, the White House’s “Initial
Benchmark Assessment Report,” presents a series of assessments of Iraq’s
performance on 18 benchmarks that have been jointly imposed by Congress and
the President. Reading the report makes two things painfully obvious: 1) President
Bush is grading Iraq on a curve; and 2) he and Congress are administering the
wrong test.
While the Iraqis are assessed in the White House’s report to have achieved
“satisfactory progress” on only eight of 18 “benchmarks”
(six are rated “unsatisfactory”; two are given mixed ratings, and
two are rated unable to be rated), it is painfully clear from reading the report
that the “satisfactory” assessments are graded on a sharp curve. On
political issues, any change – even a decision to delay a decision – is deemed
“satisfactory.” On military questions, characteristics that would
mean a military unit is unfit to fight in the American Army (such as the three
brigades the Iraqis barely managed to cobble together to deploy to Baghdad)
are deemed “satisfactory” in this report.
However, we are missing a far more fundamental and important point if all
we take from this White House report is its transparent effort to make the situation
in Iraq appear slightly less of a mess than others might perceive.
What comes through even more clearly is the imposition of alien benchmarks
on the Iraqi society and its faltering government. These benchmarks are not
an effort to assist Iraq recover from the disaster of the American invasion
and occupation, they are an effort to impose Western, if not American, values
and methods on a society that has been resisting them, mostly violently, for
the last four years. Perhaps even more to the point, the benchmarks have every
appearance of an effort to make American politicians, not Iraqi citizens, feel
better about themselves. An oil law to assist non-Iraqi oil companies extract
resources, Western notions of constitutional law and minority rights, federalism
– if not regionalism leading to virtual partition – and ending forthwith centuries
old divisions in the society are just some of the end states the benchmarks
seek to effect.
Moreover, the politicians in the White House and Congress pushing the benchmarks
are probably thankful these tests are not being imposed on them, if the thought
of oversight of themselves were ever to occur to them. For example –
Benchmark X seeks to permit Iraqi military commanders “to make tactical
and operational decisions … without political intervention …” That
would have been an excellent suggestion for former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and several others during the run up to the initial American invasion
and for the political wrangling going on this very week in Congress from both
sides of the political aisle.The discussion in the White House report on benchmark XI (“Ensuring
that Iraqi Security Forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law”)
complains that, “There have been inadequate efforts to detain some senior
… officials believed responsible for human rights abuses….” The hypocrisy
of this “benchmark” pains the core of every decent American’s soul.Benchmark VI calls on Iraqis to enact amnesty legislation, something that
was a long time in coming after the American Civil War and that today’s anti-immigration
activists scream against from the rooftops; it bespeaks a frame of mind that
many Republicans and Democrats in Congress never fail to reject as they pretend
to lament the absence of bipartisanship.
Are the benchmarks an honest and soundly based effort to assist Iraqi society
and government? Or, are they an excuse-in-waiting for American politicians to
exploit when they try to explain away the failure of a half decade of misbegotten
policy, more than half a trillion dollars, and 3,600-plus American military
lives.
Bush’s new “Initial Benchmark Assessment Report” is an interesting
document, but it should be read
to understand American political maneuvering with respect to the war, rather
than a measure of “progress” in Iraq.
