Bursting the Bubble

A front page headline on this morning's Washington Post website, Bush Venturing from "Bubble", suggests that the desperate situation in Iraq has forced a change in style on President Bush:  No longer can he afford to squelch any and all dissenting opinion.

When retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey criticized the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war three years ago, he was lambasted as an armchair general and deemed an adversary by the Pentagon. So even McCaffrey was surprised to find himself in the Oval Office this week giving President Bush his thoughts on Iraq.

Post writer Peter Baker follows with a rundown of the Washington insiders who detect or dismiss what Baker describes as a "new willingness by the administration to heed the advice of others rather than sticking stubbornly to its position".  A former congressman sees positive signs, while a retired colonel is dubious.  The recent White House shake up, with appointments of Josh Bolten, Tony Snow, and Hank Paulson, is offered as more evidence of a new willingness to consider opposing views.

But while there are indications of some kind of change, maybe it's not so much with the Administration.  After his brief appearance in the opening paragraph General McCaffrey goes unmentioned until the very end of the story where we learn that he recently returned from Iraq.

McCaffrey is another Washington veteran who hasn't always found his advice welcomed by the administration. A division commander in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, McCaffrey has been highly critical of the Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's leadership in the current war. But on returning from his latest foray to Iraq, McCaffrey was included among six specialists who briefed Bush for 90 minutes on Tuesday, then was told he was free to speak to the media on the White House driveway. "The president seemed open to views," McCaffrey said in a separate interview afterward.

McCaffrey, highly critical of Rumsfeld's leadership in the past, may have learned something during "his latest foray to Iraq".  As luck would have it, he recorded the findings from his visit in a memo to Colonel Mike Reese and Colonel Cindy Jebb, both of the United States Military Academy.  General McCaffrey's memo consists of thirteen bullet points followed by a conclusion.  Let me cherry pick the highlights.

1^st - The morale, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction - I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, an understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor.

2^nd- The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent - most are adequate... The Partnership Program with U.S. units will be the key to success with the Embedded Training Teams augmented and nurtured by a U.S. Maneuver Commander. This is simply a brilliant success story.

3^rd - The Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement in capability since MG Joe Peterson took over the program. The National Police Commando Battalions are very capable - a few are simply superb and on par with the best U.S. SWAT units in terms of equipment, courage, and training. Their intelligence collection capability is better than ours in direct HUMINT... This will be a ten year project requiring patience, significant resources, and an international public face. This is a very, very tough challenge which is a prerequisite to the Iraqis winning the counter-insurgency struggle they will face in the coming decade. We absolutely can do this. But this police program is now inadequately resourced.

4^th - The creation of an Iraqi government of national unity is a central requirement. We must help create a legitimate government for which the Iraqi security forces will fight and die. If we do not see the successful development of a pluralistic administration in the first 120 days of the emerging Jawad al-Maliki leadership - there will be significant chance of the country breaking apart in warring factions among the Sunnis and Shia - with a separatist Kurdish north embroiled in their own potential struggle with the Turks...However, in my view, the Iraqis are likely to successfully create a governing entity. The intelligence picture strongly portrays a population that wants a federal Iraq, wants a national Army, rejects the AIF as a political future for the nation, and is optimistic that their life can be better in the coming years.

5^th- The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi government.

6^th- The U.S. Inter-Agency Support for our strategy in Iraq is grossly inadequate. A handful of brilliant, courageous, and dedicated Foreign Service Officers have held together a large, constantly changing, marginally qualified, inadequately experienced U.S. mission

7^th - We face a serious strategic dilemma. Are U.S. combat troops operating in a police action governed by the rule of Iraqi law?

8^th - Thanks to strong CENTCOM leadership and supervision at every level, our detainee policy has dramatically corrected the problems of the first year of the War on Terrorism.

9^th - The stateside Army and Marine Corps needs significant manpower augmentation to continue the Iraq counter-insurgency and Iraqi training mission.

10^th- CENTCOM and the U.S. Mission are running out of the most significant leverage we have in Iraq - economic reconstruction dollars. Having spent $18 billion - we now have $1.6 billion of new funding left in the pipeline. Iraq cannot sustain the requisite economic recovery without serious U.S. support.

