Iraq: Goal is to Recover from Strategic Mistake

[So I lied...I did go out and didn't blog. Sue me. lol]

Retired Lt. Gen William Odom makes very inspired remarks in this Democratic Radio Address:

Short Bio

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.) delivered the Democratic Radio Address. General Odom has served as Director of the National Security Agency and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. In his address, General Odom will discuss why he believes President Bush should sign the conference report on the Iraq Accountability Act.

Excerpts

"Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.
"I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.

"In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

"Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

"To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is 'absent without leave.' He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

Indeed. This conflict has been nothing but counterproductive for American interests. It has weakened our military power, our international prestige and influence, eliminated whatever goodwill we had after 9/11, and emboldened and empowered the very enemies that we sought to defeat.

I particularly like how he phrases the idea that the goal can no longer be of winning but minimizing as much as possible the ill effects of entering into this conflict in the first place:

"The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.

"But it has served Iran's interest by revenging Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran's influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda's interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.

"We cannot 'win' a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

"A wise commander in this situation normally revises his objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally, but radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed.

"No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step will break the paralysis that now confronts us. Withdrawal is the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia.

"It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq's borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.

"The bill that Congress approved this week, with bipartisan support, setting schedules for withdrawal, provides the President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift, one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory, not some impossible outcome.

*claps* Ditto. To continue a failed policy is madness. To continue a failed policy that serves the interests of our enemies while robbing us of so much...its beyond madness.

And evidence of the ongoing failure of this whole endeavor continue to pile on.

Now it appears like the White House itself is not really all that optimistic about its much vaunted 'surge: (NY Times)

WASHINGTON, April 27 — The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.

In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.

That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week.

That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override
the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal
of combat troops by the end of March 2008.

Things are not looking good right now, so they dont even want to try and guage how their 'surge' is going. Even then there is a definite note of pessimism within the Administration.

I though this passage was revealing:

In January, Mr. Bush characterized Mr. Maliki as an architect of the troop increase plan, even while telling visiting Congressional leaders that “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,” according to two officials who were in the room. Pressed on why he thought the new strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back, “Because it has to.”

Add it with this correct analysis (from some Republicans no less!!)

Other Republicans have urged Mr. Bush to explain the political strategy more clearly, arguing that the troop increase is merely a tactic, and not one that can be sustained for long.

Not only merely a tactic, but a rehashing of the same failed tactics (with some modification).

This is NOT the first time that thousands of extra troops were sent in to Iraq to settle it down, and also it's not the first time that the extra troops failed to improve security in Iraq.

Oh, this time the president is confident that it will work. Why?

"Because it has to?"

Sigh.

There is a well-known saying that fits our president: (paraphrasing)

'A sure sign of madness is when a person does the exact same thing twice and expects the results to be different.'

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Yet, it's not just that the Iraq 'surge' is messed up (well, the whole endeavor is FUBAR).

The whole 'War on Terror' as run by this administration is failing miserably. As run by them it has been more than failure, it has been counter-productive.

According to an upcoming report by the State Department - Terror attacks up 29% in 2006. (McClatchy News Washington Bureau)

WASHINGTON - A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

(snip)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year's edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.

Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.

(snip)

Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.

Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.

Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.

The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don't include strikes against U.S. troops.

(snip)

President Bush and his aides routinely call Iraq the "central front" in Bush's war on terrorism and likely will say that the preponderance of attacks there and in Afghanistan prove their point.

But critics say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have worsened the terrorist threat.

The contention by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq and allied with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the
invasion has been disproved on numerous fronts.

[My Note: Most of them even prior to the invasion itself]

So this central front against terrorism is going badly. Indeed, while at one time it was not some haven for terrorism, because of the invasion it has become one. It has worsened the threat of terrorism, and caused so much damage military and political to us.

To continue with the same foreign policy, to continue with the same type of leaders who will follow in the same footsteps...

We know the the past 6+ years of leadership and foreign policy are failures, there is no reason we should support anyone who wants to follow in President Bush's footsteps.

After all, you know the saying about expecting different results from the same action....

Update: Juan Cole puts it well

Warrent Strobel and Jonathan S. Landry of McClatchy report that the annual State Department on terrorism will report a nearly 30% rise over the previous year, most of it accounted for by attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In other words Cheney has it exactly backwards. The US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is feeding terrorism, not preventing or lessening it. "They" won't follow us home if we leave. But they might if we don't.