President Bush had this to say when he learned that the proposed Iraq supplemental bill that will be sent his desk for his signature includes a timetable for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq:
“I’m disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course,” Bush said.
“They chose to make a political statement,” he said. “That’s their right but it is wrong for our troops and it’s wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders.”
Yes, like that hasn’t ever happened before. Does anyone remember Fallujah after four American security contractors were killed and their burned corpses paraded around the city by a joyful crowd? Well, I do. And guess what? Overriding the wishes of his military commanders is something Georgie Boy has been doing for a long time in Iraq:
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept. 12 — The outgoing U.S. Marine Corps general in charge of western Iraq said Sunday he opposed a Marine assault on militants in the volatile city of Fallujah in April and the subsequent decision to withdraw from the city and turn over control to a security force of former Iraqi soldiers. […]
Conway arrived in Iraq in March pledging to accelerate reconstruction projects as a way to subdue Anbar province, dominated by Sunni Muslims. But on March 31 he was confronted in Fallujah with the killing of four U.S. security contractors, whose bodies were mutilated or burned by a celebrating mob. Conway said he resisted calls for revenge, and instead advocated targeted operations and continued engagement with municipal leaders.
“We felt like we had a method that we wanted to apply to Fallujah: that we ought to probably let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge,” he said in an interview with four journalists after the change-of-command ceremony. “Would our system have been better? Would we have been able to bring over the people of Fallujah with our methods? You’ll never know that for sure, but at the time we certainly thought so.” […]
He would not say where the order to attack originated, only that he received an order from his superior at the time, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Some senior U.S. officials in Iraq have said the command originated in the White House.
In short, Bush rejected the advice of his commander in the field in order to get revenge on the city of Fallujah for causing Karl Rove a public relations defeat. That was more important than a strategy to build trust and win allies among Iraqi civilians in volatile Sunni areas like Fallujah.
Here’s a few other examples of where Bush ignored the advice of his generals and military advisors …
(cont.)
…starting with the initial invasion plan, itself. Remember General Shinseki, former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff? I do, as well as the advice he gave that we needed hundreds of thousands of more troops to invade and occupy Iraq than the plan proposed by Donald Rumsfeld, and ultimately implemented by Tommy Franks, for that mission:
The patron saint, but also the object lesson, of the many officers who are mulling their options—whether to heed Newbold’s rallying cry or keep their heads down and shoes polished—is Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff who spoke truth to power and got slammed for his troubles. Shortly before the invasion, Shinseki told the Senate armed services committee that “a few hundred thousand” troops would be needed to impose order after the war was over. Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy secretary of defense, upbraided him in public the next day; Rumsfeld named Shinseki’s successor a year in advance of his scheduled retirement, thus undercutting his authority for the rest of his term. In his Times op-ed, Gen. Eaton wrote of Shinseki’s punishment, “The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.”
Nonetheless, even back in 2003, some officers recognized that Shinseki, and not his civilian taskmasters, had been right about what it took to accomplish the mission in Iraq:
General Shinseki’s testimony that merely keeping the peace in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops was dismissed summarily as out of step with the purported revolution in military affairs. He realized, however, what eludes most others—the size of the ground force must be tied to political tasks at hand as well as military missions. The Iraqi military could be beaten by a small ground force in concert with an overwhelming air and missile campaign. The Iraqi people can be won over only by placing enough legions in the sands of Mesopotamia to provide the necessary safety and security for the rebuilding process to begin and flourish. The 200,000 troops currently on the ground seem less than ideal. His farewell address warning to beware attempting 12 divisions’ worth of requirements with only 10 divisions is a testament to his understanding of the link between political ends and military means. Unfortunately, no senior Defense Department official (outside the armed services) chose to hear those parting words of wisdom firsthand.
Now, of course, we know General Shinseki was right to insist that many more troops be deployed to secure Iraq after the invasion. But Bush trusted Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and their merry band of regime changers to plan military strategy more than he did a career soldier who had risen to the highest rank possible in the US Armed Forces.
All along the way, Bush has ignored the advice or wishes of his military commanders (whether regarding the attack on Fallujah or other matters), and based his decisions on his own domestic political
concerns rather than on what the troops on the ground needed, or their commanders requested.
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, The Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.
The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President George W. Bush’s top advisers were often at odds, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from U.S. commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.
The disagreements regarding the Iraq war between the top military brass and Bush, Rumsfeld and his “Best and Brightest” team of necons at the Pentagon soon led to extreme tensions and mistrust. It became clear that Bush backed Rumsfeld 100%, and Rummy had absolutely no inclination to follow the advice of military commanders if it didn’t agree with his own pre-conceived ideas.
It is startling to hear, in private conversations, how widely and deeply the U.S. officer corps despises this secretary of defense. The joke in some Pentagon circles is that if Rumsfeld were meeting with the service chiefs and commanders and a group of terrorists barged into the room and kidnapped him, not a single general would lift a finger to help him.
And lest we forget, Bush rejected the advice of his own commanders in Iraq, and of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, when he instead latched onto the plan to “surge” more troops into Iraq which had been proposed by Frederick Kagan, another armchair military expert who had never served one day in the US military:
White House aides also debated how to respond to the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan, congressionally chartered commission headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III, a close friend of the president’s father, and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (Ind.), a widely respected Democrat. At first, officials said, they hoped the group would prove a vehicle for bringing the two parties together after a bitter election.
But the panel advanced several key proposals that the White House quickly made clear were unacceptable to Bush, particularly a plan to withdraw U.S. combat forces by early 2008, open talks with Iraq’s neighbors Iran and Syria, and condition U.S. assistance on the Maliki government meeting defined political benchmarks. […]
Another problem for Bush was that the military did not necessarily want more troops. Army Gens. John P. Abizaid, the Middle East commander, and George W. Casey Jr., the commander in Iraq, opposed an influx of U.S. forces because they were unconvinced it would change the dynamics on the ground.
Resistance from Casey and the Joint Chiefs of Staff flared throughout the process. On Dec. 13, Bush went to the super-secure “tank” at the Pentagon to listen to his top generals, only to walk away convinced that some of them were trying to manage defeat rather than find a way to victory.
Of course, we all know what happened to Generals Abizaid and Casey. They were removed from their commands for daring to oppose his wishes, and Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus, commanders more willing to do Bush’s bidding, took their places. Yet Bush has the gall to claim that the Democratic leadership would be undermining our military commanders by putting in a few toothless provisions calling for a timetable to withdraw our troops from Iraq.
Not only that, but apparently he and Mr. Rove plan to go on the campaign trail again to attack the Democrats in Congress for their “defeatism.”
Democrats have argued that the election that left Democrats in control of Congress was a referendum for a change of strategy in Iraq. Bush used the same election results to argue his point.
“The American people did not vote for failure,” he said. “That is precisely what the Democratic leadership’s bill would guarantee. “It’s not too late for Congress to do the right thing.” […]
Radio ads expected to air Tuesday will attack Reid as treating troops like a “political football,” GOP officials said.
According to a transcript, an Iraq veteran identified as Capt. Trip Bellard says, “Senator Reid’s remarks undercut the morale of our soldiers and undermine our troops on the ground.”
Lotsa luck with that, Mr. Liar-in-Chief. Somehow, I doubt your strategy to pin the blame on the Democrats for your many failures to take the advice of your military commanders over the past 5 years was conceived by a military man. But then, character assassination and bald faced lies to mislead the American public isn’t really their forte, now is it?
