Deciding for war

Andrew Bacevich's new book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism is coming out this month. Next Tuesday (Aug 5) to be more precise. I expect that if Obama is elected President that Bacevich's perspectives could become even more valuable than they are today. He is neither a "liberal hawk", nor an advocate of "humanitarian war" (one of the worst oxymorons ever invented!), nor a nativist-isolationist of the Pat Buchanan/neo-Confederate variety.

Once Obama is elected, many of the folks featured at places like The American Conservative and Antiwar.com will suddenly start claiming that "the liberals" are a far worse menace to American foreign policy than the neocons have been. Larry Johnson's feverish polemics against Obama at his No Quarter blog are a preview of what we can expect. Johnson has been a bitter critic of the neocons, but seems to despise Obama much more.

That will make writers and analysts like Bacevich who have a perspective not driven by momentary partisanship even more important than they seem now. An Obama Presidency will show us rather quickly what a rare quantity such people are. Bacevich has so far achieved the feat of being respected from Antiwar.com to The Nation and the New Left Review. He hasn't been welcome at the Weekly Standard the last few years, however.

Meanwhile, Bacevich has an article in the Jul/Aug Boston Review, Fault Lines: Inside Rumsfeld's Pentagon, reviewing Doug Feith's War and Decision and Ricardo Sanchez' Wiser in Battle. And, speaking of The American Conservative, he also contributed an article to a feature in the 07/14/08 issue on the topic, How Good Was the Good War? The feature has several writers responding to the question raised by Pat Buchanan's recent rightwing revisionist book on the Second World War. Bacevich certainly doesn't embrace Buchanan's ridiculous, propaganda version of that history:

The problem with this orthodox interpretation is not that it’s wrong but that it is inadequate. The reflexive tendency to see every antagonist as another Hitler (or Stalin) and every sensitive diplomatic encounter as a potential Munich (or Yalta) has produced an approach to statecraft that is excessively militarized, needlessly inflexible, and insufficiently imaginative. The remedy is not to engage in a vain effort to change the way Americans remember World War II, however, but to restore that conflict to its proper context.

Ripped out of context, the war, especially the struggle against Nazi Germany, has become a parable. Whatever their value as a source of moral instruction, parables offer less help when it comes to understanding international politics. Parables simplify - and to simplify the past is necessarily to distort it. (my emphasis)

Bacevich suggests that the Great War of 1914-18 would be a fruitful source for understanding the risks and opportunities of foreign policy:

In fact, that conflagration and the peacemaking process that followed offer a mother lode of instruction for American policymakers today.

World War I does not easily reduce to a parable. Even a polemicist as talented as [neocon godfather Norman] Podhoretz would be hard pressed to render it as a story pitting good against evil or freedom against totalitarianism. It was instead a vast, complex, and utterly avoidable tragedy, a war of empires on behalf of empire. A handful of naïve and stupid statesmen, who fancied that in war lay the solution to all manner of problems, inflicted incalculable moral and material damage upon Western civilization, while accelerating the decline of European power and leaving a poisonous legacy.(my emphasis)

In his review of the two books relating to the Iraq War, he points to some important factors that need to be understood in evaluating that conflict. Feith argues that his rouge Pentagon intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans (OSP), had adequate plans for the immediate post-invasion situation that would have avoided the problems that occurred. But, Bacevich writes:

Yet OSD never actually intended that Iraqis - other than those chosen in advance by the United States - would determine their own nation’s fate. For Feith and his colleagues, "liberation" was a codeword that meant indirect control. OSD sought to exercise that control in three ways.

First, it established under Pentagon jurisdiction an agency designed to direct developments in Baghdad after Saddam’s removal. This was the misleadingly named Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), created by OSD in January 2003 and headed by retired army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, Rumsfeld’s handpicked choice for the job.

Second, against bitter opposition from the CIA and State Department, Feith and his colleagues tried to ensure that OSD would have the final say in deciding exactly which Iraqis would occupy positions of influence in the IIA [Iraqi Interim Authority]. Contemporary press reports identified neoconservative favorite Ahmad Chalabi as the Pentagon’s preferred candidate to run the IIA. Feith denies that OSD was promoting Chalabi, but his relentless attacks on Chalabi’s critics, professing bafflement at how others could malign someone of such manifest decency, belie those denials. (Subsequent charges that Chalabi was playing a double game, leaking sensitive intelligence to Iran, number among the matters that Feith ignores altogether.)

Third, even as it was touting the Iraqi Interim Authority as an embryonic government run by Iraqis, OSD established narrow limits on that government’s prerogatives. For example, as Feith notes in passing, under the IIA, the United States would retain “the authority to appoint top officials for the ministries of Defense, Finance, Interior, and Oil.” That authority provided the ultimate guarantee that the United States would continue to call the shots. The IIA would be a puppet regime, Feith and his colleagues apparently expecting Iraqis either not to notice or not to care who was actually pulling the strings. (my emphasis)

Bacevich writes of Gen. Sanchez' memoir "is above all an expression of his anger and bitterness at not achieving four-star rank" (he made only three stars). And he comments, "The result can only be described as unseemly. It is never pretty to see a grown man whine."

