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Revolt of the Generals

By Richard J. Whalen

The Nation

 

Thursday 28 September 2006

 

A revolt is brewing among our retired Army and Marine generals. This

rebellion - quiet and nonconfrontational, but remarkable nonetheless - comes

not because their beloved forces are bearing the brunt of ground combat in

Iraq but because the retirees see the US adventure in Mesopotamia as another

Vietnam-like, strategically failed war, and they blame the errant, arrogant

civilian leadership at the Pentagon. The dissenters include two generals who

led combat troops in Iraq: Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., who commanded the

82nd Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the First

Infantry Division (the " Big Red One " ). These men recently sacrificed their

careers by retiring and joining the public protest.

 

In late September Batiste, along with two other retired senior officers,

spoke out about these failures at a Washington Democratic policy hearing,

with Batiste saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was " not a competent

wartime leader " who made " dismal strategic decisions " that " resulted in the

unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies and the good

people of Iraq. " Rumsfeld, he said, " dismissed honest dissent " and " did not

tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war. "

 

This kind of protest among senior military retirees during wartime is

unprecedented in American history - and it is also deeply worrisome. The

retired officers opposing the war and demanding Rumsfeld's ouster represent

a new political force, and therefore a potentially powerful factor in the

future of our democracy. The former generals' growing lobby could acquire a

unique veto power in the future by publicly opposing reckless civilian

warmaking in advance.

 

No one should be surprised by the antiwar dissent emerging among those

who have commanded our legions on the fringes of the US military empire.

After more than sixty-five years of increasingly centralized and secret

presidential warmaking, we have concentrated ultimate civilian authority in

fewer and fewer hands. Some of these leaders have been proved by events to

be incompetent.

 

I speak regularly to retired generals, former intelligence officers and

former Pentagon officials and aides, all of whom remain close to their

active-duty friends and protégés. These well-informed seniors tell me that

whatever the original US objective was in Iraq, our understrength forces and

flawed strategy have failed, and that we cannot repair this failure by

remaining there indefinitely. Fundamental changes are needed, and senior

officers are prepared to make them. According to my sources, some

active-duty officers are working behind the scenes to end the war and are

preparing for the inevitable US withdrawal. " The only question is whether a

war serves the national interest, " declares a retired three-star general.

" Iraq does not. "

 

How widespread is antiwar feeling among the retired and active-duty

senior military? And does it extend into the younger active-duty officer

corps? These are unanswerable questions. The soldiers who defend our

democracy on the battlefield fight within military, and therefore

nondemocratic, organizations. They are sworn to uphold the Constitution and

obey orders. Traditionally, they debate only on the " inside. "

 

Earlier this year, Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in

Iraq, drafted a highly classified briefing plan that was leaked to the New

York Times in June. It called for sharply reducing US troop levels in Iraq

from the current fourteen combat brigades to a half-dozen or so by late

December 2007. The plan contained a great many caveats, and events soon

rendered it obsolete. Now General Casey says the Iraqi security forces may

be ready to take the lead role in twelve to eighteen months, but he says

nothing about troop withdrawals.

 

Casey's leaked plan revealed the thinking of some of today's top-level

officers. These senior military men believe that our forces will have to win

the potentially decisive battle for Baghdad before the United States can

leave. In August the Army announced an urgent transfer of American forces

from insecure western Iraq to the capital in preparation for that coming

battle. The move barely doubled the number of troops in Baghdad, to only

14,000 GIs spread over a sprawling metropolis with a population exceeding 7

million.

 

On August 3 the commander of US forces in the Middle East, Gen. John

Abizaid, the universally respected, Arabic-speaking warrior-scholar who

knows Iraq intimately, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee

that worsening Iraqi sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, " could move

[iraq] towards civil war. " In private, senior officers openly refer to civil

war, and have indicated that the Army would depart in such circumstances to

avoid being caught in the crossfire.

