|
THE BUSH GENERALS' EMPTY-WAR SYNDROME
This entry was posted on 2/3/2009 12:29 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
It's gotten to be kind of fun, really, watching one interest group after another underestimate Barack Obama and walk away defeated.
It was inevitable that the most powerful of those groups, Bush's generals, would attempt to stage a quiet coup of sorts, and pressure Obama to change his mind on Iraq.
I've been waiting for it, and so therefore was not surprised when I read a piece last week in the New York Times by Peter Baker and Alyssa Rubin with the rather harmless title, "Obama Seeks Accord with the Military on Iraq."
It started out inocuously enough, quoting press secretary Robert Gibbs stating that the question was no longer IF we'd pull out, but WHEN, and then it mentioned a high-level meeting Obama had held at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs and others, as he had promised throughout the campaign.
The fact that Obama met with them at the Pentagon rather than summoning them to the White House is one of those facts that is highly significant, but you have to have a military background to appreciate it.
It's about respect.
Obama's coming to them rather than demanding they come to him was a simple, but powerful, symbolic signal that he would afford them the respect that many felt was lacking in the last Democratic president who did not have a military background, not to mention the Bush administration's appalling lack of understanding or appreciation for the strain two wars would take on the military they claimed to revere.
Obama's symbol was not lost on the brass, one of whom commented anonymously in another article that it meant a great deal to them that Obama would take this one simple step to let them know that he understands they have legitimate concerns and intends to listen to those concerns.
I think of it much like Tiger Woods' old-fashioned, and charming, habit of doffing his cap on the golf course whenever shaking hands with, or meeting, a fellow golfer--most of whom are older than he is. Out here in West Texas, we recognize that gesture as one of respect, though you don't see it much anyplace else in our cap-wearing culture.
The new president also won kudos from the military by keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appointing former Marine Corps commandant James Jones as his National Security Advisor, and choosing a retired Navy admiral, Dennis Blair, as his Director of National Intelligence.
Current Marine Corps commandant, James Conway, commented in several different sources that, "[Obama] has, in his cabinet, a soldier, a sailor and a Marine. I find that pretty encouraging. Some of his choices -- Sec. Gates staying on [because] he is effective at what he does -- give us as military people a certain air of comfort."
These are all crucial steps for a new president who faces appalling global challenges and who steps into the muck, mire, expense, and bloodshed of two wars. He will need the support of the troops he commands in order to make progress on these fronts.
But there is one challenge our new president faces that I'm sure comes as no surprise to him, and that is the star-spangled cadre of celebrity-generals who were appointed by Bush and raised to the stature of demi-gods by the Bush administration and their Republican enablers, and by a compliant media prone to hero-worship, well, war-heroes.
These generals have become accustomed to getting everything they ask for, and being praised and petted for every accomplishment, no matter how modest. Their opinions have actually been elevated above the civilian leadership who, constitutionally, are supposed to be their bosses.
We haven't reached the level of animosity or sheer hubris that we saw with the President Truman/General MacArthur showdown, but I'm sure that more than one of these generals may harbor Eisenhower-type political ambitions of their own.
Ah...the battered and bruised Republican Party wet dream.
Iraq is--and has been for several years now--their baby--and even though that baby has grown up and appears ready to leave home, they're not ready to let go.
I call it the Empty-War Syndrome.
Like everything else involving the military, this little group has a strategy. It has not taken these generals long to mount a counter-campaign to Obama's plans to bring the war to an end sooner rather than later, and they are being aided and abetted by the same warmongers who first insisted that invading Iraq was a good idea and that "the Surge" was the be-all and end-all of every war tactic ever attempted, going back to the Romans, surely.
General Ray Ordierno, the top commander in Iraq, fired the first salvo in the battle when he gave an impressionable New York Times reporter an interview for the article that appeared last week. (link above)
Odierno, by his very physical presence, makes a powerful impression. He is 6'4" tall, with broad shoulders, shaved head, the bearing and posture of a soldier, and a gregarious manner. His troops love him, and the fact that one of his sons lost an arm to an IED explosion in Iraq gives him great credibility with military families. He also talks to reporters. A lot.
By going over the head of his new commander-in-chief, straight to the New York Times, Odierno was telegraphing that he will not go down without a fight:
Among those consulted by the president was Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who has developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama’s campaign timetable, by pulling out two brigades over the next six months. In an interview in Iraq on Wednesday, General Odierno suggested that it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be drawn down significantly.
