It is difficult to imagine a precedent for the buildup to and presentation of what President Bush called “the Petraeus report” (there has been no formal report, simply the general’s testimony) before House and Senate committees on the status of America’s war in Iraq. General Petraeus has been in charge of American forces in Iraq one half-year into the so-called “surge,” in which 30,000 additional troops had been added to the 130,000 already engaged in Iraq. President Bush’s prime-time address after the general’s two days of testimony invoked the general so often, one might have concluded that he was referring to the delivery of a new sacred text.
In fact, there was nothing new or unanticipated in the general’s testimony. That could not come as a surprise. A commanding general on active service does not rebut or qualify his president’s optimistic prognosis. If he did, he would be removed, as President Lincoln removed General George McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac, because of his failure to engage the Confederate Army and win the Civil War.
Similarly, when a general takes actions that contradict the president’s behavior, he will be removed. President Harry S Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command for insubordination when he issued an unauthorized statement threatening to expand the Korean war into China if it resisted, while the president was preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations. MacArthur’s independence led to the loss of many American lives. (These events are retold in David Halberstam’s posthumous The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, excerpted in “MacArthur’s Grand Illusion,” in the October 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.) General Omar Bradley expressed the prevalent military as well as political sentiment when he said that General MacArthur’s action “would have involved us in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong enemy.”
Disagreement is not the only inappropriate behavior for a general. It is also undesirable for a general to allow himself to become (albeit at the president’s instigation) a spokesperson for what is, after all, the president’s partisan politics. No longer simply a general, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell remained for the American public the general above politics and the Bush Administration’s most credible spokesperson when he was prevailed upon to address the United Nations to justify what would subsequently be America’s unilateral invasion of Iraq. Virtually no assertions of “facts” were true in Powell’s presentation of the doubtful and untruthful “evidence” supporting Iraq’s close alliance with Al Qaeda, possession of weapons of mass destruction, and intention to employ those weapons against the United States. Nevertheless, the authority of General Powell’s endorsement seemed credible to a public that would have been skeptical if these claims had come from another spokesperson.
That was the position that General Petraeus put himself into when just weeks before the 2004 presidential election, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by him. Ever the optimist, General Petraeus saw “tangible progress” in Iraqi security forces, enabling “Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” Petraeus detailed military victories and the increased capacity of the police forces. Regrettably, General Petraeus has not enjoyed the military success that the president and he have both implied that he has had. Sectarian warfare has escalated in areas under his command. His efforts at reaching political agreements have failed, as have the efforts of others. The loss of billions of dollars of Iraqi weapons have led to a major criminal investigation of Army mismanagement. Despite the general’s praise, recent reports recommend that the police should be disbanded because of their dismal failure to improve security.
Three years later, in his long-anticipated evaluation of the “surge,” the general once again has said that some progress had been made on the ground, adding that there were fewer fatalities in some areas in recent months [but didn’t count Sunnis killing Sunnis, Shias killing Shias, or assassination by being shot in the front of the head as distinct from the rear], and that some tribal groups that once used their weapons to kill Americans had entered into agreement with the Americans to use their new American-supplied weapons to kill insurgents. In passing, the president and general have acknowledged that no progress had been made to create a unified government in the devastated country. Most revealing of the limits of military judgment was the answer General Petraeus couldn’t give when asked whether America is safer. He confessed that he has not entertained that question.
It is appropriate that a general should echo the military judgment of the president, if he agrees with it. What is deliberately deceitful is the president’s pretense that he will be guided by the conclusions of his generals, as Bush stated one month before the general came home: “Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C.” He couldn’t wait for General Petraeus’s testimony and flew to a secret desert air base 120 miles from Baghdad to declare that the surge is working. Of course, he already knew the general’s conclusion, because when Bush disagrees with a general, the general is removed or retired.
What did generals think of the invasion? General Eric Shinseki, then Army Chief of Staff, asked by a Senate committee to estimate the number of ground troops necessary to support the invasion of Iraq, replied “several hundred thousand.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowiz immediately declared that was ‘’wildly off the mark.” Shinseki soon retired. Commander-in-Chief United States Central Command General John Abizaid has since said that Shinseki’s estimate was correct. General Bernard Trainor has described a willfully self-deluding planning process. General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, has said that the American invasion of Iraq might be the worse strategic mistake in American history.
What did generals think of America’s conduct in Iraq? General Antonio Taguba, charged with reporting on the documented horrors and humiliations suffered by prisoners at Abu Ghraib (which provided the terrorists with their most persuasive recruitment tool) concluded that the crimes deserved severe punishment. Instead, the Department of Defense punished only the lowest-ranking soldiers and General Taguba was exiled to a Pentagon desk job and early retirement. CENTCOM General Anthony Zinni, later Bush’s special envoy to the Middle East, has stated: “In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.” Our mistakes, Zinni argues, include denying priority to the war on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, disbanding the Iraqi army, and deBaathifying the police. The result of our ill-advised unilateral aggressive intervention, General Zinni concluded, is that “we are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.”
Did the generals think that the “surge” was desirable? When General Abizaid was pressed this past November by Senator John McCain on the need for an increased U.S. military presence, he replied: “Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General [George] Casey, the core commander, General [Martin[ Dempsey [head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq}, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”
What did generals think of the civilian strategists of the war? General Paul Eaton, who helped revive the Iraqi army, described Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically.” General John Batiste, commander of an infantry division in Iraq, turned down a promotion and a tour in Iraq as the second-ranking military officer, and chose to retire rather than continue to work for Rumsfeld. In 2006, according to a Military Times poll, almost 60 percent of the members of the United States Armed Forces do not believe that the civilians in the Pentagon had their “best interests at heart.”
Each month of the surge so far has cost $10 billion and the lives of one hundred American troops. Senator McCain warns that withdrawal would increase “the potential for genocide, wider war, spiraling oil prices and the perception of strategic American defeat.” Those grim consequences may occur. But it is the responsibility of President Bush, not of his generals, to clearly spell out when and under what circumstances the risk of these dire consequences of American withdrawal would be reduced. Absent President Bush’s clear analysis and projection of America’s future prospects in Iraq, his unstated cynical answer is that this is his legacy to a future Administration.
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Saturday, September 15, 2007
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