Frederick Kagan, AEI’s fraudulent "military expert" testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs today during a hearing entitled Iraq: Is the Escalation Working? Retired Major General John Batiste, an active member of VoteVets.org, joined him. As most of you know, Batiste commanded the Army’s 1st Infantry Division during the battle for Fallujah in 2004.
During the hearing, Kagan, one of America’s Young Chickenhawks, had the nerve to tell General Batiste that he, Frederick Kagan, knew more about military strategy in Iraq than did the general.
Kagan’s remarks were insulting and, for the most part, pretty outrageous. Unfortunately, most mainstream media outlets failed to take notice.
The Chicago Tribune’s blog, however, was one of the few news organizations to stay on top of the story. Writing for the blog, Frank James had this to say about the hearing:
Major Gen. John Batiste (ret.) who commanded the Army's First Infantry Division in Iraq, and is a respected critic of the war, said the insurgents have the initiative since they can pick where and when to explode a truck bomb for instance.
But Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, rejected that view, saying that under the new strategy being executed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, the initiative was on the U.S. military's side.
Kagan also said because of the surge, if U.S. forces were playing whack-a-mole, they were playing it everywhere.
Batiste disagreed with Kagan on this.
It was one of those strange Washington moments where the military expert with real experience as a combatant commander in the battlespace at issue was being told he was wrong by an Inside-the-Beltway expert who likely never fired a weapon at anyone in anger.
Yeah. Exactly.
I’ve transcribed exactly what was said, but you can also watch the 10-minute video clip here. This is the exchange that occurred with regard to Iraqi and/or al Qaeda insurgents:
Batiste: They’ve got the initiative in Iraq right now. And they’re gonna continue to stir it up until the 15th of September and then beyond. There’ll be other timelines after that. But at some point, there will be a point on the calendar when we’ll begin that deliberate withdrawal.
Congressman John Boozman (R-AR): But as a general officer, you know again, if I were talking to you in Iraq and I said, "Look general, you know, are you for Congress setting a timeline, you know, without consulting with any of you guys, saying we’re out of here on August the 15th or whatever," would you be in favor of that?
Batiste: I would look at you and say, my soldiers are smart. They understand there’s no strategic focus in what we’re doing. They’re concerned. They would like to see Congress start providing oversight on the executive branch and, at some point, there will be a timeline. By definition we’re not staying there forever. My concern is, "Where’s the strategic focus?" Our soldiers and marines aren’t stupid. They understand this. They understand that we’re playing whack-a-mole day after day after day.
At that point, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies jumped in and explained the futility of legislating for the Iraqi government from Washington, D.C. When he was finished, Frederick Kagan asked if he could respond to all that crazy talk coming from General Batiste:
Kagan: Thank you. I’d like to take emphatic issue with General Batiste’s assertion that the enemy has the initiative. I do not believe at this point that the enemy has the initiative. I believe that General Petraeus and General Odierno have put together a very skillful operation that is also very different from previous operations that one might call whack-a-mole. One of the things that differentiates this operation is that it is a concerted effort to attack primarily al Qaeda sanctions (sic) and safe havens just about everywhere they are in Iraq all at once. That’s not something we’ve ever done before. And it amounts to whacking all the mole holes at the same time. Now, will it succeed, will it fail? I don’t know. But I do know that it is a very different approach from what we’ve taken before, and it is not whack-a-mole. But it has also given us the initiative.
At this point, Kagan starts referring to himself and the troops in Iraq as "we"—as if he were a current commander on the ground there.
We are choosing very much where to fight. We are fighting in neighborhoods that the enemy has long held and that the enemy did not expect to be contested. When they realized we were coming after them, they rigged them very heavily for defense, and that’s one of the main reasons why U.S. casualties have increased. If you look at past operations where we’ve conducted similar operations on a smaller scale without the coherency that this operation has, you also saw an initial surge in U.S. casualties as we went into areas that had been preparing. And then you saw a decline—dramatic—often dramatic decline in U.S. casualties as the clearing operations proceeded. I predict that you will see similar effect here.
Then Kagan tries to hammer it home on Batiste:
But I think it is really inappropriate to characterize this as a situation where the enemy has the initiative, or to characterize it as whack-a-mole or more of the same, when it’s really a very different operation.
Unable to stomach Kagan’s smarmy rebuttal, General Batiste then began to correct Kagan. As he did, he said:
This cycle repeats itself over and over and over. I take exception, very respectfully, with what Dr. Kagan said.
I assume that General Batiste was probably thinking, "Somebody needs to ship this uppity fat kid’s ass over to the desert, so he’ll get some idea as to the reality of the situation." But honestly, I wouldn’t know what the general was thinking. Batiste continued:
The enemy absolutely has the initiative in Iraq. We can’t predict the time and place of the next truck bomb IED that’s gonna kill 50 people. Are you kidding me? And this goes on and on. We don’t have the troops in Iraq to properly deny the enemy sanctuary.
Kagan then responded like the know-it-all in class who thinks he knows more than the teacher:
But with respect, the situation is different now from when General Batiste was in command in 2004 and 2005 and the operation is different.
What a little worm. By acting this way, Kagan displays the disconnected arrogance so prevalent among neo-cons. In fact, Kagan is the type of guy who wouldn’t even understand the significance of the word "chickenhawk." This guy has been so sheltered and pampered during his life that he has the nerve to use the pronoun "we" when he refers to himself and the troops in Iraq. He has no idea what it means to command troops in the field.
The guy just doesn’t get it. He’s the Paris Hilton of geo-politics.