Brookings' dynamic duo says the surge should be continued "at least into 2008," while Greg Djerejian discovers Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno in Baghdad saying "we all know" the surge forces will start leaving "in the beginning of 2008."
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Odierno Versus O'Pollahan
19 Aug 2007 11:10 am
Comments (24)
What did Odierno say?
You mistakenly cut off the rest of your post.
Yet another example of
I think Matt passed out from inhaling too much concentrated stupid from Michael O'Hanlon and couldn't finish his post. Somebody call Casa Matt and make sure he's OK.
I know that the media devotes far too little attention to dovish views, but this is ridiculous.
"I know that the media devotes far too little attention to dovish views, but this is ridiculous."
Heh. That's especially funny because on Meet the Press this morning David Gregory said
Hmmm... what does Odierno know? Just as one sometimes wonders whether oil Republicans conspire to raise gas prices in the year before an election, so that they can then drop them in the months just prior to the election, one also wonders if part of the point of the surge is just to bump up troop levels to a level where they can later be publicly and dramatically cut with no net change, but giving the Republican candidate a boost.
There's another variable: Ordinary turnover due to troop rotations in Iraq will force the Pentagon to reduce levels to around 135,000 by next spring or early summer. That's about the same force level as pre-surge. An extension of tours beyond the current 15 months would be very unpopular with troops and their families, and politically untenable at home. Without a big boost in recruitment, such high force levels in Iraq can't be sustained for long.
Conveniently, the reductions in force levels will provide further evidence that the surge was a "success" just in time for the fall campaigns.
The New York times has a pretty strong anti-war piece written by a bunch of active sergeants. It might not be sufficiently anti-war for some (I doubt these guys think immediate and total withdrawal is right or possible), but they do say this of the Iraqis:
They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
For what it's worth, this is basically conventional military wisdom (Bacevich noted it a few weeks back in a piece that I think was in TNR, or somewhere; Casey indicated the same thing in his speech at National Press Club last week) - the surge is simply not militarily sustainable past March/April 2008.
One reason it's an important point is because I think it points to the likely Bush administration strategy heading into and out of September: they will turn a military necessity into a rhetorical virtue, arguing that the surge has been successful enough, should be continued until spring 2008 and then we should begin a drawdown on the basis of that success - just as Bush has promised, he wants to withdraw too, but only because of success and only in a more moderate way than the Democrats. Bush will thus appear to be listening to the people and pleasing the pundits, when in fact all he will be doing is bowing to military necessity and continuing at or near the maximum level of forces possible until the end of his term (presumably somewhere between 110-130k). Or if the Republicans in Congress really put up a fight, which I don't think they will, Bush will authorize a drawdown to a symbolically significant number like 99.9k.
What are the odds Odierno is saying this because he knows (second-hand and first-hand) that once the 2008 political election season kicks in most of the remaining (and cynical) GOP support for the surge will evaporate as they go running for cover.
The Republican Party has become a cruel joke.
Is it possible for Republicans like McCain and Guiliani not to support the Iraq War at this point? McCain repeatedly says that the surge is the right strategy and that we can't give up in Iraq, and Guiliani has been even more vocal about being super aggressive in Iraq and everywhere else. They promise catastrophe if there is a withdrawal.
I guess their only cover would be Bush himself backing down, which he probably would do only to a certain extent. Or maybe if General Petraeus comes out strongly in favor of evacuation, they could back down. But how likely is that? These guys seemed locked into a war without end just like every politician is locked into a war without end against drugs. They'd rather look tough and perpetuate failiure than step back and reassess.
Here's an AP article on this very topic, which includes Casey's comments from last week. The article makes it sound much more up in the air than the military, as illustrated by Odierno's comment, seems to think it is, and that may reflect the chat with Frederick Kagan, who says some ambiguous things in the article but who in fact a few weeks back at the AEI v CNAS event apparently advocated mobilizing the Guard to maintain the surge, if it should be extended - strategic and political exhaustion on our part be damned. And of course every time his back is against the wall as far as what he is being told by all his people, Bush lurches for victory by going once again to the AEI well. So who knows.
I was referring to the Congressional Republicans, and it will be very interesting to see what level of synchrony we end up seeing between the Republicans running for president and for Congress. I would suggest that this is still very much in the air and that the possibility of electoral disaster for the GOP is very much real.
An electoral disaster for the GOP doesn't mean the occupation of Iraq will end, and widening the conflict to Iran appears probable. How dare those Iranians attack us? I feel a draft.
So O'Pollahan say the surge should continue into '08 and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno says it will end in '08 -- which means it will have to continue into '08. Some contradiction there.
Chances are, the surge will end the way it began: gradually, over a period of about six months, as the extra brigades end their tours and aren't replaced.
I've followed O'Dierno's comments from Iraq since back in the summer of 2003.
This clown is the biggest idiot in the US military.
Nothing that comes out of his mouth is worth listening to. He's a born professional liar.
The amusing thing about the notion that the surge is not "militarily sustainable" is that Bush and Cheney are ginning up a war in Iran. How is THAT going to be "militarily sustainable"?