 

The dissenting retired generals are bent on making Iraq this nation's

last strategically failed war - that is, one doggedly waged by civilian

officials largely to avoid personal accountability for their bad decisions.

A failed war causes mounting human and other costs, damaging or entirely

destroying the national interest it was supposed to serve.

 

Let me interject a personal note. At the height of the Vietnam War,

between 1966 and 1968, I was a conservative Republican in my early 30s on

the campaign staff of the likely next President, Richard Nixon. What I heard

from junior officers returning from Vietnam convinced me that US military

involvement there should give way to diplomacy. We no longer had a coherent

political objective, and were fighting only to avoid admitting defeat. I

wrote Nixon's secret plan for " ending the war and winning the peace, " a

rhetorical screen for striking a summit deal with the Soviet Union, followed

by a historic opening to China that would allow us to extricate ourselves

from what we belatedly recognized was an anti-Chinese Indochina.

 

After I left Nixon's staff in August 1968, I helped end the draft. In

1969-70, I co-wrote and edited the Report of the President's Commission on

an All-Volunteer Armed Force. Our blockbuster proposal to end the draft

combined political expediency and libertarian idealism. Our staff's numbers

crunchers calculated that if we raised enlisted men's pay scales, retention

rates among the sons of lower- to middle-income families would stay high

enough to create a de facto all-volunteer Army. So why not take credit for

acting on principle? Nixon's domestic adviser Martin Anderson pushed it, the

private computers of consultant Alan Greenspan (who would go on to become

chair of the Federal Reserve System) confirmed it and I delivered the text

that the commission accepted. Nixon, for once, enjoyed the media's acclaim.

The draft was swiftly abolished.

 

The Iraq War only confirms the wisdom of the nation's commitment to the

all-volunteer armed forces. A draft would merely prolong the Iraq agony, not

avoid defeat. More than 2,700 GIs killed and more than 20,000 wounded, along

with tens of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis, are enough to carry on

the nation's conscience.

 

Some of the officers from the first generation of the volunteer Army,

now mostly retired, are speaking out and influencing their active-duty

colleagues. Retired Lieut. Gen. William Odom calls the Iraq War " the worst

strategic mistake in the history of the United States " and draws a grim

parallel with the Vietnam War. He says that US strategy in Iraq, as in

Vietnam, has served almost exclusively the interests of our enemies. He says

that our objectives in Vietnam passed through three phases leading to

defeat. These were: (1) 1961-65, " containing " China; (2) 1965-68, obsession

with US tactics, leading to " Americanization " of the war; and (3) 1968-75,

phony diplomacy and self-deluding " Vietnamization. " Iraq has now completed

two similar phases and is entering the third, says Odom, now a senior fellow

at the Hudson Institute. In March he wrote in the newsletter of Harvard's

Nieman Foundation:

 

Will Phase Three in Iraq end with U.S. helicopters flying out of

Baghdad's Green Zone? It all sounds so familiar. The difference lies in the

consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on U.S. power

that Iraq is already having. On this point, those who deny the Vietnam-Iraq

analogy are probably right. They are wrong, however, in believing that

staying the course will have any result other than making the damage to U.S.

power far greater than would changing course and making an orderly

withdrawal.... But even in its differences, Vietnam can be instructive about

Iraq. Once the U.S. position in Vietnam collapsed, Washington was free to

reverse the negative trends it faced in NATO and U.S.-Soviet military

balance, in the world economy, in its international image, and in other

areas. Only by getting out of Iraq can the United States possibly gain

sufficient international support to design a new strategy for limiting the

burgeoning growth of anti-Western forces it has unleashed....

 

The fact that so many retired generals are speaking out against the war

and against Rumsfeld, and are doing so at such forums as New York's

prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, reflects the depth and intensity

of the military's dissent. Traditional discipline and career-protecting

reticence prompt many disillusioned field-grade officers (majors and above)

to keep silent. These are " the Carlisle elite, " who attend the US Army War

College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from whose ranks are selected the

generals and top leaders of tomorrow.

