Far graver than Vietnam

[Guest guest]

Far graver than Vietnam

 

Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has

turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale

 

Sidney Blumenthal

Thursday September 16, 2004

 

The Guardian (U.K.)

 

'Bring them on! " President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency

in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been

killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day,

in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is

" winning " in Iraq. " Our strategy is succeeding, " he boasted to the

National Guard convention on Tuesday.

 

But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent

retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William

Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: " Bush

hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front.

That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too.

It's lost. " He adds: " Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving

Bin Laden's ends. "

 

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of

US Central Command, told me: " The idea that this is going to go the

way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're

conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no

sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone

who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong. "

 

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: " I

see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become

true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and

the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan. "

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W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic

studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: " I don't

think that you can kill the insurgency " . According to Terrill, the

anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several

cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more

capable as a consequence of US policy.

 

" We have a growing, maturing insurgency group, " he told me. " We see

larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better

and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of

insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong.

The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there

are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The

political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we

stay, the more they are confirmed in that view. "

 

After the killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, the marines

besieged the city for three weeks in April - the watershed event for

the insurgency. " I think the president ordered the attack on

Fallujah, " said General Hoare. " I asked a three-star marine general

who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came

to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House. "

Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals

gained control, using the city as a base.

 

" If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a

non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that

occupation, " Terrill explained. " Most Iraqis consider us occupiers,

not liberators. " He describes the religious imagery common now in

Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: " There's talk of angels and the

Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of

martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents. "

 

" I see no exit, " said Record. " We've been down that road before. It's

called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi

force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the

imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the

foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state

building in Vietnam than in Iraq. "

 

General Odom said: " This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as

much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went

ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now

we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape

with our allies. "

 

Terrill believes that any sustained US military offensive against the

no-go areas " could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi

government would feel compelled to resign " . Thus, an attempted

military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political

legitimacy. " If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory. "

 

General Hoare believes from the information he has received that " a

decision has been made " to attack Fallujah " after the first Tuesday in

November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The

signs are all there. "

 

He compares any such planned attack to the late Syrian dictator Hafez

al-Asad's razing of the rebel city of Hama. " You could flatten it, "

said Hoare. " US military forces would prevail, casualties would be

high, there would be inconclusive results with respect to the bad

guys, their leadership would escape, and civilians would be caught in

the middle. I hate that phrase collateral damage. And they talked

about dancing in the street, a beacon for democracy. "

 

General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration

and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has

ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. " I've never

seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the

military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster.

The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the

Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that

our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad.

They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic. "

 

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is

Washington bureau chief of salon.com

 

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