We stand a chance of LOSING - not being defeated, but LOSING - our entire military in Iraq if that happens, according to William Lind.
We've already extended tours of duty to 15 months. The troops are close to exhaustion. Does this stop Bush and Cheney? Does ANYBODY see ANY evidence of that?
So why assume that the "facts on the ground" will overrule Bush and Cheney? The only "facts on the ground" that will do that is a US military mutiny.
If Bush orders tour extensions to 18 months, the yes-men in the Pentagon will salute and do it. They may hate it but their job is to salute and do it. The same applies to any attack on Iran.
Get a grip. Bush and Cheney DO NOT CARE what happens to the US troops as long as they obey orders.
It's that simple.
Therefore it doesn't matter what O'Dierno or Petraeus or anybody else thinks about what WILL be done.
That’s not exactly much of a contradiction. Maybe if they’d said “through 08”… but as it stands there is barely any disagreement there.
It will be interesting to see at exactly what point we declare success and start the pullback.
they promise catastrophe
The cynicism in that idea is soul-deadening.
There's catastrophe in front of their glass eyes now.
"The amusing thing about the notion that the surge is not "militarily sustainable" is that Bush and Cheney are ginning up a war in Iran. How is THAT going to be "militarily sustainable"?"
This suggestion that military action against Iran would resemble our involvement in Iraq right now is Cheney-esque. Military action against Iran is likely to look a lot more like Clinton's Desert Fox bombing campaign against Iraq's WMD sites. Those who oppose military action against Iran under any circumstances have compelling arguments to make about negative potential consequences of such action, but those pretending that it will involve an invasion of Iran with 150,000 troops are either deluded or dishonest.
Lt. Gen. Odierno was the genius who thought smash and grab was the best way to run counter insurgency. From the Tom Ricks in the WaPo 7/24/06:
"Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population."
The surge, like the war itself, has already accomplished the administrations goals. The invasion of Iraq got W & Co. off the hook for the failures before 9/11 and the botched "invasion" of Afghanistan. It also helped the GOP in the off year elections of 2002, paved the way for more tax cuts and allowed W. to run for re-election as a war president. In the final months of 2006, the administration's Iraq policy had been discredited and the talk was how long before the new Dem Congress forced a policy change. The administration latched on to the surge as a way to change the debate (from the overall war to the surge) and push the day of reckoning farther down the timeline.
If the Dem Congress had actually forced a policy change they could have run as the anti-debacle party in 2008. With the start of withdrawal pushed backed, both GOP Senators and the President get what they need. Vulnerable Republicans will "break" with the administration after it no longer matters and the President will be out of office before the disastrous last days of the American occupation.
Administration policy has always been focused on domestic politics. The war is no exception.
Fred
Are you really missing it? I take it the point is that no person who knew what Odierno says we all know - that the surge cannot be sustained past March-April 2008 - would say that the surge should be sustained at least into 2008.
Or alternately, if someone wanted to defy that perceived military reality, they should be more forthright that they agree with the AEI position that, strategy and politics and the armed forces be damned, tours should be extended to 18 months and/or the Guard and Reserve should be mobilized - breaking all the promises that have been made to those people and potentially doing all sorts of other damage. Some of the good folks at AEI are honest about that. If you think the surge can and should be extended beyond spring 2008, it seems incumbent on you to explain how.
"those pretending that it will involve an invasion of Iran with 150,000 troops are either deluded or dishonest."
Excuse me, but you are the "deluded and dishonest" one here.
Once the US begins bombing Iran, and the Iranians retaliate against the US forces in Iraq with their agents in Iraq, and the Iraqi Shia forces they can call on, and perhaps their own incursions across the border into Iraq, exactly HOW do you think the US is going to prevent this from becoming a ground war?
Besides which, the entire intent of this operation is clearly to seize the oil fields of Khuzestan, which is right across the border from Iraq - if for no other (ostensible) reason than to cut off the Iranian government's oil revenues so they cannot continue the war.
Anybody who thinks this is going to be a little "three week air war" is a complete idiot. That may be the Administration spin, but anybody looking at the intent and actual words of the neocons knows that is not true - the goal is "regime change in Iran" and there is NO WAY this is going to be done from the air.
Once the US begins bombing Iran, and the Iranians retaliate against the US forces in Iraq with their agents in Iraq, and the Iraqi Shia forces they can call on, and perhaps their own incursions across the border into Iraq, exactly HOW do you think the US is going to prevent this from becoming a ground war?
Listen up, defeatist, the United States controls the world. We know this because Guiliani's manifesto said so, and he knows everything about terrorism, because he happened to be mayor during a terrorist attack. All that would prevent a brilliant US victory is if we fail to harvest the sufficient amount of willpower which, as the great Mark Steyn once had it, is what "truly wins wars". (This is why Geronimo lost to the United States, by the way)
Sarcasm aside, the results of a US Airstrike could really be deadly for our soldiers in Iraq. I would advise people to check out the writings of William Lind, an arch-arch-arch-conservative writer, who is pretty sound on military strategy.
Comments closed September 02, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
What did Odierno say?
You mistakenly cut off the rest of your post.
Posted by Armando | August 19, 2007 11:25 AM