General Odom, my former commander, could hardly be called a wimp, wuss, pacifist, liberal, coward, flip-flopper, windbag, or opportunist. He is a Vietnam veteran who Reagan appointed to be the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), and since retiring from the Army, he has been a professor and a scholar at several conservative think tanks, including the Hudson Institute.
First, the "money quote":
"The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history," said Odom, now a scholar with the Hudson Institute.
So, what does General Odom
say we should do?
"The invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.
The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq," he said, "and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells."
This is not the first time that General Odom has spoken out - it is a damned shame that those concerned about the war have not taken advantage of the political "cover" that his comments in 2003 and 2004 would have provided. He's got no political ambitions - he's just mad as Hell at what Bush has done to our country and the world.
Like General Clark and General Zinni, he was against the war before it began. He has also been a pessimist about the war and occupation all along, and has not engaged in any of the fantasy thinking that "somehow" the U.S. or NATO can "fix" that which the U.S. has broken. I have agreed with General Odom with this all along.
Back in June of 2004, in an interview, General Odom said the following:
Q: You've said the United States should withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible. Why?
Odom: It was not in our interest to enter Iraq in the first place. It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980.
Our presence in Iraq risks turning it into a country that could become the base for terrorist operations and organizations like al Qaeda. Of the three war aims that the president set out-destruction of weapons of mass destruction, overthrowing Saddam's regime, and creating a liberal democracy there-the first has supposedly been accomplished, although it seems to have been accomplished before we invaded; the second, as I just pointed out, was not in our interest, it's more in our opponents' interest; and the third I don't think is possible.
Our creating a liberal democracy there is not going to happen any time soon. We're more likely to have an illiberal democracy with theocratic rulers, very much as in Iran. And any Iraqi [leader] who has much legitimacy with the population cannot afford to be pro-Western or pro-United States. Therefore, once U.S. forces leave, it is almost inevitable that an anti-Western, anti-U.S. regime will arise. I don't see that as an outcome that makes sense for the United States. In fact, it struck me when we invaded last year that if we did it without European and East Asian support, we were risking losing our alliance in Europe in exchange for Iraq, and that is a very undesirable exchange.
Q: Why did you wait until very recently to make this argument?
Odom: I held these views before the invasion. I was quoted in The Washington Post in February 2003 on my point of view. But during the first three, four, or five months after the intervention, the mood of the country was such that you really couldn't debate this, so I decided to raise these issues again this spring because I think events are beginning to show that these judgments may be well-founded.
Q: Is it physically possible for the United States, with more than 130,000 troops in Iraq, to just pull out?
Odom: When I say pull out as soon as possible, I say this to galvanize the discussion about whether we ought to decide to do it. The tactics of the withdrawal are quite another thing. First, I would go to the United Nations Security Council, eat a little humble pie, and point out to the Europeans that what happens in Iraq is as important to them as it is to us, maybe more so, and that we made a mess of it and we would like to have the United Nations endorse some sort of United Nations force there, a stability force. And while we will contribute to it for a time, we're beginning to bring our forces down, and clearly our 134,000 troops are not enough. So we hope the United Nations and the Security Council will be able to generate forces to back up ours and actually supplement them now.
I would use the 30 June deadline [for turning sovereignty over to Iraq] to try to start that process, if [the members of the Security Council] agree. Now, there are reasons they may not agree. Of course, if I were advising the president right now, I would tell him to be quite candid, in [communications via] confidential diplomatic channels, that the United States is headed out and that his timeline for getting U.S. troops out of there will be somewhere toward the end of this calendar year, maybe into early next calendar year. Not necessarily setting a specific date. But I would make it unambiguously clear that we are going to withdraw, and if Iraq falls into civil war and if all these unhappy things occur, we're just going to have to accept them.
Western imperialism and occupation is the problem. Iraq wasn't some ass-backward country before we bombed the Hell out of them - it was a modern nation with a highly educated, secular population. Saddam had women in his cabinet and in senior positions of leadership in the military.
Iraq's military was second only to Israel in the region. There were over 1 million military and security force members on duty when Bremer cut them loose in 2003, and millions more who were trained and had previously served. They don't want to serve a puppet government for the U.S., NATO, or anyone else. The Iraqis don't need their country rebuilt by foreign laborers when the unemployment rate is over 50%.
