Posted on 02/15/2007 5:55:38 PM PST by Checkers
(The following is a transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview with Retired General William Odom. - Checkers)
HH: Welcoming now to the Hugh Hewitt Show General William Odom. General, a real pleasure to make your acquaintance. Thanks for being on the program, thanks for your service.
WO: Thank you for the opportunity to be on your program.
HH: Now I read with great interest your piece in Sundays Washington Post on February 11th, Victory Is Not An Option, and a piece very similar to it from 2005, General, and Id like you to explain to the audience who havent had a chance to read it what you think America should do in Iraq right now.
WO: Well, we cant do much of anything thats useful for ourselves until we begin to withdraw. We are diplomatically and strategically paralyzed in Iraq. As we begin to move out, countries who are not very cooperative with us, or wish us evil, are going to be worried about the aftermath. We cannot stabilize the whole region by ourselves. Were going to need really important allies, not just our allies that weve bought to come in there with us for the invasion. And were going to need them both on the borders of Iraq, and were going to need Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and others to help us.
HH: How quickly do you want us
WO: They will, I think, begin to respond to us once we get out. They will not as long as were still there.
HH: How long do you want us to take to get out, General?
WO: Well, to me, that would be an issue that would have to be resolved with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Commander out there. But if we could do it in six months, Id like to do it. If it takes nine, fine. I would not complain if we did it in four.
HH: Now lets talk a little bit about two of the key points that really intrigued me, and I disagree with them, General, but I want to hear you out on them. The first is that the Arab and Muslim political cultures just arent ready for democracy. Can you expand on that for the audience?
WO: Well, theyre ready for democracy. Theyre not ready for constitutional orders.
HH: Okay, and can you expand on that please?
WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but theyre illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.
HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?
WO: Its a borderline case, but it hasnt yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.
HH: And so thats not a counterexample to your hypothesis?
WO: No, its not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.
HH: What about Indonesia?
WO: Indonesias about as illiberal as you can get.
HH: But does it have a constitutional order? Theyve had a couple of elections
WO: No. No way. Heres what constitutes a constitutional order. Its not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British dont have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, thats irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So Im looking at countries where the rules have been made stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.
HH: And so is it your proposition that Muslim and Arab countries simply cant develop that constitutional order?
WO: Well, lets put it this way. They have not yet done so, and people like Professor Huntington have looked at various groups, and said that some religious areas are more easily disposed to constitutional deals than others. Confucian societies and Islamic societies have been terribly resistant. Hindu Buddhist societies seem to be neutral. Protestants have been more easy to make into constitutional orders than Catholic, although the record on thats improving somewhat. So just looking at the record, those are just facts. Now I have not said that Arabs cant be good democrats. I said that in the article. Theyve become very good liberal American citizens.
HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafats arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile
WO: Theyve never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, its been there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.
HH: But then now, thats where I get confused, because are you arguing that theres just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support
WO: No, Im saying that we cant do much about it. Im saying if youre going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then youre not going to be able to do that. Youre going to fail at that. Ive been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.
HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?
WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, dont tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.
HH: I didnt make that I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?
WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.
HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?
WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesnt produce order.
HH: I know that, but Im trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?
WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesnt just mean free to kill each other?
HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?
WO: We have made it much worse.
HH: Much worse than Saddam?
WO: Yeah.
HH: You believe that people in Iraq
WO: Oh, theres many more people been killed each year weve been there than were being killed during Saddams period.
HH: How many people were being killed under Saddam, General?
WO: I dont know, but it was not a very high number were discovering.
HH: General, the mass graves? Those are not signifiers?
WO: Well, look. You know, I havent counted the people in the mass graves, but I think that that would be a very instructive figure to get some hard data on and compare them. Id like to see it. I dont think that Saddam he had enough intimidation so that he didnt have to kill on the rate that were killing.
HH: And so
WO: or that theyre killing each other.
HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.
WO: No, I said it doesnt matter how bad it gets, its not going to get better by us staying there. You see, Im not one of those I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than weve pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What Im saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. Theyre not going to do it the way were headed there now.
HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists. Do you
WO: I think thats a pretty accurate description of whats happened over the past four years.
HH: So you dont think it can get worse?
WO: Yeah, it can get worse. Its gotten worse every year.
HH: But how much worse could it get if we werent there?
WO: I dont know. I dont think it look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.
HH: But if we precipitously withdraw, do you expect genocide?
WO: I would call some of the things I mean, you know, thats a definitional term.
HH: Do the numbers
WO: I mean, it depends on what you define as genocide.
HH: Do the numbers matter at all to your analysis? If someone came to you and said 100,000 people will die
WO: Yes, they matter, and what Im telling you is that we cant affect, we cannot improve the numbers of survivors by staying longer.
HH: Well here do you follow the work of John Burns, New York Times correspondent?
WO: Yeah.
HH: Heres John Burns on that subject from last week.
JB: If the United Nations is correct in saying that 3,700 Iraqi civilians died in October, and thats a morgues count. It may be an underestimate, we dont know. But he said if its correct that 3,700 people died in October across Iraq, think about this. You take the American troops away in this situation, leaving Shiite death squads to move into Adamiya in force, without any kind of protection, he said it wont be 3,700 dead in the month, it will be 3,700 dead in the night in Adamiya. Now that may be an exaggeration, but it reflects the kind of fears that are quite widespread, amongst Sunnis in particular, but also to some extent amongst Shiites in Iraq about the consequences of an American troop withdrawal.
