Yesterday I watched and listened to hours of Alice in Wonderland testimony by Petraeus and Crocker on the "fragile success" known as Iraq. Nothing like a strong shot of the unvarnished truth to wash away the bad taste.
Steve Coll, writing in The New Yorker has made the following observation:
A war born in spin has now reached its Lewis Carroll period. ("Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.") Last week, it proved necessary for the Bush Administration to claim that an obvious failure—Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s ill-prepared raid on rival Shiite gangs in Basra, which was aborted after mass desertions within Maliki’s own ranks—was actually a success in disguise, because it demonstrated the Iraqi government’s independence of mind.
We need to hear the plain and simple truth that our muzzled generals know in their hearts and demand that our Army be restored to policies embedded in reality.
This article is a gem of clarity -the perfect cure for the fuzzy fog of BS brought on by listening to hours of Petraeus/Crocker blather.
Military Conflict by Steve Coll
Coll summarizes the testimony last week before the Armed Services Committee of four star Army General Richard Cody on the impossible task being given to the military.
(The Army) was attempting to fight terrorism, quell the Taliban, invade and pacify Iraq, and, at the same time, prepare for future strategic challenges, whether in China or Korea or Africa. The endeavor was, Cody said, like "building an airplane in flight."
The suppression of professional military dissent helped to create the disaster in Iraq; now it is depriving American voters of an election-year debate about the defense issues that matter most. These include the nature and the location of the country’s global adversaries and interests, the challenge of a revitalizing Al Qaeda in Pakistan, the conundrum of Iran, the failing health of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and, to address all this, the need for a sustainable strategy that restores the Army’s vitality and makes rational use of America’s finite military resources. To implement such a strategy, it would not be necessary to rashly abandon Iraq to its fate, but it would be essential, at a minimum, to reduce American troop levels to well below a hundred thousand as soon as possible. In the long run, success or failure for the United States in Iraq will not hinge on who wins the argument about the surge; it will depend on whether it proves possible to change the subject.
In the words of General Cody:
The current demand for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply, and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies. . Soldiers, families, support systems and equipment are stretched and stressed. . . . Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it. If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the all-volunteer force and degrades the Army’s ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.
Coll frames the truth that needed to come out of the Petraeus Hearings. This truth and nothing but this truth is all that will save us from the inevitable collapse awaiting our nation if we remain in the grip of Rumsfield's ghost who would doom us with flawed military planning and policy based on an ideological pipe dream.