Competence?

Avedon Carol posts a comment by one of her readers:

Look, Green Zone civilian employees weren’t only required to be ideologues. They had to be incompetent too. It wasn’t an accidental byproduct.

In a war largely created to be a conduit between the US Treasury and whatever GOP palm-greasers wanted to belly up to the trough, can you imagine how much havoc a real CPA would have created, someone who was used to doing things by the GAAP? Or an experienced grown-up engineer who’d managed a few projects in his day and truly wanted, and knew how, to get the water supply up and working, on time and under budget? The ass/elbow incognition of these hires was mission-critical.

Part of me agrees with this. Part of me doesn’t. My problem with this is that, in my experience, those who are incompetent don’t view themselves as such, and are also unlikely to recognize the difference between competence and incompetence. Besides, as the succession of Bush economic advisers has shown, one can always find competent people who are willing to keep their eyes closed.