Generals Say Iraq Withdrawal Might Be Delayed

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Shocker. On average Pres Obama seems to move back the goalposts for his timeline-for-withdrawal about every 2 months. SO, here it is Friday, and in the Friday trash dump we see a feeler tossed out.

General Ray Odierno: we may miss Iraq deadline to halt al-Qaeda terror

The activities of al-Qaeda in two of Iraq’s most troubled cities could keep US combat troops engaged beyond the June 30 deadline for their withdrawal, the top US commander in the country has warned.

US troop numbers in Mosul and Baqubah, in the north of the country, could rise rather than fall over the next year if necessary, General Ray Odierno told The Times in his first interview with a British newspaper since taking over from General David Petraeus in September.

He said that a joint assessment would be conducted with the Iraqi authorities in the coming weeks before a decision is made.

Combat troops are due to leave all Iraqi cities by the end of June. Any delay would be a potential setback for President Obama, who has pledged to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq by August 2010 as he switches his focus to Afghanistan.

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Scott: On average Pres Obama seems to move back the goalposts for his timeline-for-withdrawal about every 2 months.

Isn’t this a good thing? Meaning that President Obama is listening to military commanders? No more gut responses, looking into eyes, but listening to a professional and acting on his advice *caughs, CSA Shinseki*.

Oh blast. Nice try, but not today. Bush listened to his commanders-many of whom are now advising Obama, and so if Bush was wrong-then Obama is wrong. Shinseki…what a myth. Shinseki said there’d have to be hundreds of thousands of troops to stop an insurgency. Bush sent 30,000 after an insurgency had 4 years to settle, and the 30,000 did what Shinseki said would take almost half a million. Shinseki was wrong. He was wrong about the number needed to stop an insurgency. He was wrong that an insurgency could be prevented (as we found out later, Syria, Iran, and others backed Saddam’s govt in exile, harbored them, aided them, funded them, and more, and those actions couldn’t have been stopped by 400,000 (we know since Coalition forces were almost twice that for years, and it still wasn’t stopped). Shinseki was just one of tens of thousands of generals/admirals in the DoD, and the only reason he gets any attention from opponents of the war is because his position has been incorrectly used to make the insurgency look like Bush’s fault rather than the fault of Saddam’s regime in exile, Syria, Iran, Al Queda, etc.; it’s an effort to blame Bush rather than America’s enemies.

If Bush was wrong to listen to Gates, Petraeus, Fallon, and others, then Obama’s just as wrong to continue doing so today.

Scott, Shinseki was the CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY, not just some casual observer when he made his statements, and the enormous cost in lives due to the insurgency may have been avoided if Pres Bush had acted with the military we needed, verses the military we had.

Shinseki said there’d have to be hundreds of thousands of troops to stop an insurgency.

Um… and we had a huge insurgency develop because we did not maintain security and there was a total meltdown in civil society… for years. Only now is Iraq returning to some form of normalcy. Yes, the surge worked, but it has been time consuming and the lack of control cost many lives and lots of money. Maybe you might feel it was acceptable, but I don’t. If we secured the stockpiles of weapons, provided the appropriate level of security to civil society (immediately following the invasion), the outcome would have been better for all involved.

Shinseki was wrong. It took 30,000 troops and a different strategy than the one advocated by Shinseki to stop an insurgency. A massive occupying force would have made an insurgency WORSE and given a more viable casus belli for Iraqis and Arabs who would fight. In the end, Iraq has to be secure under Iraqi control. Having US forces there to do all the control is exactly what Dems opposed for years (and today) because it gives Iraqis no stake in fighting against an insurgency rather than against an occupation. Yeah, Shinseki was COS of the Army, and advocated overwhelming Army force. The COS of the Navy advocated carrier strikes, Marine Corps MEUs, etc. The COS of the USAF advocated a Kosovo style air war w Shock and Awe campaign. Franks-head of CENTCOM at the time-advocated using all assets-even diplomatic and covert-rather than just one like Shinseki. It also bears out the question of just how many Coalition forces were there in Iraq after May 2003? I’ll bet it was more than 400,000 when you count the ISF.

Nope. Shineseki was wrong. If he was right, then there should be 400,000 US troops in Iraq today and forever.

Fact is Bush listened to his generals, Obama listens to them now. Since he’s been listening to the generals, Obama’s ADVOCATED staying in Iraq and the Bush policy of staying until it is secure and stable.

I also believe (though I’d have to look) that Shinseki himself said that his testimony that opponents of the war cling to was taken out of context.

Code Pink ALERT….Code Pink ALERT

So, will there be protests in the streets and CNN coverage????

Will the “talking bobble heads” start to poo-poo the president?

Blast, suggest you read pg 275 of General Franks’ book, American Soldier. It describes how the joint Chiefs were pushing their service agendas rather than addressing the entire needs of an invasion. If Shinseki REALLY thought it would take the entire US Army, then he felt strong enough to speak up about it.

