Cut & Run? You Bet.
That's the title of
Lt. Gen. William E. Odom's op-ed
for ForeignPolicy.com.
Gen. Odom can argue all he wants but I'll take Col. Peters' reports from Iraq over the assessment of a general sitting in an office thousands of miles from Iraq.
Here's Col. Peters' report at the time:
In other words, Odom doesn't have a great pedigree. In fact, it isn't much of a pedigree at all.
It's time to swat down these defeatist, factually-challenged generals and to do it ASAP.
Cross-posted at California Conservative
Posted Thursday, May 4, 2006 3:47 PM
No comments.
If we leave, there will be a civil war.The part that "today, only the blind deny it" destroys his credibility. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters isn't a Bush apologist by any stretch of the imagination Far from it. Neither is Lt. Col. David Hunt. Neither is the Washington Post's David Ignatius. All three of these men say that there isn't a civil war happening in Iraq. Peters wrote a series of compelling reports from Iraq for the NY Post, with the most compelling providing proof on the ground that civil war hadn't happened.
In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam. Any close observer could see that then; today, only the blind deny it. Even President Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That's civil war.
Gen. Odom can argue all he wants but I'll take Col. Peters' reports from Iraq over the assessment of a general sitting in an office thousands of miles from Iraq.
Here's Col. Peters' report at the time:
I'm trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it. Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills. And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.Gen. Odom's claim that Iraq's in a civil war just got blown to smithereens. Let's look at Odom's next excuse for cutting and running:
Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops. All day, and it was a long day, we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None. And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome. Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward. Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that?
Withdrawal will encourage the terrorists.That was an awfully defeatist sentence that triggered some red flags for me. Here's what I found:
True, but that is the price we are doomed to pay. Our continued occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers, precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them. Our occupation also left the surviving Baathists with one choice: Surrender, or ally with al Qaeda. They chose the latter. Staying the course will not change this fact. Pulling out will most likely result in Sunni groups’ turning against al Qaeda and its sympathizers, driving them out of Iraq entirely.
From 1977 to 1981, General Odom was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. As a member of the National Security Council staff, he worked upon strategic planning, Soviet affairs, nuclear weapons policy, telecommunications policy, and Persian Gulf security issues.Look at that list of failures Gen. Odom participated in. Soviet policy was a failure. Strategic planning for a military that didn't even have enough spare parts to keep a fleet of helicopters must've been challenging at best. Zbigniew Brzezinski was and is a failure, telling President Carter that Ayatollah Khomeini's brand of Islam was a passing fad.
In other words, Odom doesn't have a great pedigree. In fact, it isn't much of a pedigree at all.
Withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility in the world. Were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world's only superpower, it's patently phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved wrong then and it would be proved wrong today.It's insulting that Gen. Odom would try propagating such a lie. His argument is essentially that you don't lose credibility by lying. Give me a break. That's so absurd that it's laughable. If his logic is right, then Bill Clinton is a trustworthy person when it comes to personal matters.
It's time to swat down these defeatist, factually-challenged generals and to do it ASAP.
Cross-posted at California Conservative
Posted Thursday, May 4, 2006 3:47 PM
No comments.
