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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running? [Everything that could happen is happening already, says retired Gen. William E. Odom.] By William E. Odom Source: Nieman Watchdog Everything that opponents of a pullout say would happen if the U.S. left Iraq is happening already, says retired Gen. William E. Odom, the head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. So why stay? If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better. Here are some of the arguments against pulling out: 1) We would leave behind a civil war. 2) We would lose credibility on the world stage. 3) It would embolden the insurgency and cripple the move toward democracy. 4) Iraq would become a haven for terrorists. 5) Iranian influence in Iraq would increase. 6) Unrest might spread in the region and/or draw in Iraq's neighbors. 7) Shiite-Sunni clashes would worsen. 8) We haven’t fully trained the Iraqi military and police forces yet. 9) Talk of deadlines would undercut the morale of our troops. But consider this: 1) On civil war. Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can’t prevent a civil war by staying. For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, re-establishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits itsstrategic error, no such coalition can be formed. Thus those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse while preventing a new strategic approach with some promise of success. 2) On credibility. If we were Russia or some other insecure nation, we might have to worry about credibility. A hyperpower need not worry about credibility. That’s one of the great advantages of being a hyperpower: When we have made a big strategic mistake, we can reverse it. And it may even enhance our credibility. Staying there damages our credibility more than leaving. Ask the president if he really worries about US credibility. Or, what will happen to our credibility if the course he is pursuing proves to be a major strategic disaster? Would it not be better for our long-term credibility to withdraw earlier than later in this event? 3) On the insurgency and democracy. There is no question the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once we leave. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American, because the Iraqi people are increasingly becoming anti-American. Also, the U.S. will not leave behind a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq no matter how long it stays. Holding elections is easy. It is impossible to make it a constitutional democracy in a hurry. President Bush’s statements about progress in Iraq are increasingly resembling LBJ's statements during the Vietnam War. For instance, Johnson’s comments about the 1968 election are very similar to what Bush said in February 2005 after the election of a provisional parliament. Ask the president: Why should we expect a different outcome in Iraq than in Vietnam? Ask the president if he intends to leave a pro-American liberal regime in place. Because that’s just impossible. Postwar Germany and Japan are not models for Iraq. Each had mature (at least a full generation old) constitutional orders by the end of the 19th century. They both endured as constitutional orders until the 1930s. Thus General Clay and General MacArthur were merely reversing a decade and a half totalitarianism -- returning to nearly a century of liberal political change in Japan and a much longer period in Germany. Imposing a liberal constitutional order in Iraq would be to accomplish something that has never been done before. Of all the world's political cultures, an Arab-Muslim one may be the most resistant to such a change of any in the world. Even the Muslim society in Turkey (an anti-Arab society) stands out for being the only example of a constitutional order in an Islamic society, and even it backslides occasionally. 4) On terrorists. Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. In fact, the CIA has pointed out to the administration and congress that Iraq is spawning so many terrorists that they are returning home to many other countries to further practice their skills there. The quicker a new dictator wins the political power in Iraq and imposes order, the sooner the country will stop producing well-experienced terrorists. Why not ask: "Mr. President, since you and the vice president insisted that Saddam's Iraq supported al Qaeda -- which we now know it did not -- isn't your policy in Iraq today strengthening al Qaeda's position in that country?" 5) On Iranian influence. Iranian leaders see US policy in Iraq as being so much in Teheran's interests that they have been advising Iraqi Shiite leaders to do exactly what the Americans ask them to do. Elections will allow the Shiites to take power legally. Once in charge, they can settle scores with the Baathists and Sunnis. If US policy in Iraq begins to undercut Iran's interests, then Teheran can use its growing influence among Iraqi Shiites to stir up trouble, possibly committing Shiite militias to an insurgency against US forces there. The US invasion has vastly increased Iran's influence in Iraq, not sealed it out. Questions for the administration: "Why do the Iranians support our presence in Iraq today? Why do they tell the Shiite leaders to avoid a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shiites? Given all the money and weapons they provide Shiite groups, why are they not stirring up more trouble for the US? Will Iranian policy change once a Shiite majority has the reins of government? Would it not be better to pull out now rather than to continue our present course of weakening the Sunnis and Baathists, opening the way for a Shiite dictatorship?" 6) On Iraq’s neighbors. The civil war we leave behind may well draw in Syria, Turkey and Iran. But already today each of those states is deeply involved in support for or opposition to factions in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. The very act of invading Iraq almost insured that violence would involve the larger region. And so it has and will continue, with, or without, US forces in Iraq. 7) On Shiite-Sunni conflict. The US presence is not preventing Shiite-Sunni conflict; it merely delays it. Iran is preventing it today, and it will probably encourage it once the Shiites dominate the new government, an outcome US policy virtually ensures. 