 

The military's senior active-duty leadership will not openly revolt.

" We're not the French generals in Algeria, " says Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton. " But

we damned well know that the Iraq War we've won militarily is being lost

politically. " The well-read retired Marine Lieut. Gen. Gregory Newbold wrote

in a Time magazine essay: " I retired from the military four months before

the [March 2003] invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had

used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. " Newbold calls the Iraq

War " unnecessary " and says the civilians who launched the war acted with " a

casualness and swagger " that are " the special province " of those who have

never smelled death on a battlefield.

 

When civilian Pentagon officials bungled the long, dishonorable endgame

of the Vietnam War, disciplined senior soldiers kept silent. After that war

ended in US defeat and humiliation, a flood of firsthand military accounts

of the war appeared. Embittered generals and other officers, like future

general Colin Powell, vowed it would never happen again.

 

Today, a retired major general privately asserts: " For our generation,

Iraq will be Vietnam with the volume turned way up. Three decades ago, the

retired generals who are now speaking out against the Iraq War were junior

officers in Vietnam. The seniors who trained and mentored us, and who became

generals but who kept silent, did not speak out after retirement against

Vietnam. " Now, even before the Iraq War has ended, generals have shed their

uniforms and begun publicly to fight back against Rumsfeld's bullying and a

new generation of Pentagon civilians' bloodstained mistakes. These former

generals despise Rumsfeld, with several, like Batiste, describing him as

totally dismissive of their views. They recall repeatedly trying to warn

Rumsfeld before the Iraq invasion that the US forces he was planning to

deploy were barely half the 400,000 they said were needed.

 

Rumsfeld publicly humiliated all who dissented, beginning with Army

Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was virtually dismissed the day he

honestly gave his views to Congress. Rumsfeld's deputy, neoconservative

ideologue Paul Wolfowitz, listened respectfully before rejecting the

generals' advice. As the Iraqi insurgency grew, the generals found Rumsfeld

" completely unable and unwilling to understand the collapse of security in

Iraq, " says Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, now retired. The severely

understrength US forces have never been able to provide adequate security.

Once Iraqi civilians lost their trust and confidence in America's

protection, the war was lost politically. As General Newbold says: " Our

opposition to Rumsfeld is all about his accountability for getting Iraq

wrong from day one. "

 

Bureaucratic accountability comes hard and very slowly. According to a

stark consensus of global terrorism trends by America's sixteen separate

espionage agencies, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq " helped spawn a

new generation of Islamic radicalism and [expand] the overall terrorist

threat. " This highly classified National Intelligence Estimate is, according

to the New York Times, " the first report since the war began to present a

comprehensive picture " of global terrorism trends.

 

There's blame enough to go around. In his recently published bestseller

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, the

Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, offers a devastating,

heavily documented indictment of almost incredible civilian and military

shortsightedness and incompetence, such as the foolish decisions that

encouraged the Iraqi insurgency. " When we disbanded the Iraqi Army, we

created a significant part of the Iraqi insurgency, " explains Col. Paul

Hughes, whose advice to retain the army was rejected. Before he retired he

told Ricks, " Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will

lose strategically. " The most critical political-strategic decisions about

post-Saddam Iraq's future were made by deeply mistaken civilian officials in

Washington and in the Green Zone by our " viceroy, " Paul Bremer,

administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

 

The senior military dissenters will not rest until they indict the

mistakes of Rumsfeld and his principal civilian aides at Congressional

hearings. The military always plays this game of accountability for keeps.

Should the Democrats gain control of a Congressional chamber in the November

midterms, televised Capitol Hill hearings in 2007 will feature military

protagonists speaking of " betrayal " and " tragically wasted sacrifices. " The

retired generals believe nothing would be gained, and much would be lost, by

keeping the truth about Iraq from the families of America's dead and

wounded.