Sanchez tries to blame Rumsfeld for the development of the disaster in Iraq. But Bacevich is willing to point to the failures of some of our glorious generals, not intimidated as so many of our elected officials seem to be of making any kind of criticism of uniformed military officers who are supposedly subject to civilian authority. He writes:

When Sanchez assumed command, evidence of a brewing insurgency was already mounting. While back in Washington Feith was lovingly perfecting his vision of an Iraqi Interim Authority, Baghdad was already coming apart at the seams. By the time Sanchez departed Baghdad a year later, chaos had engulfed Iraq, and U. S. forces were caught in the middle of a civil war that Sanchez himself reports “our actions had undeniably ignited.” Punctuating this deteriorating situation was the Abu Ghraib scandal, which seemed to affirm that something had gone fundamentally wrong.

In short, when the animals in Iraq escaped their cages, Ricardo Sanchez was the chief zookeeper. His mission was to secure Iraq. He failed egregiously. The results of his efforts were almost entirely negative. As measured by the number of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed and wounded, they were also costly. Yet none of this, Sanchez insists, was his fault.

According to a core value of the military professional ethic, commanders are responsible for everything that occurs on their watch. The whole point of Wiser in Battle is to suggest that in the case of Ricardo Sanchez the principle of command responsibility should not apply. (my emphasis)

When responsible senior officials have such terrible results, we shouldn't assume that their own performance is free of responsibility for the bad things that happen, while anything good that occurs is taken as evidence of the brilliance of their leadership.

The following will surely become one of the building blocks of the stab-in-the-back excuse that the generals and conservative Republicans have already been constructing for years now:

Sanchez refrains from criticizing the president directly, depicting him as well-intentioned yet utterly out of his depth. During a videoconference in the midst of the notorious first Fallujah offensive of April 2004, Bush offered the following guidance to his field commander: "Kick ass! If someone tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! . . . Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out!" Two days later orders from above directed Sanchez to suspend the offensive. "Politics"—Sanchez employs the term as shorthand for any intrusion by ignorant civilians with ulterior motives - had produced "a strategic defeat for the United States and a moral victory for the insurgents." (my emphasis)

Bacevich concludes his review by referring to the institutional aspects of the dysfunctional decision-making process that produced the Iraq, saying, "To imagine, however, that simply electing a new chief executive in November will fix the problem is surely to succumb to an illusion."

Tags: andrew bacevich, douglas feith, iraq war, ricardo sanchez

Spencer Ackerman on "war critic" Gen. Sanchez

Spencer Ackerman focuses in on "war critic" Gen. Ricardo Sanchez' stab-in-the-back posturing, which I discussed a couple of days ago. Writing in The Disgruntled General American Prospect Online 10/16/07, Ackerman says:

Contrary to its billing, this was no mere attack on the administration. Sanchez's speech is perfectly positioned to accelerate the stabbed-in-the-back myth of explaining the war now emerging on the right. That corrosive idea, revived most recently by revisionist Vietnam historian Mark Moyar, holds that sybaritic [lazy, selfish, hedonistic] and feckless civilians recklessly squander the hard-won gains of the military.

... Sanchez's speech reads like a foundational text for an aggrieved conservative worldview that the war was too virtuous for the country that fought it. And it makes a lot of sense that it's Sanchez, the most disgraced general of the entire war, who issued this j'accuse.

Consider the following line, one which didn't make it into most media accounts of the speech. "While the politicians espouse their rhetoric designed to preserve their reputations and their political power -- our soldiers die!" Sanchez is interested in attacking -- repeatedly -- unnamed "political leaders" whose partisan squabbling has "endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield." (my emphasis)

Ackerman's article mentions Sanchez' disgraceful role in the torture program and the Abu Ghuraib scandal in the first paragraph and elaborates on it later. And, sensibly ignoring the ludicrous taboo on criticizing our holy generals, he also reminds us that torture may not be the only thing for which Sanchez' has to answer in his professional role:

Abu Ghraib was only one element in Sanchez's manifold failures as a general in Iraq. Lacking clear leadership or central coordination, his division commanders essentially ran their own occupations, resulting in drastically varying results -- from the heavy-handed tactics of Major General Ray Odierno in Anbar to the population-centric approach of Major General David Petraeus. In account after account from Iraq veterans in Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks's definitive book Fiasco, Sanchez is described as a tactician unable to see the bigger picture of the war.

