The United States is engaged in an undeclared war (the longest in American history) against an unnamed enemy (terrorism neither identifies whom we are fighting nor the meaning of victory), by means that do not affect most Americans, but will produce great profits for private contractors and great indebtedness for future generations.
This indictment demands demonstration. The war in Iraq is an undeclared war: American entry into World War II was based on the last congressional declaration of war, although the Constitution requires it. It is the longest war: It is now four-and-a-half years, and there is no end in sight. The enemy is unnamed: Al Qaeda was not even in Iraq when America invaded that country in March 2003, and the enemy now consists mostly of unnamed nationalists, insurgents and terrorists, whose ranks are subject to augmentation or diminution at any time, and with none of whom America can sign a treaty ending the war.
It once would have seemed unimaginable that a war of this magnitude, of such great cost to the United States, and involving such great loss of life to combatants and innocent civilians, could be waged without having an impact on the lives of most Americans, but it is clear that apart from the high cost of gasoline (insofar as it is related to the war), the overwhelming majority of Americans are personally untouched, neither knowing anyone in the armed forces nor being asked to make any sacrifice for the cost and conduct of the war.
The real cost now exceeds one trillion dollars. No one can guess how much greater it will be by the time the United States leaves Iran. To whom is that money going? The answer is that never in American history have private corporations profited so greatly or corruptly from the performance of tasks that until now were considered the responsibilities of the armed forces. Most non-combat roles, and the use of armed security forces, have been outsourced to 630 private companies work for the United States in Iraq, employing approximately as many persons as are there in the American military.
Of necessity, some of these are Iraqi firms, employing non-American personnel, because they have knowledge and linguistic skills which the American armed forces do not possess. However, the vast majority of contracts, dollars spent, and personnel employed are American civilian contractors who are subject to virtually no oversight or accountability for how and how much they spend or how much they profit.
The most famous or infamous of American contractors (but far from the largest) is Blackwater U.S.A., which provides security forces for the U.S. State Department, and is not subject to supervision or control by the U.S. Department of Defense. Blackwater, a company that contributes heavily to the Republican Party, was hired (as have other contractors) without competitive bidding. The notoriety of Blackwater derives from documented instances (described by American and Iraqi eyewitnesses) in which Blackwater employees have opened fire and killed unarmed Iraqis without provocation. As of this writing, Blackwater security guards and other personnel have been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005. In at least two cases, Blackwater, with the approval of it employer, the State Department, made cash payments to family members of its victims who complained, and it has sought to cover up other cases.
Last year on Christmas eve, a Blackwater employee, while drunk, killed a bodyguard for one of Iraq’s two vice presidents. Blackwater, with the help of the State Department, spirited the assailant out of Iraq within 36 hours. More than nine months have passed, and no charges have yet been brought against the assailant. Many other charges against these guards have been made by Iraqi and American military officers. Until now, they have been immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts and protected by agencies of the American government from effective prosecution in the United States.
Given the cost in human lives, it might be callous to consider the economic cost, but for the fact that the war has been a source of great wealth for those to whom the United States has outsourced much of the cost. A single example, typical of arrangements with other companies, will indicate how wasteful it has been for the United States and how very profitable it has been for the companies and individuals who have received these contracts.
Blackwater pays an individual security guard $600 a day (that comes to $180,000 a year), which is four or five times the income the security guard received when he was a member of the American military. (He also benefits from having armored cars that are safer than Army vehicles.) To the security guard’s salary, Blackwater adds a 36% markup (for a total of $815 a day) plus overhead and costs in Iraq, including insurance, room and board, travel, weapons, ammunition, vehicles, office space, and equipment. This bill goes to Regency Hotel, a Kuwaiti company, that tacks on the cost of its buying vehicles and weapons, plus a profit for itself, and sends an invoice to ESS, a German food services company that cooks meals for the troops. Regency has billed ESS a price of $1500 per man per day, but it has told Blackwater it was charging $1200, giving it a substantial secret profit. ESS adds on its costs and profit, and sends its bill to Halliburton, which also adds overhead and profit, and presents its bill to the Pentagon. The United States has no contract with ESS, which will not provide any information to the government or the relevant congressional committees.