“I believe that if we can get through the next year peacefully, with incidents about what they are today or better, I think we’re getting close to enduring stability, which enables us to really reduce,” General Odierno said as he inspected a polling center south of Baghdad in advance of provincial elections on Saturday.
General Odierno said the period between this weekend’s elections and the national elections to be held about a year from now would be critical to determining the future of Iraq. While some American forces could be withdrawn before then, he suggested that the bulk of any pullout would probably come after that. On the surface of it, this does not seem like that rebellious of a statement.
But look closer. He's saying, Sixteen months, shmixteen months. Maybe I'll give you a couple brigades, then WE'LL SEE, like, A YEAR FROM NOW.
Kind of like what you say to an impatient child.
Needless to say, this subtle jockeying for position and power to roll back Obama's plans has not been covered in the American media, but the international press is all over it. A blogpost, "Generals Seek to Reverse Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Decision," in Huffington Post, from the Inter Press Service, by Gareth Porter, nails it:
CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.
But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.
Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.
A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.
Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama." Petraeus and Gates had actually put together a cute little plan that they thought might work. They wanted to "recategorize" a large number of combat troops as SUPPORT troops. That way, Obama could claim he was drawing down combat troops, just like he promised "his base," but they'd be able to continue on with plans they'd made with Bush.
And nobody would know any different!!!
These are, in fact, the very kinds of plans that Bush and his cronies are famous for--the ole bait and switch.
Obama was having none of it. He's not into game-playing.
But almost immediately, Republican war-mongers swung into their full enabling glory-mode:
The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama's withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the Jan. 21 meeting when retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Gen. Petraeus, appeared on the Lehrer News Hour to comment on Obama's pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal.
Keane, who had certainly been briefed by Petraeus on the outcome of the Oval Office meeting, argued that implementing such a withdrawal of combat troops would "increase the risk rather dramatically over the 16 months". He asserted that it would jeopardise the "stable political situation in Iraq" and called that risk "not acceptable".
The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning. Ah yes. It seems they got it ALL PLANNED.
Obama will insist on drawing down, like he said in the campaign, and chaos and horror and terrible Iraqi bloodshed will erupt in a now-peaceful Iraq, and then they can all go on FOX news and everywhere else and blame Obama for losing the Iraq war.
The American people will turn on him, see, for blowing Bush's Good War, and rush into the arms of a waiting Republican mama Sarah Palin or maybe a REAL warrior like Petraeus, and we can return our country to the Republican version of madhouse-sanity.
Right?
In fact, the article goes on to point out, a media long since brainwashed by right-wing armchair warriors has already begun to paint Obama's insistence on keeping his word as some sort of empty promise that he made to left-winger anti-war activists like those vipers over at MoveOn.org.
(Never mind the 75% of the American people who oppose the war and want it to end.)
However, the storyline goes, folks like Odierno and Petraeus deal with "realities," you know, "on the ground," and Obama would do well to heed their advice if he wants to Win the War.
This is the narrative being pushed by the likes of Jack Keane, who, as the article stresses:
"has been the central figure manipulating policy in order to keep as many U.S. troops in Iraq as possible. It was Keane who got Vice President Dick Cheney to push for Petraeus as top commander in Iraq in late 2006 when the existing commander, Gen. George W. Casey, did not support the troop surge.
It was Keane who protected Petraeus's interests in ensuring the maximum number of troops in Iraq against the efforts by other military leaders to accelerate troop withdrawal in 2007 and 2008. As Bob Woodward reported in "The War Within", Keane persuaded President George W. Bush to override the concerns of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the stress of prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq on the U.S. Army and Marine Corps as well its impact on the worsening situation in Afghanistan. Keane, who has a great deal of sway with Gen. Petraeus, had the four-star's ear during the campaign. He apparently had the general convinced that a Democratic president wouldn't DARE push back and risk what Keane perceives as being a backlash by the American people who, he thinks, want the Iraq war as much as Keane does:
Obama told Petraeus in Baghdad last July that, if elected, he would regard the overall health of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps and the situation in Afghanistan as more important than Petraeus's obvious interest in maximising U.S. troop strength in Iraq, according to Time magazine's Joe Klein.