 

Says retired two-star General Eaton: " The repeated rotations of Army

Reservists and National Guardsmen are hollowing out the US ground forces.

This whole thing in Iraq is going to fall off a cliff.... Yet we have a

moral obligation to see this thing [the Iraqi occupation] through. If we

fail, it will cause America grave problems for several decades to come. "

These earnest, if contradictory, sentiments echo what some conflicted US

military officers told me thirty-five years ago, as Vietnam was being

abandoned. After President Nixon's Watergate disgrace and resignation, a

fed-up American public and a heavily Democratic-controlled Congress finally

pulled the plug on our Saigon ally, allowing South Vietnam to fall.

 

Over the past year, the United States has pressed into service newly

trained Iraqi army, police and security forces, replacing elements of the

140,000-plus US troops. But the Iraqi forces lack everything from body armor

to tanks and helicopters. Major General Eaton, who in 2003-04 was in charge

of training Iraqi security forces, says the United States needs another five

years to train the Iraqi army, and as much as another decade to train and

equip an effective Iraqi police force.

 

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a hero in the 1991 Gulf War who visited Iraq and

Kuwait this past spring, writes in an unpublished report: " We need to better

equip the Iraqi Army with a capability to deter foreign attack and to have a

leveraged advantage over the Shia militias and the insurgents they must

continue to confront. The resources we are now planning to provide are

inadequate by an order of magnitude or more. The cost of a coherent

development of the Iraqi security forces is the ticket out of Iraq - and the

avoidance of the constant drain of huge U.S. resources on a monthly basis. "

 

Thus, the crucial " Iraqification " process has barely begun and is mostly

still self-deception. New York Times Iraq correspondent Dexter Filkins

reports that Baghdad has become " a markedly more dangerous place " over the

past year. This undercuts " the central premise of the American project here:

that Iraqi forces can be trained and equipped to secure their own country,

allowing the Americans to go home, " a replay of the failed Vietnamization

scenario.

 

The retired generals' revolt may be inspired by their apprehension over

a wider Mideast conflict spreading to potentially nuclear Iran, writes

former Pentagon planner and now antiwar critic Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired

Air Force lieutenant colonel and a razor-sharp PhD. Writing in

MilitaryWeek.com, she speculates that the generals are trying to get rid of

Rumsfeld now to head off a conflict with Iran. The Bush Administration

reportedly has contingency plans to bomb Iran's UN-disapproved nuclear

sites. Some underemployed Navy and Air Force officers are lobbying to strike

Iran, but the overstretched ground combat forces overwhelmingly oppose it as

the worst of all possible wars. She writes: " If Rumsfeld retires, we will

not 'do' Iran under Bush 43. " Such concern over Tehran is well founded.

According to Kwiatkowski and retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, American

Special Forces are already secretly inside Iran, identifying potential

targets for future air strikes. The Iranians are of course aware of their

uninvited visitors.

 

The obvious diplomatic recourse is for the Bush Administration to talk

to Tehran about our pending exit from Iraq, but the White House refused to

do so until late September, when the Bush family's longtime political fixer,

former Secretary of State James Baker, entered the picture as a deal-maker.

Baker is co-chair, with retired Indiana Democratic Representative Lee

Hamilton, of the Congressionally created Iraq Study Group (ISG), which is

due to issue a comprehensive report on US options in Iraq after the November

elections. After a four-day visit to Iraq, Baker, Hamilton and the eight

other members of the bipartisan task force returned to Washington with an

obvious recommendation: Start talking to Tehran. After receiving President

Bush's immediate approval, Baker invited an unidentified " high

representative " of the Iranian government, as well as Syria's foreign

minister, to meet with the ISG. Baker realizes the leverage is largely on

Iran's side of the table.

