No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

Why did the Iraq occupation go so bad?

The war in Iraq simply isn’t worth the cost. The problems are obvious and were mostly predictable. The first is the fact that it is a diversion from the terrorist threat against America, bringing into question why we started it at all when we did. But this has been discussed at length. Now Fred Kaplan of Slate uses Paul Bremer’s recent revelations that he told the administration that we did not have enough troops to do the job to discuss the way it was handled and speculate a little on why it was handled that way.

The week's most stunning development may have been the revelation in L. Paul Bremer's remarks, before a group of insurance agents at DePauw University, that we never had enough troops in Iraq, either to secure the country's borders or to provide the stability needed for reconstruction. "The single most important change, the one thing that would have improved the situation," Bremer said, "would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout."

But Bremer's disclosure slams himself no less than Team Bush. Bremer, after all, was the man who ordered the disbanding of the old Iraqi army. This decision is commonly seen in retrospect as the administration's first—and perhaps most—disastrous move after the fall of Baghdad. If Bremer thought there weren't enough U.S. troops on the ground, why did he call for the demobilization of Iraqi troops (many of whom had not been loyal to Saddam—they didn't, after all, fight for him)? This is one of the war's great remaining mysteries. (Another is why we went to war in the first place, but that's another story.) Bremer almost certainly didn't make this decision himself; it had to come from higher up. But from where? My guess is that, ultimately, Ahmad Chalabi was a big influence. He was still counting on taking the reins of power in the new Iraq (he had the support of the White House and the Pentagon at the time), and he hoped to install his own militia, the Free Iraqi Forces, as the new Iraqi army. The old, Baathist-dominated army would have been in the way; it had to go.

Saddam Hussein was a major problem in the Middle East and the sanctions on Iraq were losing their effectiveness at keeping him from acquiring chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The invasion of Iraq was one option for resolving the problems he caused. The majority of the problems in Iraq today stem not from the invasion itself as from the utter incompetence with which the aftermath of the invasion was handled. The small number of America troops used, the lack of any plan for security after the invasion, and the disbanding of the Army and police forces eliminated security and allowed the insurrectionists the time and space to become organized and learn their trade.

Now the middle classes who were happy to see Saddam go and should have supported the occupation are leaving the country because it is not safe to live and work there. Robberies, kidnappings, murders, all of these things are occurring alongside the more telegenic car bombs, so the nation is being left to the radicals and the criminals. It is the failure to anticipate and deal with these problems that make Iraq the greatest indictment against the Bush administration.

When the history of this sad period is written, Ahmad Chalabi will be seen as a key influence in the most idiotic actions taken by the Bush administration, perhaps as much a disastrous influence as Vice President Dick Cheney.