But judging from Petraeus's shock at Obama's Jan. 21 decision, he had not taken Obama's previous rejection of his arguments seriously. That miscalculation suggests that Petraeus had begun to accept Keane's assertion that a newly-elected Democratic president would not dare to override his policy recommendation on troops in Iraq. Soooo....Say WHAT?
You mean, your commander-in-chief actually ACTED like one? He didn't kowtow or grovel or hero-worship?
DAMN! FOILED AGAIN!!!!
Go ahead, people.
Just keep on underestimating Barack Obama. You've been doing it ever since you smirked that there was no way he could win 95% white Iowa, crowed that he could NEVER beat the Clinton Machine, insisted that Americans would never pass over a War Hero in a Time of War for a big-eared inexperienced non-military KID.
The thing is, as I said, the generals don't want to let go of their baby just yet, and as for the Keanes of the world, well, they have other agendas, and every last one of them is stuck into a RETRO MINDSET.
Like, how the whole country will blow up if we pull out our troops sooner than the three-year timeframe set by the Iraqis themselves.
Hmmm. Really?
It seems that ACTUAL conditions "on the ground" say otherwise.
According to the New York Times by the same Alyssa Rubin:
BAGHDAD — Iraqis across the country voted Saturday in provincial elections that will help shape their future, but regardless of the outcome it is clear that the Americans are already drifting offstage — and that most Iraqis are ready to see them go.
The signs of mutual disengagement are everywhere. In the days leading up to the elections, it was possible to drive safely from near the Turkish border in the north to Baghdad and on south to Basra, just a few miles from the Persian Gulf — without seeing an American convoy. In the Green Zone — once host to the American occupation government, and now the seat of the Iraqi government — the primary PX is set to close, and the Americans have retreated to their vast, garrisoned new embassy compound. Iraqi soldiers now handle all Green Zone checkpoints.
American helicopters and drones may be in the sky, but Iraqi boots are on the ground. The Americans are already worried about securing the road to Kuwait because soon they will have to start hauling out much of the infrastructure they have built on bases across Iraq.
The end of an era comes not in a single moment, but looking back it has become evident that the mood has changed, power has shifted, the world is not the same. The article stresses that there are still some scary areas--Mosul, for one--but that, increasingly, the Iraqis seem more and more capable of maintaining the peace without American assistance beyond back-up.
This is the time, in fact, for the serious political diplomacy that Obama has insisted on from the beginning, but which was completely ignored by the Bush people:
As the American military slowly steps back, the diplomats and the civilians are emerging from the wings. Certainly, this is far from a normal diplomatic relationship. Iraqis entering any area close to the Americans are still subject to multiple humiliating searches and interminable waits. American diplomats cannot yet leave the embassy; they live like virtual prisoners, every movement beyond its gates an armed undertaking. But it is possible for Americans and Iraqis to talk about issues other than sheer survival.
Iraqis, too, are beginning to explore a different kind of relationship, one that no longer looks to the Americans only for protection. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has agreed to finance a substantial scholarship program to send Iraqis to the United States and British Commonwealth countries for study, in an effort to create a better educated professional class.
In the Washington Post, Obama's new choice for Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, is unconventional but exactly what's needed right now. He may not speak Arabic and may not be a Bushie, even though he worked for Condoleeza Rice, but he's got balls:
Over the course of four years, Hill was largely responsible for dramatically shifting the Bush administration's policies on North Korea, despite opposition from Vice President Cheney, who opposed making what he considered concessions to the North Korean government. Hill struck a deal with North Korea and then, step by step, persuaded Pyongyang to halt its nuclear reactor and begin to disable it...
In David Sanger's recently published book, "The Inheritance," Hill offered a blunt dismissal of his hard-line foes in the administration. "These [expletive deleted] don't know how to negotiate," he said. "Everything is Appomattox. It's just 'Come out with your hands up.' "
Hill has an easy manner and dry sense of humor that may serve him well in the fractious politics of Iraq. He was ambassador to Macedonia when protesters attacked the U.S. Embassy in 1999 over NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia. In a story Hill loves to recount, the embassy in Macedonia, unlike most overseas missions, did not have Marine guards. The protesters quickly overran the guard posts and began to use the embassy flagpole as a battering ram. When a top State Department official called Hill during the crisis to ask where his Marines were, Hill sardonically noted he didn't have any -- but that there were Marines at the embassy in Luxembourg.