 

An expert on Shiite Islam, Professor Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate

School, sees a glaring missed opportunity the ISG could help seize. He

suggested in the July-August Foreign Affairs that " Iran will actively seek

stability in Iraq only when it no longer benefits from controlled chaos

there, that is, when it no longer feels threatened by the United States'

presence. Iran's long-term interests are not inherently at odds with those

of the United States; it is current U.S. policy toward Iran that has set the

countries' respective Iraq policies on a collision course. "

 

General McCaffrey warns that " U.S. public diplomacy and rhetoric about

confronting Iranian nuclear weapons development is scaring neighbors in the

Gulf. Our Mideast allies believe correctly that they are ill equipped to

deal with Iranian strikes to close the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. They do

not think they can handle politically or militarily a terrorist threat

nested in their domestic Shia populations. "

 

The recent war in Lebanon has only made the prospect of war with Iran

more problematic. As Richard Armitage, the astute onetime Navy SEAL and

former Deputy Secretary of State, told reporter Seymour Hersh: " When the

Israel Defense Forces, the most dominant military force in the region, can't

pacify little Lebanon [population: 4 million], you should think twice about

taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of 70

million. "

 

McCaffrey's report raises the possibility that US forces will have to

fight their way out of Iraq. He says, " A U.S. military confrontation with

Iran could result in [the radical Islamic Mahdi Army's] attacking our forces

in Baghdad or along our 400-mile line of communications out of Iraq to the

sea. " The Bush Administration needs Iranian cooperation for the eventual

safe exit of our troops, as General McCaffrey advises. This assumes that the

Iranians will not risk World War III by trying to entrap our hostage Army in

a humiliating Dunkirk-in-the-desert. After successful negotiations, the

United States should be able to withdraw via the southern exit route leading

through Kuwait to the Persian Gulf and the blue waters beyond.

 

Once we get our troops safely out, a newly elected, post-2008

administration in Washington may be able to begin reassembling America's

scattered global allies to address the region's problems anew, next time

multilaterally, and through diplomacy rather than pre-emptive unilateral

military force.

 

America is a uniquely favored nation that redefines itself in each

generation. But we have had a lifetime of embracing one democratic global

war, and numerous presidentially inspired, politicized and secret smaller

wars that have turned out badly. Sixty-five years after Pearl Harbor, we owe

it to the past three generations to resume the debate on our national

identity, suspended on December 7, 1941, and foreshortened on September 11,

2001.

 

In the post-cold war era, we have severely cut back our military

manpower, reducing the regular Army to only 480,000 troops, but we have not

cut back fantastically expensive Air Force weapons systems or the somewhat

more useful but still gold-plated Navy. Nor have we redefined our strategic

goals to fit realistically within reduced budgets. We have " paid " for the

invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by borrowing heavily from

foreign dollar-holders, such as China, that are awash in trade surpluses,

and have left debt service to future US generations.

 

A key argument in the ex-generals' indictment is this undeniable fact:

Our armed forces are too small to police and reorder the world and intervene

almost blindly, as we have in Iraq. That invasion acted out the

world-changing daydreams of pro-Israel neoconservative policy intellectuals

like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others who gained warmaking power and

influence atop the Pentagon but who evidently never asked themselves,

Suppose we're wrong? What happens then? Sober, realistic Israelis privately

fear the neocons' " friendship, " and where it has led America, more than any

Arab enemies. In the inevitable post-Iraq War tsunami of US political

recrimination, such Israelis foresee Christian Zionist evangelicals, whose

lobbying muscle in Congress was decisive in the run-up to the Iraq War,

attempting to scapegoat the high-profile neocons and endangering Israel's

all-important security ties to the United States.

 

Growing public disgust and frustration with the Iraq War has begun to

arouse a self-defeating desire to retreat into isolationism. Rather, the

United States should revive the traditional but recently neglected realistic

approach to foreign policy, as the ISG is starting to do, and it should

begin with a renewed multilateral approach to peacemaking in the Middle

East.