Retired General John Batiste commanded 22,000 troops in Iraq during 2004 and 2005. According to the New York Times, he quit the Army “in anger at what he calls mismanagement of the Iraq war.” A lifelong Republican, he has decided that “it is past time for change” and appears in new TV ads being broadcast in Republican Congressional districts as part of a $500,000 campaign financed by VoteVets.org.
You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.
Interviewed by the Times, he says there were never enough troops in Iraq:
There was never enough. There was never a reserve. Again and again, we had to move troops by as many as 200 miles out of our area of operations to support another sector. We would pull troops out of contact with the enemy and move them into contact with the enemy somewhere else. The minute we’d leave, the insurgents would pick up on that, and kill everybody who had been friendly [emphasis added].
The Times article continues:
As described by General Batiste, the message is not antiwar; it argues that continuing the war in Iraq as a civil, sectarian conflict that cannot be won by outside forces is crippling the Army and the Marine Corps. It does not deny the danger of violent Islamic extremism, he says, but contends that the war in Iraq prevents the armed services from preparing to battle other global security threats.And it says that if terrorism, and especially terrorists armed with unconventional weapons, truly threaten America’s very survival, then the rest of the country — not just the military — should be called to sacrifice [emphasis added].
On the last score, I fully agree. Bush has tried to have it both ways: he has repeatedly said (accurately, in my view) that defeating terrorism is the calling of our time, but has left it up to a small segment of our population—the undermanned, all-volunteer military services—to fight the battle. No wonder, then, that so many people have decided that the threat from terrorism has been overstated and used as an excuse for putting more power in the hands of the Executive.
Perhaps, but it would be a great deal more persuasive if Batiste would have first put together a thesis that better argues his case, and only thereafter takes to the airwaves. For example, the ramifications stemming from the larger footprint, as trite as that may sound to jaundiced/cynical ears presently, it’s a factor nonetheless that pertains to potentially creating greater opportunities for excesses to be committed by the coalition forces (both real and perceived), therein producing the potential for more and not fewer incitements and incentives for “insurgent” activities and recruitments; there’s the additional problem with drawdown/withdrawal (why wouldn’t the vacuum, in relative terms, open the opportunity for new “insurgent” motivations as well); there’s the problem with further strains on personnel and weakening in other parts of the globe (real and perceived). That’s only the barest of beginnings.
I don’t see where Batiste is particularly persuasive. Hindsight, especially so in the abstract and without being tested, is 20/20, is almost always too self-assurred.
Too, “quitting the Army after three decades in uniform” hardly strips him of all his post-career benefits, in fact it launches him into yet another career, as the latest ex-military spokesperson on the airwaves. Not wanting to be presumptuous in the least, but this is not a huge sacrifice for this ex-military man.
Critiques and criticisms, yes, but taking to the airwaves first and foremost and absent a more thoroughly explicated critique/thesis that argues all the primary and subsidiary pros and cons, seems more than a little wanting.
I am sure that if this country were attacked, the whole country as citizens and soldiers would respond. Anyway where are the killers coming from? There is an army out there ready to march on this country? We didn’t have a big Armey before Pearl Harbor was attacked, but the whold country responded. If our soldiers are over steatched now, and there was a big attack, but these few soldiers are sitting at home waiting and resting, are there enough for the next attack. By his thinking there are not enough soldiers to fight any ground war. I think there is not another politician that would put forces on the ground anyway. Not after the support and then not support for this endeavor. Al Qaeda is in Iraq, trying to set up a base in the Al Anbar provence. Batiste wants to leave. So we leave and let it build? That is our biggest problem right now, not some mythological fight in the future.
There is nothing in General Batiste’s statement that reveals that he understands who the enemy actually is in our last-chance effort in Iraq, and that lethal enemy is certainly still going to be killing us whether we prevail or withdraw from Iraq. Withdrawal from Iraq, however, will simply embolden this enemy, yet withdrawal is steadily becoming a must for a democratic republic exhausted by so many years of homicidal/suicidal war. Neither the general nor his commander-in-chief appear to have worked out this lose-lose dilemma.
Churchill once paraphrased someone else when he remarked: ‘War is too important to be left to generals.’ If a general cannot identify the actual enemy, then how is his advice any better than a blinded politician’s?
The Iraqi moratorium on partition discussion has roughly half a year more to go. We should be building a Marine Corps base in Kurdistan NOW, assess the ‘surge’ in September (five months), and then just let free people in a free land choose for themselves what they want to do. My guess is, the Kurds will bless us in their new independent republic, the Sunnis will laugh all the way to the nearest branch of a Swiss bank in Baghdad, Sunnistan (the oil under An Bar is rumored to be the world’s largest discovery), and the Shi’ites will elect Sadr as mullah-for-life in a new Shi’istan.
General who?
Okay, but a mandatory part of any military briefing that describes A Problem is to offer multiple Solutions. What would the good general have done differently? Just saying you want lots and lots more soliders ignores the fact that there were not lots more to be had. Pulling troops out of South Korea and Europe sounds good to me, but I will admit that tehre wuld have been significant geoppoltical issues associated with that.
The single mistake I will attribute to President Bush is a failure to immediately increase the size ofd our military starting on 9/12/01. However, we have a professional military, and it would have taken years to produce forces of the right quality – and larger numbers of quickly trained troops would probably have done more harm than good. Aside from that, it is at best self-serving for the General to say he needed more troops to do the job – and at worse it smacks of the inevitable first cry of the incompetent, “I did not have enough resources!”
Kathie, could you explore your confidence a little more for us? I seem to recall that this country was attacked and, as Marc has quite ably documented, within three or four months of the attack, those who opposed an active response of any sort had already mobilized.
Know thy Enemies h/t Solomonia
First I would like to address Micheal’s statement criticizing General Batisle’s method of bringing the people his views on the present administration’s decision making judgements in battle. I don’t think the burden of proof is on Batisle to convince the masses that what he has said is true I feel it is up to journalists and the media machine to investigate leads like this and expliot there legitamacy to the american people; furthermore I’m cautious of anyone’s judgement that would doubt the judgement of a General whom has actually been on the front lines in a position between our political machine and that of Iraq’s. I think Genral Baltisle’s words should hold great weight, investigated, substantiated, and reported to the American people. Blind patriatism does our nation no good value dissent is the highest form of patriatism; it is where historically the greatest positive change has occurred for our country. I commend General Batisle for coming forward and performing the last duty of his position which was to serve the AMERICAN people and not the hipocrytical political machine. It’s too bad that we can’t get more information like this before our military personel retire for fear of adverse consequeces of their actions.