Defying common sense among both liberals and conservatives, he told Tim Russert in April 2004, "the forces that we have on the ground are adequate," -- even as both the Sunni and the Shiite insurgencies inflamed the country. Whatever divides civilians and soldiers, it's not respect for Sanchez. One active-duty officer summed up the catastrophe in Iraq by telling Ricks, "In Vietnam we left Westy [Commanding General William Westmoreland] in. In Iraq we left Sanchez in."

I would add to Ackerman's perceptive comments that the stab-in-the-back excuse has been on the horizon since 2003, because the stab-in-the-back nonsense was already embedded in the political right and much of the officer course as an alibi for the loss of the Vietnam War. It seemed to me that around the beginning of 2005, the stab-in-the-back take on the Iraq War started to get a lot more visibility.

Ackerman also sights some of the major themes in the stab-in-the-back motif in Sanchez' whiny criticism of recent days:

And Sanchez has no shortage of culprits. In fact, it's Bush who gets off easiest here. Nearly everyone not in uniform is responsible for the horror. The press has strayed from ethical standards - so far, he says, that a reversal of course is needed so "our democracy does not continue to be threatened." Civilians within the Bush administration, and particularly on the National Security Council, failed U.S. troops by not devising and implementing a strategy for Iraq that involved more than military power. Congress is a particular enemy: it abdicated "focused oversight" in favor of "exhortations, encouragements, investigations, studies and discussions." America itself does not escape blame. The "greatest failures" in Iraq are linked to the country's "lack of commitment, priority and moral courage in this war effort." Sanchez's comments might benefit war opponents in the short term, since the press hasn't emphasized this vitriol, but embittered conservatives looking to place blame practically have a catechism to read from. (my emphasis)

This is all stock authoritarian boilerplate, adapted to the particular conditions of the Iraq War. But you can find the same nonsense in an endless number of rightwing books, articles and blog posts about the Vietnam War.

Ackerman may not fully realize what stock authoritarian thinking this is. But he's right in noting that Sanchez' has a particular stake in promoting this worldview on the Iraq War:

Sanchez's hysteria is not easily explained. That is, unless you take into account Sanchez's guilty conscience and his anger over his disgrace.

That conscience is made guilty, of course, by the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal specifically, and the explosion of the insurgency during his year in command more generally.

Sanchez is producing the kind of whining that the Republican Party's hardcore base just loves.

Tags: authoritarianism, iraq war, ricardo sanchez, spencer ackerman, stab-in-the-back

Gen. Sanchez criticizes the Iraq War

The legacy that "war critic" Gen. Ricardo Sanchez left to his country

War critics, understandably, have been happily noting that Gen. Ricardo Sanchez is criticizing the Iraq War now that he's retired: Sanchez, former U.S. commander in Iraq, calls war 'a nightmare with no end in sight' by Jeff Schogol Stars and Stripes Mideast edition 10/13/07. Stars and Stripes is a newspaper for servicepeople funded by the Pentagon. I'm not sure to what extent it could be fairly described as "independent". But they do print real news, not just the hack propaganda strategic communications that you get at the CENTCOM and Air Force "news" sites.

But I'm afraid my reaction to reading about Sanchez' criticisms was more like, "Well, cry me a [Cheney]ing river." Because look at what he's saying: "The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure and the American people must hold them accountable." God forbid that the commanding generals like Sanchez should ever come in for any criticism over losing the Iraq War!

Sanchez has a particular reason to look for alibis and duck responsibility for his actions and failures. In a word, "torture". Or, if you're feeling long-winded, two words, "Abu Ghuraib." Schogol's Stars and Stripes piece reports, starting with paragraph three:

Sanchez commanded U.S. troops in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. His controversial tenure saw the capture of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi government, but also the rise of the insurgency and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

While cleared of any wrongdoing, one report found that Sanchez and his deputy, "failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations."

Abu Ghraib was a sore subject Friday for Sanchez, who lambasted the media for using phrases like "dictatorial and somewhat dense," "liar" and "torturer" to describe him.

"I also refused to talk to the European Stars and Stripes for the last two years of my command in Germany, for their extreme bias and single-minded focus on Abu Ghraib," he said. (my emphasis)

I have no sympathy for this guy. He screwed up on this torture business, at the very best. More likely, he was complicit in war crimes.

And what does he have to say about it? Why, he whines about how that awful anti-American Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press! was mean to him and even reported that people criticized him over the criminal, sadistic torture that was exposed at Abu Ghuraib. Including those pro-terrorist leftwing America-haters at Stars and Stripes.

How did an irresponsible whiner like this get to be a commanding general?

Gen. Antonio Taguba, on the other hand, who received the duty to investigate the torture occurring under Sanchez' command, found that his career hit an immediate dead-end. Because our honorable, divinely-inspired generals like Sanchez who are too sacrosanct to be criticized (so our Congress told us in a bipartisan vote) don't like it when a guy like Taguba comes in and investigations serious crimes and tries to do so with a serious intent to uphold his duty under the law, his oath as an officer, probably his personal religious convictions, and, hell - maybe even that concept called "honor".

In Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (2004), Seymour Hersh described Sanchez' role in the Abu Ghuraib torture:

Taguba [during his investigation] also got access to a classified report by General Geoffrey Miller, the Guantánamo commander. In late August 20093, Miller had brought a team of experts to Iraq to review the Army program.

His recommendations, filed in September, were radical: that Army prisons be geared, first and foremost, to interrogations and the gathering of information needed for the war effort. "Detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation ... to provide a safe, secure and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence," Miller wrote. The military police on guard duty at the prisons should make support of military intelligence a priority.

General Sanchez agreed, and on November 19, 2003, his headquarters issued an order formally giving the 2O5th Military Intelligence Brigade tactical control over the prison. General Taguba fearlessly took issue with the Sanchez orders, which, he wrote in his report, "effectively made an MI [military intelligence] Officer, rather than an MP [military police] officer, responsible for the MP units conducting detainee operations at that facility. This is not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agenda assigned to each of these respective specialties."

Miller's concept, as it emerged in later Senate hearings, was to "Gitmoize" the prison system in Iraq - to make it more focused on interrogation. While in Iraq, he briefed military commanders on the interrogation methods used in Cuba [Guantánamo]. A complete version of Miller's classified report, provided to some reporters in August 2004, made it clear that it had an ambitious goal: to turn Abu Ghraib into a center of intelligence for the Bush Administration's global war on terrorism. General Sanchez, he wrote, envisioned a system that could "drive the rapid exploitation of internees to answer ... theater and national level counter terrorism requirements" and respond to the "needs of the Global War on Terrorism." Miller apparently believed that the prisoners in Iraq, if interrogated correctly, could provide strategic intelligence relevant to operations around the world. If his recommendations were put into effect immediately, the general claimed, "a significant improvement of actionable intelligence will be realized within thirty days." (my emphasis)

Of course, even if Sanchez were fool enough to believe that, it would still have been a criminal act on his part to approve the torture that was actually implemented at Abu Ghuraib. As Hersh goes on to explain, though, the idea that locals swept up haphazardly along with common criminals that were also in the Abu Ghuraib population could provide intelligence on worldwide operations of Al Qa'ida was just plain goofy on the face of it.

What is going on in our armed forces that men like Sanchez get to senior positions like that? This guy should have been writing press releases for the American Legion and making speeches at John Birch Society meetings, not commanding an army in an exceptionally difficult situation like the Iraq War. (Although the Spanish surname probably limits the Bircher gig option.)

I think war critics need to be alert to the fact that scoundrels like Sanchez are trying to make themselves into victims to avoid historical and possibly future legal consequences for their failures and misdeeds. I understand the temptation to highlight their criticisms of the war. But it's time that war critics distinguish clearly between serious criticism and alibis like the ones Sanchez is tossing out. Because the alibis are only aimed at deflecting criticism from our infallible generals. And that would be ridiculous to give characters like Sanchez a free pass.

Tags: iraq war, ricardo sanchez, seymour hersh, torture

Iraq War: The Stars and Stripes on soldiers' morale

I just want to mention again the series in the armed services paper Stars and Stripes about troop morale in Iraq. It would be naive to say it was done without an awareness of the current disputes over the Iraq War. But the reader can get at least some glimpses of the morale situation without it being first filtered and "spun" through political and PR slogans.

It's especially interesting to read the full text of this interview with Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top officer commanding American forces in Iraq, and then to compare what the news article summarizing the interview selected out of the interview.

This is one passage that stands out to me in the full interview (my emphasis):

[Stars and Stripes]: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you're the first officer to lead V Corps who is not a Vietnam veteran. Still, I imagine you have been a student of that war on more on more than a few occasions. What lessons from Vietnam should we remember in Iraq?

[Sanchez]: I think the key is that the only way we're going to fail here in this country is by walking away from Iraq. The defeat in Vietnam was because we walked away from it. We can't afford to retreat back. I firmly believe that this is one of the battlegrounds in the global war on terrorism and it will continue - there's a long road ahead.

This is a version of the Vietnam stab-in-the-back theory that has become widely accepted among military officers. The idea is that the Army could eventually have beaten the Viet Cong/National Liberation Front in Vietnam if "the media" and "the politicians" back home hadn't lost their determination.

To call this a half-truth or a quarter-truth would be to misconstrue it. It's an ideological reading of the Vietnam experience that allowed the Army to stick with its orientation toward conventional "mid-level" conflict, and try to avoid guerrilla wars.

Avoiding guerrilla wars is great as long as it's consistent with America's national security. But now the Army is in the middle of one.

Tags: iraq war, ricardo sanchez, stab-in-the-back, vietnam war