Ray McGovern: Afghan Lessons From the Iraq War
[Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst at the CIA for 27 years, and is on the Steering Group of VIPS. ]
You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice.
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration’s dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this is not open-ended?”
It is the same question that policymakers and generals were grappling with three years ago with respect to Iraq. Let’s hope they learned the right lessons from that experience, but it’s doubtful since the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has been no help in shedding light on what actually happened.
If you remember, President George W. Bush had been voicing lots of optimism about the Iraq War and Vice President Dick Cheney had claimed the enemy was “in its last throes.” But it was becoming increasingly clear by 2006 that sectarian violence was ripping Iraq apart, that the death toll of American troops was rising, and that U.S. defeat was looming.
But Bush and Cheney were hell-bent on preventing defeat from happening, at least on their watch. Nor did they want the neo-con dream of a U.S.-dominated Iraq to die.
However, many in Washington – especially in the military – recognized that the Bush/Cheney war couldn’t be open-ended and that hard decision would have to be made for a gradual withdrawal to begin.
To his credit, Rep, Frank Wolf, R-Virginia, almost singlehandedly got Congress to create the “Iraq Study Group,” a blue-ribbon panel that was to assess the situation in Iraq and determine what the United States could still reasonably accomplish.
The effort was not blessed by Bush and Cheney, who considered the idea of second-guessing their judgments a nuisance or worse. But the panel became more of a threat when high-profile figures — Republican elder statesman James Baker and Democratic fixer Lee Hamilton — were picked to chair it.
Though Baker had been the Bush family’s consigliere for decades, he was considered a possible wild card. As a hard-headed pragmatist, he reflected Establishment thinking, which was coming to believe that the war-hungry neo-cons around Bush had bitten off more than they could chew in Iraq.
A New Course
By fall 2006, the members of the Iraq Study Group were convinced that a new course was needed for Iraq. And almost no sober thinker favored sending more troops.
The senior military, especially CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid and his man on the ground in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, emphasized that sending more U.S. troops to Iraq would signal leading Iraqi politicians that they could relax and continue to take forever to get their act together.
Here, for example, is Gen. Abizaid's answer at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 15, 2006, to Sen. John McCain, who had long been pressing vigorously for sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq:
”Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, ‘in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?’
“And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”...
Read entire article at Truthout
You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice.
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration’s dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this is not open-ended?”
It is the same question that policymakers and generals were grappling with three years ago with respect to Iraq. Let’s hope they learned the right lessons from that experience, but it’s doubtful since the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has been no help in shedding light on what actually happened.
If you remember, President George W. Bush had been voicing lots of optimism about the Iraq War and Vice President Dick Cheney had claimed the enemy was “in its last throes.” But it was becoming increasingly clear by 2006 that sectarian violence was ripping Iraq apart, that the death toll of American troops was rising, and that U.S. defeat was looming.
But Bush and Cheney were hell-bent on preventing defeat from happening, at least on their watch. Nor did they want the neo-con dream of a U.S.-dominated Iraq to die.
However, many in Washington – especially in the military – recognized that the Bush/Cheney war couldn’t be open-ended and that hard decision would have to be made for a gradual withdrawal to begin.
To his credit, Rep, Frank Wolf, R-Virginia, almost singlehandedly got Congress to create the “Iraq Study Group,” a blue-ribbon panel that was to assess the situation in Iraq and determine what the United States could still reasonably accomplish.
The effort was not blessed by Bush and Cheney, who considered the idea of second-guessing their judgments a nuisance or worse. But the panel became more of a threat when high-profile figures — Republican elder statesman James Baker and Democratic fixer Lee Hamilton — were picked to chair it.
Though Baker had been the Bush family’s consigliere for decades, he was considered a possible wild card. As a hard-headed pragmatist, he reflected Establishment thinking, which was coming to believe that the war-hungry neo-cons around Bush had bitten off more than they could chew in Iraq.
A New Course
By fall 2006, the members of the Iraq Study Group were convinced that a new course was needed for Iraq. And almost no sober thinker favored sending more troops.
The senior military, especially CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid and his man on the ground in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, emphasized that sending more U.S. troops to Iraq would signal leading Iraqi politicians that they could relax and continue to take forever to get their act together.
Here, for example, is Gen. Abizaid's answer at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 15, 2006, to Sen. John McCain, who had long been pressing vigorously for sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq:
”Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, ‘in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?’
“And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”...