Denial of reality won't make the problems go away. The Iraqis don't want and don't need to be occupied by anyone. They can take our money and fix things themselves...of course, the "Gucci guerrillas from London" (Gen. Zinni's term) will likely be executed or exiled from Iraq, but that's what they deserve for being opportunistic and trying to come in and rule a country that many of them hadn't lived in for decades.
A few days ago, there was a meeting of former Iraqi army officers that The London Times reported on:
It was meant to be a moment of reconciliation between the old regime and the new, a gathering of nearly 1,000 former Iraqi army officers and tribal leaders in Baghdad to voice their concerns over today's Iraq. But it did not go as planned.
General after general rose to his feet and raised his voice to shout at the way Iraq was being run and to express his fear of escalating war. "They were fools to break up our great army and form an army of thieves and criminals," said one senior officer. "They are traitors," added another.
The sense of hatred felt by these influential men, mostly Sunni Arabs, towards the new order installed by the US since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 is palpable and it bodes ill for Iraq. The country is entering a critical political period that will see a deeply divisive referendum on the constitution on 15 October, the trial of Saddam four days later and an election for the National Assembly on 15 December. The Sunnis fear the constitution means the break up of Iraq and their own marginalisation.
The meeting, in a heavily guarded hall close to the Tigris, was called by General Wafiq al-Sammarai, a former head of Iraqi military intelligence under Saddam who fled Baghdad in 1994 to join the opposition. He is now military adviser to President Jalal Talabani.
His eloquent call for support for the government in his fight against terrorism did not go down well. He sought to reassure his audience that no attack was planned on the Sunni Arab cities of central Iraq such as Baquba, Samarra and Ramadi, as the Iraqi Defence minister had threatened. He said people had been fleeing the cities but "there will be no attack on you, no use of aircraft, no bombardment by the Americans". The audience was having none of it.
General Salam Hussein Ali sprang to his feet and bellowed that there was "no security, no electricity and no clean water and no government". The only solution was to have the old Iraqi army back in its green uniforms, not those supplied by the Americans. He was dubious about how far Iraq was a democratic country, since nobody paid attention to the grievances of the people.
General Sammarai had called for criticism but seemed dismayed at its ferocity, at one moment exclaiming "this is chaos," though he later apologised and said he supposed it was democracy. He said most of the trouble in Iraq was caused by foreign terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, prompting another officer to mutter: "I don't think Zarqawi will threaten us because we are against occupation."
The meeting was important because the officer corps of the old Iraqi army consider themselves as keeper of the flame of Iraqi nationalism. One of them asked General Sammarai to stop using the American word "general" and use the Arabic word lewa'a instead.
In conversation, the officers made clear that they considered armed resistance to the occupation legitimate. General Sammarai told The Independent that he drew a distinction between terrorists blowing up civilians and nationalist militants fighting US troops.
The past three years have been a disaster for the old Iraqi army. The US viceroy, Paul Bremer, disbanded the army and security forces in May 2003. In a single stroke, hundreds of thousands of professional soldiers were out of a job. Some were reduced to driving taxis. General Hassan Kassim said he was now receiving a pension of just $40 a month.
Everybody at the meeting said there must be no distinction between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. But as they spoke it became evident that the officers are frightened of being persecuted as Sunni. One said there were random arrests in Adhamiyah, a Sunni strong-hold. Another asked why all the talk was about Zarqawi when people were being killed by the Badr Brigade, a powerful Shia militia.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Sammarai, the imam of the Sunni mosque of the Umm al-Qura, the headquarters of the powerful Muslim Scholars Association, first called for Sunni and Shia solidarity. But he added that he had just spoken to a Sunni from Ramadi who was arrested by the police and tortured. The imam claimed the police had said: "For every Shia killed in Fallujah or Ramadi, a Sunni would be killed in Baghdad."
General Sammarai concluded: "All the officers are against the American occupation. But when they come to my office they say that if the Americans leave there will be civil war."
An Iraqi female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a US military office in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar yesterday, killing herself and at least five others and wounding 53, police said. It was believed to be the first attack by a female suicide bomber in Iraq since the insurgency began. The US said the bomb targeted civilians at a civil military operations centre while they were filing for compensation over lost relatives or damaged property.
Back in April, 2004, Odom told the world in the Wall Stree Journal:
"...Staying the course in Iraq is untenable...The question IS NOT whether we are going to fail in Iraq. We have failed. The issue is how high a price we're going to pay - less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later." Odom added, "The ability of Islamist militants to use Iraq as a beachhead for attacks against American interests elsewhere may increase."