thedrifter
04-09-07, 09:12 AM
Iraq warning
McCaffrey says ‘little time left’ for success
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : April 16, 2007
The Iraq war has left the U.S. military “in a position of strategic peril,” retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has warned in the wake of a recent trip to Iraq.
“This whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle,” McCaffrey wrote in a March 26 memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs.
“The majority of the Iraqi population [Sunni and Shia] support armed attacks on American forces,” while “U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq has evaporated and will not return,” he wrote.
In a March 29 interview with Marine Corps Times, McCaffrey said the best hope for the U.S. is that the military will be able to keep a lid on the violence long enough for the new leadership team in Baghdad — Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker — to forge a political consensus among the three main Iraqi population groups: Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs and Kurds.
“The armed forces will give these guys a chance to talk us out of this situation, if it can be done,” he said.
But in his memo, he says the window of opportunity is closing.
“We can still achieve our objective” of a stable Iraq, he wrote, but “we have very little time left.”
Failure in Iraq will have dire consequences, according to McCaffrey. “A disaster in Iraq will in all likelihood result in a widened regional struggle which will endanger America’s strategic interests in the Mideast for a generation,” he wrote. “We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership.”
The retired four-star had his own criticism for the military’s senior leaders, whom he blames in part for what he views as the calamitous state of the Army.
“I do not believe the most senior military leadership spoke up in an adequate manner ... about the shortfalls in resources,” he said. “No one with a brain ... thinks that the U.S. Army isn’t now progressively starting to come apart.”
He cited problems with the Army’s equipment readiness and availability, as well as the quality of the recruits coming in.
“We have written off the NCO education system to a large extent, and to some extent we’re doing the same thing to officer training. So the readiness of the force, unequivocally and in the minds of most observers, is starting to unravel on us.”
McCaffrey paints a similarly gloomy picture of the situation in Iraq, which he said “is ripped by a low-grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3,000 citizens murdered per month.”
“The population is in despair,” he wrote. “Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.”
McCaffrey, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who retired in 1996 as head of U.S. Southern Command and then served as President Clinton’s drug czar, wrote his eight-page memo based on a March 9-16 trip to Iraq and Kuwait during which he talked to more than 65 U.S. and allied officials.
They include Petraeus, the new commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq, and Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, as well as virtually every other senior U.S. and allied military figure there.
McCaffrey’s view that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war is at odds with that expressed by incoming U.S. Central Command chief Adm. William Fallon, who told CNN on March 27 that he didn’t think Iraq was in a civil war.
Three million Iraqis, including many of the country’s educated elite, have fled the country, McCaffrey noted.
In the land they left behind, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “has little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged,” wrote McCaffrey. “It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds.
“There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance. No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign [nongovernmental organization employee], contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection.”
Iraqi security forces are in poor shape, according to McCaffrey, and “the Iraqi Army is too small [and] very badly equipped.”
McCaffrey noted that although the U.S. and its allies have arrested 120,000 insurgents and have 27,000 still in custody, and killed “some huge number of enemy combatants” that he estimates at “perhaps” over 20,000, “the armed insurgents, militias and al-Qaida in Iraq without fail apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers. Their sophistication, numbers and lethality go up — not down — as they incur these staggering battle losses.”
McCaffrey’s memo then warned of looming disaster for the U.S. military if current trends are not reversed.
“Stateside U.S. Army and Marine Corps readiness [is] starting to unravel,” he wrote. “Ground combat equipment is shot in both the active and reserve components. Army active and reserve component recruiting has now encountered serious quality and number problems. Promotion rates for officers and NCOs have skyrocketed to replace departing leaders.”
Yet despite this overwhelmingly gloomy picture, the situation in Iraq is not irretrievable, according to McCaffrey.
Since the arrival of Petraeus, “the situation on the ground has clearly and measurably improved,” he wrote.
The Maliki government has “given the green light” for U.S. and Iraqi special operations forces to “prune out” elements of Shia politician Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi army, McCaffrey said.
The new U.S. and Iraqi strategy of establishing joint security stations across Baghdad also is working, according to McCaffrey.
“Life is almost immediately springing back in many parts of the city,” he wrote.
“The murder rate has plummeted. IED [improvised explosive device] attacks on U.S. forces during their formerly vulnerable daily transits from huge U.S. bases on the periphery of Baghdad are down, since these forces are now permanently based in their operational area.”
The Iraqi government also has “finally committed credible numbers of integrated police and army units to the battle of Baghdad,” McCaffrey said.
But ultimately, only a political deal will end the bloodshed and secure a satisfactory outcome for the U.S. in Iraq, McCaffrey said.
The “primary war-winning strategy” for the U.S. in the coming 12 months must be for Crocker and Petraeus “to focus their considerable personal leadership skills on getting the top 100 Shia and Sunni leaders to walk back from the edge of all-out civil war,” he wrote.
“Reconciliation is the way out. There will be no imposed military solution with the current non-sustainable U.S. force levels.”
McCaffrey said in the interview that the senior field-grade and general officers he spoke with in Iraq are not giving up. They have “poured their lifeblood into this war, and they don’t want it to fail,” he said.
The commanders are excited about serving under Petraeus, who McCaffrey said he has known for about 25 years and regards as “probably ... the most talented person I’ve ever met.”
Petraeus is giving it his best shot, McCaffrey said. “I don’t believe the guy went over there saying to himself, ‘I’ll get winched off the roof of the embassy 24 months from today,’” McCaffrey said. “I think he believes he can turn this around.”