Shinseki was a self-annointed expert on everything, but was widely considered to be too by-the-book, inflexible, and unwilling to consider other factors outside of his beliefs (in other words, he refused to adapt and reformulate when conditions warranted or required it.) In the end, I think he just conflicted with too many of the other top brass, which distanced him from the decision makers.

It would be sort of funny if the right started opposing the military action in Afghanakistan; the media would either be completely baffled or (most likely) would just use the opportunity to showcase the “hypocrisy of the right” without questioning Obama’s military actions.

Jeff V

This can hardly be a surprise. Altho at this point, I’m reticent to tie Obama to this in any way right now. The agreement that the troops withdraw to the edges of the city centers is a SOFA agreement. Which is why the article specifically says a decidions will come perhaps in a few weeks, only after a joint assessment conducted with the Iraqi authorities.

At that point, the ground commanders can broach Obama with their mutually decided plan… and presumably Obama can either “listen” to the commanders, or flat out refuse to honor the SOFA and accept the consequences of such. At this point, we have no clue about Obama’s thoughts on whether the US troops elongate their stay in the cities.

Remember, also in the SOFA was the ability to mutually agree to change any of the terms in light of potential rise in violence that the Iraqis could not handle themselves. Emphasis on the term “mutual”…. which is ultimately the decision of a CIC.

Consider also that Zawahiri told us in no uncertain terms that the plans for Iraq was to wait for the US to leave, and re’enter in our wake. So the Iraqis must be up to snuff to battle the impending increased onslaught to destabilize Iraq.