8) On training the Iraq military and police. The insurgents are fighting very effectively without US or European military advisors to train them. Why don't the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime's service do their duty as well? Because they are uncertain about committing their lives to this regime. They are being asked to take a political stand, just as the insurgents are. Political consolidation, not military-technical consolidation, is the issue. The issue is not military training; it is institutional loyalty. We trained the Vietnamese military effectively. Its generals took power and proved to be lousy politicians and poor fighters in the final showdown. In many battles over a decade or more, South Vietnamese military units fought very well, defeating VC and NVA units. But South Vietnam's political leaders lost the war. Even if we were able to successfully train an Iraqi military and police force, the likely result, after all that, would be another military dictatorship. Experience around the world teaches us that military dictatorships arise when the military’s institutional modernization gets ahead of political consolidation. 9) On not supporting our troops by debating an early pullout. Many US officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. And according to the New York Times last week, they are beginning to voice complaints about Americans at home bearing none of the pains of the war. One can only guess about the enlisted ranks, but those or a second tour – probably the majority today – are probably anxious for an early pullout. It is also noteworthy that US generals in Iraq are not bubbling over with optimistic reports they way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not, and should not, express publicly. The more important question is whether or not the repressive and vindictive behavior by the secretary of defense and his deputy against the senior military -- especially the Army leadership, which is the critical component in the war -- has made it impossible for field commanders to make the political leaders see the facts. Most surprising to me is that no American political leader today has tried to unmask the absurdity of the administration's case that to question the strategic wisdom of the war is unpatriotic and a failure to support our troops. Most officers and probably most troops don't see it that way. They are angry at the deficiencies in materiel support they get from the Department of Defense, and especially about the irresponsibly long deployments they must now endure because Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have refused to enlarge the ground forces to provide shorter tours. In the meantime, they know that the defense budget shovels money out the door to maritime forces, SDI, etc., while refusing to increase dramatically the size of the Army. As I wrote several years ago, "the Pentagon's post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants." The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly "supported the troops." The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense. Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; Ã2; So why is almost nobody advocating a pullout? I can only speculate. We face a strange situation today where few if any voices among Democrats in Congress will mention early withdrawal from Iraq, and even the one or two who do will not make a comprehensive case for withdrawal now.Why are the Democrats failing the public on this issue today? The biggest reason is because they weren’t willing to raise that issue during the campaign. Howard Dean alone took a clear and consistent stand on Iraq, and the rest of the Democratic party trashed him for it. Most of those in Congress voted for the war and let that vote shackle them later on. Now they are scared to death that the White House will smear them with lack of patriotism if they suggest pulling out. Journalists can ask all the questions they like but none will prompt a more serious debate as long as no political leaders create the context and force the issues into the open. I don't believe anyone will be able to sustain a strong case in the short run without going back to the fundamental misjudgment of invading Iraq in the first place. Once the enormity of that error is grasped, the case for pulling out becomes easy to see. Look at John Kerry's utterly absurd position during the presidential campaign. He said “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," but then went on to explain how he expected to win it anyway. Even the voter with no interest in foreign affairs was able to recognize it as an absurdity. If it was the wrong war at the wrong place and time, then it was never in our interest to fight. If that is true, what has changed to make it in our interest? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The US invasion of Iraq only serves the interest of: 1) Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al Qaeda, positioned US military personnel in places where al Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America's most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders US military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al Qaeda in Pakistan.); 2) The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight year war with Iraq.); 3) And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don't really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war between the United States and most of the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.) The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly. - Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. E-mail: diane@hudson.org
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#1. To: crack monkey (#0)
outstanding commentary and assessment, Lt Odom, so well reasoned.
