soc.veterans

"The UnaPoet" wrote in message
news:818f6fe5-fffd-400a-b19b-dc017d971204@r9g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> General William Odom Tells Senate Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution
>
> Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-04-02 20:45.
>
> Two related audio files:
>
> Media conference call with StandUpCongress.org on April 1st.
>
> Radio show with ThePeopleSpeakRadio.net on March 17th.
>
> Testimony before Senate Commitee on Foreign Relations:
>
> Here's the PDF.
>
> TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
> By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
>
> 2 April 2008
>
> Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor
> to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007,
> when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has
> worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy.
> Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old
> strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects
> for success.
>
> I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging
> instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president
> claims.
>
> Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military
> solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the
> level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to
> strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but
> today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far
> more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and
> Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in
> several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the
> notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
>
> More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action
> and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his
> Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political
> solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
>
> No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and
> the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown
> over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea
> that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes
> me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
>
> Also disturbing is Turkey's military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK
> groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a
> choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its
> commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the
> former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States
> will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
>
> Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other
> Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be.
> Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to
> cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full
> credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are
> their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their
> financial plight.
>
> Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The
> Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans,
> including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides
> express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is
> utter
> nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq.
> The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites,
> like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only
> take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past
> year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb
> and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.
> As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president
> and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on
> spreading the war to Iran.
>
> Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being
> paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate
> that
> the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per
> day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are
> increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals
> forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and
> they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people.
> We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment.
> At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the
> government's troops and police, hardly a sign of political
> reconciliation.
>
> Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals
> with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among
> themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join
> our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence
> reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who
> distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves.
> Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the
> proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a
> proliferating number of political bosses.
>
> This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less
> progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that
> needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At
> the same time, Prime Minister Maliki's military actions in Basra and
> Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We
> are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the
> Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being
> asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and
> finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political
> centralization. He describes the process as building the state from
> the bottom up.
>
> I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to
> explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical
> case where power has been aggregated successfully from local
> strong men to a central government except through bloody violence
> leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history
> of
> feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is
> the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.
> It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the
> English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia
> and Kosovo.
>
> How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as
> effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the
> United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to
> consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US
> expense.
>
> To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an
> over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear
> before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and
> marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
>
> The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order.
> Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US
> strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional
> stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that
> goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely
> renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt
> Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran
> detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill
> more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack
> on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically
> as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are
> Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation
> between them has its limits.
>
> No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but
> US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable
> than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president's
> policy has reinforced Iran's determination to acquire nuclear
> weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
>
> Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the
> region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces
> and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.
>
> A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely.
> I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a
> cat. Let try again me explain why they don't make
> sense.
>
> First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training
> element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense
> at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be
> safe
> and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I
> have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training
> foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to
> command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short
> on military skills.
>
> Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We
> heard that argument as the "domino theory" in Vietnam. Even so, the
> path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we
> withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral
> responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly
> to
> blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it.
> American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are
> misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it.
> The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more
> Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to
> stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That
> is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders
> seems willing to assume.
>
> Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional
> instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and
> our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable.
> Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly
> backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the
> sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies' interest.
>
> I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the
> commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
>
> Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.


Super post!
A plan for the next president!