Military ‘in peril,’ McCaffrey says

By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 27, 2007 18:43:47 EDT

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.

“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,” McCaffrey writes in a memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy, where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs.

He says the United States and its allies must focus on a strategy aimed at a political consensus among the three main Iraqi population groups: Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs and Kurds.

“We can still achieve our objective” of a stable Iraq, he writes in a memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy, where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs, but “[w]e 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 writes. “We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership.”

McCaffrey paints a largely gloomy picture of the situation in Iraq, which he says “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 writes. “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 Bill Clinton’s drug czar, wrote the eight-page memo based on a March 9-16 trip to Iraq and Kuwait. The memo lists over 65 U.S. and allied officials that McCaffrey talked to during his trip. They include Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of Multi-National Forces – Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who commands Multi-National Corps – Iraq, as well as virtually every other senior U.S. or allied military figure there.

His 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 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 notes.

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,” writes McCaffrey. “It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds.

“There is no function of government that operates effectively across the nation – not health care, not justice, not education, not transportation, not labor and commerce, not electricity, not oil production. There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance .... No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi – without heavily armed protection.”

The Iraqi security forces are in poor shape, according to McCaffrey. “The police force is feared as a Shia militia in uniform which is responsible for thousands of extra-judicial killings,” he writes. “The Iraqi Army is too small [and] very badly equipped.” The army “is also unduly dominated by the Shia, and in many battalions lacks discipline,” writes McCaffrey, adding that the high rates of desertion and absence without leave “frequently leave Iraqi army battalions at 50 percent strength or less.”

In contrast, the number of insurgent and sectarian militia forces likely exceeds 100,000, McCaffrey writes. “These non-government armed bands are in some ways more capable of independent operations than the regularly constituted” Iraq security forces, he adds.

McCaffrey notes that although the U.S. and its allies have arrested 120,000 insurgents (including 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.”

The retired four-star then warns of a looming disaster for the U.S. military if current trends are not reversed.

“Stateside U.S. Army and Marine Corps readiness ratings are starting to unravel,” he writes. “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 .... Our promotion rates for officers and NCOs have skyrocketed to replace departing leaders. There is no longer a national or a theater U.S. Army strategic reserve.”

Noting that the Army “will be forced to call up as many as nine National Guard combat brigades for an involuntary second combat tour this coming year,” he adds that [m]any believe that this second round of involuntary call-ups will topple the weakened National Guard structure – which is so central to U.S. domestic security.”

However, the situation in Iraq is not irretrievable, according to McCaffrey.

“Since the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus in command of Multi-National Force – Iraq – the situation on the ground has clearly and measurably improved,” he writes.

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 says. As a result, U.S. and Iraqi forces have “harvested” over 600 “rogue leaders” from the Mahdi army, while “Sadr himself has fled to Iran and many of his key leaders have escaped to the safety of the Shia south. “His fighting cadres were ordered to go to ground, hide their weapons, take down their check points, stop the terrible ethnic cleansing and terror tactics against the Sunni population, and ignore (not cooperate with) US and ISF forces.”

The new U.S. and Iraqi strategy of establishing joint security stations across Baghdad is working, according to McCaffrey. “The Iraqi people are encouraged – life is almost immediately springing back in many parts of the city,” he writes. “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.”

In addition, the Iraq government has “finally committed credible numbers of integrated police and army units to the battle of Baghdad,” McCaffrey says. Those forces are also “showing increased willingness to aggressively operate against insurgent/militia forces.”

In Anbar province, “[t]here is a real and growing groundswell of Sunni tribal opposition to the Al Qaeda in Iraq terror formations,” he writes. “This counter-Al Qaeda movement…was fostered by brilliant U.S. Marine leadership.” The result is an ongoing fight between the western Sunni tribes and Al Qaeda in Iraq. “This is a crucial struggle and it is going our way – for now,” McCaffrey says.

Ultimately, only a political deal will end the bloodshed and secure a satisfactory outcome for the United States in Iraq, according to McCaffrey.

“The primary war winning strategy for the United States in the coming 12 months must be for Ambassador Ryan [Crocker] and General 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 writes. “Reconciliation is the way out. There will be no imposed military solution with the current non-sustainable U.S. force levels. Military power cannot alone defeat an insurgency – the political and economic struggle for power is the actual field of battle.”

Ellie