Halliburton’s contract is an open-ended “cost-plus” contract to supply the U.S. armed forces with food, laundry, and other necessities. Cost-plus means the United States pays Halliburton all of its expenses (that is everything it spends and everything it pays to its subcontractors) plus 2% profit on top. The more it spends, the greater the profit it makes. Henry Bunting, a former Halliburton purchasing officer, has stated, “There is no incentive for KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary) or their subs to try to reduce costs. No matter what it costs, KRB gets one hundred percent back, plus overhead, plus their profit.” Up to this point, the Army has committed $7.2 billion on a single contract with Halliburton. The Defense Contract Audit Agency recently stated that Halliburton could not document 42% of a $4 billion invoice in March 2007. Among other charges, it stated that Halliburton billed the government for up to three times as many meals as it served.
Halliburton has failed to respond to repeated requests for detailed information regarding its costs and profits.
Employers and former employers are discouraged from becoming whistleblowers. Blackwater does as other American contractors in Iraq do. It makes individual contractors sign confidentiality agreements that compel them to pay Blackwater $250,000 in instant damages if they violate their contract by publicly discussing the details of their agreements or work.
What then is the real cost of a security guard? A sergeant (the former rank of many private security guards) would receive around $38,000 a year in base pay and housing and subsistence allowances. This does not reflect additional costs for health and retirement benefits. When a private security guard is killed, even though he may be an American citizen, the U.S. government is not responsible for his burial, death benefits, or payment to his survivors. We save money, but it is doubtful if, even in the long run, it constitutes a saving for the United States.
The advantage to outsourcing personnel is entirely political. The United States can pretend that it is conducting war with fewer soldiers, not needing to call up more regular troops, National Guard and reserves. Of course, General Shinseki and other military leaders were correct, before and after we invaded Iraq, when they insisted that the U.S. needed at least twice as many uniformed soldiers than we had sent to Iraq.
We have euphemisms to describe them, but there can be no mistake that the individuals who take high-risk, high-paying jobs are mercenaries, and their employers, who are not held unaccountable for their greed, crimes and cover-ups, are war profiteers. Any veneer of idealism or unselfish motive has been stripped away. We should answer a single question regarding how America conducts war: Are we willing to continue to outsource both the supplying of necessary resources and the actual waging of war by armed persons not wearing military uniforms, or should we create a military force fully capable of defending itself? The name of the alternative to what we are now doing strikes panic in the hearts of those who want to continue to prosecute this war, those who want to start a new war against Iran, those who want America to be prepared for a future war, and most voters contemplating the next election. That name is: conscription.
Showing posts with label Iraq war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq war. Show all posts
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
WHAT ARE AMERICAN SOLDIERS DOING IN IRAQ?
Seven American soldiers serving in Iraq wrote the following op-ed piece that appeared in The New York Times on August 19, 2007. I recently reread it and urge everyone to do so. Only one salient fact has changed since they wrote it.
The War As We Saw It by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
They will not all “see this mission through.” Even before the article was published, Staff Sergeant Jeremy A. Murphy was shot in the head on August 12, and suffered a severe brain trauma. He is expected to survive. On September 10, Sergeant Omar Mora and Staff Sergeant Yance T. Gray and five other Americans were killed when the five-ton truck in which they were riding overturned. What are American soldiers doing in Iraq? Dying.
The War As We Saw It by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
They will not all “see this mission through.” Even before the article was published, Staff Sergeant Jeremy A. Murphy was shot in the head on August 12, and suffered a severe brain trauma. He is expected to survive. On September 10, Sergeant Omar Mora and Staff Sergeant Yance T. Gray and five other Americans were killed when the five-ton truck in which they were riding overturned. What are American soldiers doing in Iraq? Dying.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
DOES THE PRESIDENT OR THE GENERAL DECIDE HOW OR WHETHER TO PROSECUTE WAR?
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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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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