outstanding commentary and assessment This is the crux of the entire issue. This war has come to no good, except for the bankers, arms merchants and corporatists. We, the people, pay in blood and treasure each and every time our leaders go off on a mission with imperial aims. “We are led into war with the promises of peace. We are now being led toward dictatorship with the promises of democracy.” Charles Lindbergh, Jr. “What will you do when evil men take office? When evil men take office, the whole gang will be in collusion! They will keep the people in utter ignorance and steal their liberty by ambuscade!” Patrick Henry “We are all ensnared by the tentacles of a system of social control, operating at all levels of society, which demands the blood sacrifice of millions of the cream of our youth every generation in bloody aggression to maintain prosperity. The primary intellectual and spiritual fundaments of this system spring from what passes for history, and are percolated down to the lowest member of society via a well-coordinated machine which leaves nothing unsullied by its poisonous output.” Willis A. Carto, 1983 “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of." Lord Byron
This is an excellent article. I'm going to skip around a bit in this excessively long post. My feelings on issue #2 is that the time to be concerned about credibility is before one undertakes one of the largest fools errands in modern memory, not after. It is vital to be able to spot a losing investment when one sees it. Very early in my readings about military operations, I wrote down something that has stuck with me for over a decade now: Great losses in personnel require great strategic gains. It is one of the most concise statements about economy of force that I have ever seen (true, it doesn't encompass the whole concept, but it is good, nonetheless, and no one in the Bush administration seems to have ever stumbled across it.) Basically, don't waste your men for nothing. That no one seems to be able to define an actual goal at the strategic level that is being met by this war to me, shows that they really don't have a vision for why they conducted this. The statement by Wolfowitz about troop levels for the invasion, to me, was the quintessential demonstration that their heads were completely up their asses. He said something like more troops meant that there was more potential for them to be killed, so they sent the minimum. By his logic, the Normandy invasion should have comprised a company, because then we would only have lost around 200 men on June 6, 1944. It was such a breathtakingly ignorant statement that I was certain that the Onion had written it for a while. But, alas, such is the caliber of mind that populated the DoD at the highest levels at that time. I have huge issues with this statement in issue #9, though. " Many US officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically." The set up for the Vietnam era bullshit version of the stab- in-the-back is being set up. If only those civilians who don't know anything would have done what is necessary, we would have won, they'll be able to say. I agree with the second part, that we are losing strategically. We're losing tactically, too, because most of the fighting isn't conducted in a way that is conducive to metrics of the type we're used to. If you have 200 attacks on convoys throughout Iraq each day, and can't drive the couple of miles from the Green Zone to BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) because it's too dangerous, one can scarcely say that the tactical battle is being won. Yes, we have some success when we're able to get them to fight on our terms, but even then, the body count math sometimes is suspect. With each passing day in Iraq, the manual on how to defeat us grows bigger, for any future adversary to look at. One of the reasons that the 82nd Airborne traditionally was used very sparingly was to maintain the aura of eliteness. Now we have used virtually every unit in the army, so that aura is gone, the world has seen the level of training and the tactics that we will use. As an aside, if I was on the opposing side, I would hate to see 10th Mountain Division patches show up, because they were always deployed, very capable, and very pissed off because they were used so much. When I deployed to Bosnia in 1997 with 1st Infantry Division we relieved a 10th Mountain MP company that had been in Haiti for nearly 18 months, returned to home station and then two months later deployed to Bosnia for 9 months. That's the kind of use that 10th Mountain got, and still gets. I saw some of that Division's units in Iraq two years ago, too. Anyway, the important thing is that potential enemies think that their defeat is a foregone conclusion. When we are unable to pacify a nation that had suffered through a long war with Iran, the Gulf War and then a decade of the most comprehensive sanctions the world has ever seen, the message being sent isn't a good one. "As I wrote several years ago, "the Pentagon's post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants." The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly "supported the troops." The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense. " I love that paragraph. If you peruse http://www.military.com, you will be able to find articles that attempt to demonstrate the utility of submarines in the Global War on Terror. Initially I thought that those articles were from the Onion, also, but I was mistaken. The best thing that the army could have done was to take many of Col (ret.) Douglas Macgregor's concepts in "Breaking the Phalanx" and formed many mobile brigades that are capable of independent operations. Move the Army into something closer to the Marine Corps. The Army is finally moving towards a workable concept with the Units of Action, which are essentially brigades with a lot of support unit augmentation.
"Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not ever the poorest Arab would have worried his head over"--Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
Slipshod scholars in the Bush camp hold up Germany and Japan as examples of what they hope to do in Iraq ,forgetting that Germany and Japan have had a fairly monolithic society with stable governments .
This is sort of my assessment too. I think there are battles worth fighting and I think we will be faced with a few of these very soon. If Bush continues to have his way, we may well face them with an exhausted, demoralized and discredited military. Our threat factor is now gone. The interested parties know exactly what we can do and they will calculate their moves based upon this. We will now be forced to fight where before a threat of a fight would have carried us.
The guy in Imperial Hubris notes that our current situation could have been predicted by spending a few days in any public library. His position is that the necessary information was always there in unclassified form.
ping to Holdings' excellent post above.
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