So for me, this news is not a surprise.

~~~

blast, Scott is correct. Bush remained in constant touch with, and depended upon, the ground commanders and his military advisors. It is incorrect to accuse Bush of not doing so.

You may only accuse him of not listening to a particular voice. However there is never a consensus on one way to prosecute a war. Bush chose which advisors and commanders he felt best reflected the situation, and Obama will do the same.

So it remains to see if Obama will “listen” to Gates and Odierno on this particular situation. And is the cost of this possible delay to leave the cities in the hands of the Iraqis alone built in to his latest request for $85 bil in war/defense funds?

Hah….we’ve been down this road before, blast. I guess neither of our opinions have evolved much since.

Here’s a previous comment I made:

Here’s how I understand it from Feith’s account: Rumsfeld was willing to give General Franks and Abizaid all the troops they needed. Generals unhappy with troop numbers (especially those in 20/20 hindsight, and those who were did not take part in war planning and are therefore not privy to the back-and-forth discussions) didn’t fail to convince Rumsfeld; they failed to convince Abizaid or Franks for requesting more troops. The issue and possibility of more troops might have been mentioned, but no one at the time seems to have pressed for it.

Here’s what Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff you brought up and who is cited by the “gotcha” critics, said last month on CNN’s Situation Room with Blitzer:

WOLF BLITZER: …he gets a lot of praise from critics of the Iraq war for standing up to Defense, supposedly standing up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

JAMIE MCINTYRE: That’s right, Wolf. The story that’s going up around General Shinseki is that he spoke truth to power and was punished for it. But the facts suggest a slightly different, perhaps a little less complementary narrative. For better or worse, General Eric Shinseki’s distinguished 38-year Army career has been largely reduced to these 29 words uttered in a Senate committee almost six years ago.

[Flashback Feb 25, 2003]

GENERAL ERIC SHINSEKI: I would say that what’s been mobilized, to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required.

[/end flashback]

MCINTYRE: That off-the-cuff guesstimate just a month before the invasion of how many U.S. troops it would take to secure Iraq turned Shinseki into a poster boy for Bush administration critics. For years, they have argued the General’s sage advice for a larger ground force was ignored by his civilian bosses. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz, who famously dismissed the high-end estimate. In naming Shinseki as his pick for Veterans Secretary, President-elect Obama seemed to be subtly rebuking Rumsfeld, calling Shinseki someone who always stood on principle.

[videobyte]

BARACK OBAMA: No one will ever doubt that this former Army chief of staff has the courage to stand up for our troops and our veterans.

[/end videobyte]

MCINTYRE: But Shinseki has his critics, too, who say, in fact, he never stood up to Rumsfeld, never pressed for more troops for Iraq, and, when asked in a private meeting of the Joint Chiefs if he had concerns about the war plans, never said a word, according to two people who were in the room. Asked by Newsweek two years ago to respond to the criticism he didn’t press his concerns, Shinseki e-mailed back: “Probably that’s fair. Not my style.” But nobody disputes General Shinseki has had a distinguished military career, and now that he’s serving a President who wants his advice and counsel, he has the potential to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of wounded veterans and their families.

So many things that war critics anticipated happening didn’t come to pass; and that’s in part, due to the planning that we did right. Unfortunately, much of the successes get overshadowed by the failures and things that went wrong.

Scott on numbers:

Shinseki said there’d have to be hundreds of thousands of troops to stop an insurgency. Bush sent 30,000 after an insurgency had 4 years to settle, and the 30,000 did what Shinseki said would take almost half a million. Shinseki was wrong. He was wrong about the number needed to stop an insurgency.

This is similar to something Linda Robinson (her book’s still on my reading list) has mentioned in interviews and in this WaPo article:

The extra surge brigades certainly helped, but the number of U.S. troops was far less important than the new ways in which they were used. The most important new tactical move still gets scant Beltway attention: Petraeus’s initiative to reach out to the Sunni insurgency and its base. “We cannot kill our way to victory,” he said.

Another good piece by her.

Petraeus himself recently iterated the same thing in regards to the troop SURGE for Afghanistan:

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND CMDR: It’s not just the additional numbers, it’s how those numbers are employed.

And yes, blast, it’s a good thing that Obama is listening to military commanders; but then, he’s simply plagiarizing from the Bush playbook 😉 .

Wordsmith: And yes, blast, it’s a good thing that Obama is listening to military commanders; but then, he’s simply plagiarizing from the Bush playbook

Haha… this is the second time you used the line that Obama is “plagiarizing” Bush… President Obama is being president. Many other presidents have used the same playbook… it is called the Constitution and being Commander and Chief. I don’t care really who is president right now… Obama, McCain, Palin, it would all be the same to be honest. We have a fiscal emergency, that would not have changed. Certainly there may have been different approaches and no one will really know for sure what will work in the end, if anything could or would work…

Much like the re-debate about the amount of troops. We do know that an insurgency did develop and it did require more forces to be deployed. Doesn’t that by definition mean the level of troops we had in place were inadequate? We will never know for sure, but I bet in the future military planners will not go in with such a light footprint if we plan on taking and HOLDING an country and subduing a population. If you look at the casualty figures you will see the vast majority took place outside of “major combat operations” and were in the time between that and the surge. 139 KIA during the period of major combat operations, and some 3000+ KIA before the surge was implemented. To me the level of casualties was the result of poor planning and not enough force given the conditions… So even if we discount what GEN Shinseki said prior to the invasion, the proof is in the results. We went in too light, did not secure the country until much damage was done. As to your reposting of Feith’s account, that sounds like revisionist history given the public flogging that Shinseki got at the time.

When a president listens to his military commanders he’s plagiarizing from the Bush playbook? I hope that this was intended as satire.

@ChrisK:

Bit late to the game. You might want to visit the archives and note the excellent, indepth work both Scott, Wordsmith and other FA hosts as well, have done regarding both theaters before you make a fool of yourself, again.

blast:

We will never know for sure, but I bet in the future military planners will not go in with such a light footprint if we plan on taking and HOLDING an country and subduing a population.

You can’t bet on that. This probably already has and will continue to be rehashed over and over and then, someday we will have access to the studies by each of the services.

I have read where we gained the success we had during the Awakening because we didn’t have the country overwhelmed by our footprint. If we had the number of troops Shinseki was rumored to have wanted it would have stirred even more hostility because the Iraqis would have resented and an overwhelming occupation, they already resented what we had.

The way it worked out, those who dabbled with al Qaeda found a no win situation for their country and decided to put their trust in us but it took the evils of al Qaeda to push them there. We also had a lot of Iraqis who were sitting on the fence waiting to see if we would stick it out or leave, thank you MSM/democrat noise. pulling out would have left their heads on the chopping block as they very well knew.

It was hard fought, mistakes were made, but we did get Petraeous and he turned it around.

blast #10 and chrisk #11,

Yup, tongue-in-cheek. Hence the *wink*. Of course he’s doing what presidents are expected to do. I was inferring to my previous post headline blurb, noting that Obama is essentially doing things that he’d be criticized for if he had the scarlet letter “R” next to his name, and if his name were “Bush”. And I chose to use the term “plagiarized”, because there were accusations of that in some of his campaign speeches (“just words?….”).

Just accept it with good-natured partisan ribbing or get worked up over it. Either way’s fine by me. 😀

As to your reposting of Feith’s account, that sounds like revisionist history given the public flogging that Shinseki got at the time.

Well what you might consider “revisionist”, I might consider “setting the record straight” on the standard media-run narrative.

Much of what we “know” or think we know on the war, has been written by outsiders and partisan critics. On my bookshelves, I have Thomas Ricks, Richard Clarke, Woodward among others. I think it only fair to hear the side of the story of someone on the inside, who was there in the war room planning; one of the architects. Critics would do well to read from Feith to gain a different perspective and insight. Unlike Tenet’s book (or McClellan’s), Feith’s book reads like a serious piece of history whether you agree with the war or not. It’s richly sourced and appendixed. Anyone serious about history would and should include it on their bookshelf for referencing every bit as much as having Woodward and Ricks on their shelves.

Wordsmith: Feith’s book reads like a serious piece of history whether you agree with the war or not.

I have no problem with anyone who presents his version, Feith does have an axe to grind as he was part of it, all of it will add to a mosaic of information, some truthful and so less so. And, I think I am getting to know you, so I get the ribbing on partisan stuff, at the same time however, we are all in a world of hurt and somehow I want to give O a change, even if I don’t agree 100% with what he is for.