Someone who's not afraid of Dick Cheney or the North Koreans--not to mention a bunch of enraged Macedonians--ain't gonna put up with any bullshit from the likes of Nouri al-Maliki, either.
This is not to insinuate in any way that the job is done; let's all just dust off our hands and leave tomorrow.
This "precipitous pull-out" as Obama's opponents continue to call it, was never one Obama asked for. He has, after all, his OWN military experts, and he had consulted with more than a dozen of them BEFORE he ever came up with the "16 month" timeframe.
This is the most responsible, reasonable allowance for pull-out, and I'm sure Obama is not above some concessions. I wouldn't be surprised if the pull-out came closer to 24 months, but not the three years insisted upon by Odierno and Petraeus and Keane and all the rest.
And, I do think the Iraqis still fear their old enemies, Iran and Syria. Regardless of Iranian influence on this war, to Iraqis, the Iranians are PERSIAN, not Arab, and most Iraqis do not want to hand their country over to those ancient enemies.
They like knowing the Americans are "over the horizon," to help when called upon. They just don't want them patrolling the streets anymore.
If this past weekend's election is any indication, American soldiers and Marines really aren't needed all that much anymore, anyway, to keep the peace.
Though there were a handful of political assassinations in the weeks leading up to the vote, there was not a single act of violence anywhere in the country on election day.
Security was provided by the Iraqi army and police--with surveillance and back-up provided from a distance by the Americans--and measures taken by the Iraqis themselves also helped: curfews, banning of vehicle traffic, and women volunteers trained to frisk women voters.
But that hasn't stopped the Greek Chorus from howling that Obama is going to wreck everything, even the actual military itself.
Robert Kagan, part of the Unholy Trinity that started all this in the first place, had an op-ed in the Washington Post today, all about how Obama is going to "weaken" national defense by--HORRORS!--cutting the Pentagon budget.
He lists five of the same old reasons why the budget should not be cut--a budget which, by the way, grew more during the Bush White House than at any other time in history, a total of 700 BILLON DOLLARS A YEAR--and never mind that SecDef Robert Gates HIMSELF ordered the Pentagon to start streamlining is bloated acquisitions budget for all its pet high-tech toy gadgets.
(By way of comparison, the annual State Dept. budget is 39 billion dollars.)
According to Kagan, if we merely reduce defense spending by one-tenth, it will "embolden our enemies" as well has frighten our allies and also CUT JOBS when, gosh darn it, we need those jobs!
However, in the very same edition of the very same paper, only one of those projects was analyzed
The Marine Corps is starting to deploy a jeeplike vehicle called the Growler, 10 years after conception and at twice the contract price, after delays that were caused by changing concepts and problems in contracting, development and testing, according to two reports.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sought investigations by the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department inspector general in light of complaints by the unsuccessful bidder on the project.
But a spokesman for Levin said the inspector general's report, released last month, showed that cost increases and delays are so normal in defense contracting, particularly in contracts involving hundreds of millions of dollars, that they don't raise great concerns.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, however, stressed the importance of reforming procurement in remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, saying that all services are feeling the effects of weapons programs that have "had repeated -- and unacceptable -- problems with requirements, schedule, cost and performance."
Oh yeah, I think we can pretty easily eliminate 10% of that bloat and waste without provoking a big party over at al Qaeda headquarters.
That $70 billion would go a long way toward helping our civilian population.
I mean, really.
Bush's celebrity generals and their warmongering buddies of the right wing are going to have to accept the fact that the Glory Days, as Bruce Springsteen sang, are over.
The Iraqis, while far from U.S. military-perfect, have proven themselves capable of stepping up to security challenges and doing an adequate--if not stellar--job. Good enough, anyway, to reassure their own people. They still need our help, much like our kids still need our assistance when they go off to college or otherwise grow up.
But most of them do grow up, eventually.
The bottom line is these matinee generals are going to have to learn that going around behind President Obama's back and giving suggestive interviews to the media or enlisting their ally-spokesmen on to go public on their behalf is not going to get them what they want.
That's not how Obama rolls.
They're welcome to express their doubts to him behind closed doors, and he will listen.
But in the end, he's the commander-in-chief, now.
Let me repeat that.
President Barack Obama is now the commander-in-chief.
Bush's Boys are going to have to get used to that, and learn to follow orders for a change, or they might find themselves looking around for a civilian job, just like everybody else.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