11^th - We need to better equip the Iraqi Army with a capability to deter foreign attack - and to have a leveraged advantage over the Shia militias and the AIF insurgents they must continue to confront.

12^th- There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the U.S. media. We need to bridge this gap. Armies do not fight wars - countries fight wars.

13^thU.S. public diplomacy and rhetoric about confronting Iranian nuclear weapons is scaring neighbors in the Gulf.

And finally, from McCaffrey's conclusion:

There is no reason why the U.S. cannot achieve our objectives in Iraq. Our aim must be to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not: enslave its own people, threaten its neighbors, or produce weapons of mass destruction. This is a ten year task. We should be able to draw down most of our combat forces in 3-5 years. We have few alternatives to the current US strategy which is painfully but gradually succeeding. This is now a race against time. Do we have the political will, do we have the military power, will we spend the resources required to achieve our aims?

It was very encouraging for me to see the progress achieved in the past year. Thanks to the leadership and personal sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of men and women of the CENTCOM team and the CIA – the American people are far safer today than we were in the 18 months following the initial intervention.

Admittedly there are negatives in the General's assessment, but the negatives call for adjustments to be made, not abandonment of our goals.  What General McCaffrey says our aim must be, "to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not: enslave its own people, threaten its neighbors, or produce weapons of mass destruction," has been our objective all along. 

He includes too much praise and too many positive conclusions for his opinions to be considered dissent.  Though the Washington Post article claims he's been highly critical of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and he doesn't mention Rumsfeld anywhere in his findings, a share in McCaffrey's praise for the military has to accrue to the Secretary.  He commands it.  Only if Rumsfeld were an ineffectual, hands off figurehead presiding over an organization that runs itself, could you conclude otherwise.  And Rumsfeld can hardly be accused of having a hands off style or being an ineffectual leader.

While McCaffrey directs his praise almost entirely to the "hundreds of thousands of men and women of the CENTCOM team and the CIA" his conclusion that the American people are safer now implies an acceptance, maybe a grudging acceptance, that taking the battle to Iraq may not, after all, have been the wrong strategy in fighting the War on Terror.

The Post portrays an insulated George Bush and a reactive Administration.  Because Bush has the damnable nerve to hold to his own opinions and to continue to promote policies with which Post editors disagree, he is reported to be inflexible.  And every setback in the War on Terror is described as a failure of his policies.  In the meantime Bush goes on as always, listening to the advice that's out there, but choosing his own course.  He watches the progress and makes adjustments, but always, he keeps his eye on the ball. 

Nearly five years ago, Bush set a goal of winning the War on Terror, and he devised a strategy to do it.  His goal in the War on Terror was not to fight it to a draw, but to win it.  The centerpiece of his strategy, political reform in the Middle East, included the liberation of Iraq.  Much the dismay of the Washington Post and other critics, Bush has been inflexible on this.  He continues to work towards his original goal and he continues to believe his strategy will get us there.  I do too.  I'm optimistic.  I believe I can count on him to be inflexible.  To see this thing through to the end.

Comments

[Sissy Willis]

Great post -- Thanks for doing all the hard work of cherrypicking salient points. My favorite of McGaffrey's bullet points is #12:

"There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the U.S. media. We need to bridge this gap. Armies do not fight wars - countries fight wars."

I'm assuming the media will now turn on McGaffrey as a traitor to their cause of bringing down Bush.

[Tom Bowler]

Thanks, Sissy. Actually I think MSM are in denial over what McCaffrey wrote. In a post that took Brit Hume to task for cherry picking the positives from that very same memo, Media Matters made a point of highlighting the negatives. I think they'll continue to claim him as a critic on the strength statements like, 13th U.S. public diplomacy and rhetoric about confronting Iranian nuclear weapons is scaring neighbors in the Gulf. They will simply ignore. Just the way the Post article passing reference to McCaffrey's trip and no mention of his memo of findings.

In the opening paragraph the Post claims "...even McCaffrey was surprised to find himself in the Oval Office this week..." Come on! How surprised could he have been? Who asked him to go to Iraq?

I like #12 too.