Ellie
McCaffrey says ‘little time left’ for success
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : April 16, 2007
The Iraq war has left the U.S. military “in a position of strategic peril,” retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has warned in the wake of a recent trip to Iraq.
“This whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle,” McCaffrey wrote in a March 26 memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs.
“The majority of the Iraqi population [Sunni and Shia] support armed attacks on American forces,” while “U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq has evaporated and will not return,” he wrote.
In a March 29 interview with Marine Corps Times, McCaffrey said the best hope for the U.S. is that the military will be able to keep a lid on the violence long enough for the new leadership team in Baghdad — Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker — to forge a political consensus among the three main Iraqi population groups: Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs and Kurds.
“The armed forces will give these guys a chance to talk us out of this situation, if it can be done,” he said.
But in his memo, he says the window of opportunity is closing.
“We can still achieve our objective” of a stable Iraq, he wrote, but “we have very little time left.”
Failure in Iraq will have dire consequences, according to McCaffrey. “A disaster in Iraq will in all likelihood result in a widened regional struggle which will endanger America’s strategic interests in the Mideast for a generation,” he wrote. “We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership.”
The retired four-star had his own criticism for the military’s senior leaders, whom he blames in part for what he views as the calamitous state of the Army.
“I do not believe the most senior military leadership spoke up in an adequate manner ... about the shortfalls in resources,” he said. “No one with a brain ... thinks that the U.S. Army isn’t now progressively starting to come apart.”
He cited problems with the Army’s equipment readiness and availability, as well as the quality of the recruits coming in.
“We have written off the NCO education system to a large extent, and to some extent we’re doing the same thing to officer training. So the readiness of the force, unequivocally and in the minds of most observers, is starting to unravel on us.”
McCaffrey paints a similarly gloomy picture of the situation in Iraq, which he said “is ripped by a low-grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3,000 citizens murdered per month.”
“The population is in despair,” he wrote. “Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.”
McCaffrey, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who retired in 1996 as head of U.S. Southern Command and then served as President Clinton’s drug czar, wrote his eight-page memo based on a March 9-16 trip to Iraq and Kuwait during which he talked to more than 65 U.S. and allied officials.
They include Petraeus, the new commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq, and Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, as well as virtually every other senior U.S. and allied military figure there.
McCaffrey’s view that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war is at odds with that expressed by incoming U.S. Central Command chief Adm. William Fallon, who told CNN on March 27 that he didn’t think Iraq was in a civil war.
Three million Iraqis, including many of the country’s educated elite, have fled the country, McCaffrey noted.
In the land they left behind, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “has little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged,” wrote McCaffrey. “It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds.
“There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance. No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign [nongovernmental organization employee], contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection.”
Iraqi security forces are in poor shape, according to McCaffrey, and “the Iraqi Army is too small [and] very badly equipped.”
McCaffrey noted that although the U.S. and its allies have arrested 120,000 insurgents and have 27,000 still in custody, and killed “some huge number of enemy combatants” that he estimates at “perhaps” over 20,000, “the armed insurgents, militias and al-Qaida in Iraq without fail apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers. Their sophistication, numbers and lethality go up — not down — as they incur these staggering battle losses.”
McCaffrey’s memo then warned of looming disaster for the U.S. military if current trends are not reversed.
“Stateside U.S. Army and Marine Corps readiness [is] starting to unravel,” he wrote. “Ground combat equipment is shot in both the active and reserve components. Army active and reserve component recruiting has now encountered serious quality and number problems. Promotion rates for officers and NCOs have skyrocketed to replace departing leaders.”
Yet despite this overwhelmingly gloomy picture, the situation in Iraq is not irretrievable, according to McCaffrey.
Since the arrival of Petraeus, “the situation on the ground has clearly and measurably improved,” he wrote.
The Maliki government has “given the green light” for U.S. and Iraqi special operations forces to “prune out” elements of Shia politician Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi army, McCaffrey said.
The new U.S. and Iraqi strategy of establishing joint security stations across Baghdad also is working, according to McCaffrey.
“Life is almost immediately springing back in many parts of the city,” he wrote.
“The murder rate has plummeted. IED [improvised explosive device] attacks on U.S. forces during their formerly vulnerable daily transits from huge U.S. bases on the periphery of Baghdad are down, since these forces are now permanently based in their operational area.”
The Iraqi government also has “finally committed credible numbers of integrated police and army units to the battle of Baghdad,” McCaffrey said.
But ultimately, only a political deal will end the bloodshed and secure a satisfactory outcome for the U.S. in Iraq, McCaffrey said.
The “primary war-winning strategy” for the U.S. in the coming 12 months must be for Crocker and Petraeus “to focus their considerable personal leadership skills on getting the top 100 Shia and Sunni leaders to walk back from the edge of all-out civil war,” he wrote.
“Reconciliation is the way out. There will be no imposed military solution with the current non-sustainable U.S. force levels.”
McCaffrey said in the interview that the senior field-grade and general officers he spoke with in Iraq are not giving up. They have “poured their lifeblood into this war, and they don’t want it to fail,” he said.
The commanders are excited about serving under Petraeus, who McCaffrey said he has known for about 25 years and regards as “probably ... the most talented person I’ve ever met.”
Petraeus is giving it his best shot, McCaffrey said. “I don’t believe the guy went over there saying to himself, ‘I’ll get winched off the roof of the embassy 24 months from today,’” McCaffrey said. “I think he believes he can turn this around.”
Ellie