HH: So General, should we be indifferent to that?
WO: Yes.
HH: Why?
WO: Because we cant affect it. Hes assuming we can make it different, and we are the cause that that situation exists today. John Burns, hes forgot that we invaded the country, and they werent having those deaths that rate when Saddam was there.
HH: But it was a nation of
WO: You insist, you are arguing that they you cant have it both ways. You cant say that there were more deaths when Saddam was there, and say that were improving things by staying there, and seeing them get worse every year.
HH: Actually, I believe that we have some significant numbers of the number of killed under Saddam over the course of his lifetime, and that those are much higher than have died in the four years under the American occupation.
WO: Well, Id be very surprised to discover that, because hes not he was not that efficient at killing people. Now Stalin was.
HH: Did you see any hope for Saddams regime to change, General?
WO: No.
HH: Would his sons have been at least as worse as he was if
WO: Sure.
HH: And so
WO: And I can think if dictators much worse than him that we dont bother with.
HH: But of course, he had attempted
WO: So why do we pick out this one among all the dictators in the world we could pick out and go overthrow?
HH: Well, because he shot at American planes because he
WO: He who we shot at him.
HH: Well, he had U.N. resolutions that were being enforced by American planes
WO: And we were doing a pretty good job of containing him.
HH: But thats one he was clearly hostile to the United States, right, General?
WO: Sure.
HH: And he had invaded Kuwait.
WO: He was hostile to his neighbors our there, too.
HH: Yeah, he had invaded Kuwait, he invaded Iran
WO: Look, I mean, I this a kind of a pointless argument. I mean, the issues all of your things can be true. They dont make it any better for us. We are on a path to suffer every month we stay. The defeat we face will be larger, and we will put off the time at which and where we will have even less resources to recover. If you remember the Second World War, Hitler had 600,000 troops thrown into Stalingrad, refused over four, five months to withdraw them, at the plea by, from his generals, and he ends up losing them all. If he had withdrawn them as they said, asked him to do, and let Stalingrad go, he could have shortened his lines by seven or eight hundred kilometers, and had nearly, had over 600,000 troops survive. Now thats a military commander that doesnt know when to retire from one area so he can approach the conflict from another area, is not a smart commander. And it seems to youre advocating a kind of policy where you have a president who jumps off the Empire State Building, and he goes by the 50th floor, and he says Im on course. Well, I want a president who knows how to change course.
HH: Im actually just trying to figure out what you think Iraq would look like if after four months hence, we leave, what it would look like in a year?
WO: Its going to look worse if we stay.
HH: I know that, but what do you think it will look like? I know you believe that
WO: I dont know. I dont know. You dont know, and its just a guess. And I dont see killing more Americans based on your guess.
HH: Did you see Cambodia coming, General?
WO: And following let me ask you. Are you enthusiastic enough to put on a uniform and go?
HH: No. Im a civilian.
WO: Okay, but we can recruit you.
HH: Im 51, General.
WO: And I dont see all these war hawks that want to none of them have been in a war, and they dont want to go.
HH: Well, General, are you advocating that only uniformed military should have opinions on this?
WO: No, you can have an opinion, but if you you cant start telling me that youre going to just pay no attention to what people like myself say.
HH: No, I am paying thats why youre on this program.
WO: Okay.
HH: I want to hear it, and I want but I want to know what you think its going to look like, because Im not indifferent to the aftermath.
WO: I dont know. Im prepared to accept whatever it looks like, if its not killing Americans, and were not losing U.S. resources, because eventually, it will settle out out there, and our capacity to help it settle out earlier with allies will be greatly improved. I think actually, that it will come out much better than these scare pictures youre describing, and I include John Burns as somewhat of a scaremonger in this regard.
HH: Did you predict or see coming the Cambodian holocaust after our withdrawal from Southeast Asia?
WO: That would have happened if wed stayed.
HH: But did you predict it?
WO: We didnt we were not in Cambodia.
HH: But did you
WO: We [helped] perpetrate that.
HH: Did you or anyone you work with at the time see it coming? Did you see the reeducation camps in Vietnam?
WO: No, we didnt. I wasnt focused on that then. I was focused on Vietnam.
HH: And what about the reeducation camps and the boat people?
WO: Well, what about them?
HH: Did we foresee that? Did anyone sit down
WO: Well, we said that things much worse than that were going to happen.
HH: John Kerry, when he testified before the Senate, actually thought it would be a couple of thousand people that would be
WO: Well, Im not John Kerry, and I dont Im not defending John Kerrys position. Im saying the big scare in Southeast Asia was that there will be a whole group of countries that became pro-Soviet bloc, and pro-Chinese. Well, two more went communist, but they were not pro-Chinese. We were pursuing a war to contain China, the Soviet policy had become containing China. We were presenting a half a million U.S. troops in pursuit of Soviet foreign policy objectives. Right now, we are pursuing al Qaeda and Iranian foreign policy objectives in Iraq.
HH: But General, what Im trying to do
WO: And you want to continue to do that.
HH: Im trying to figure out if you and others have thought through how bad it can get in Iraq.
WO: I have thought this through, because Ive seen it in Vietnam, and Im prepared
HH: So how many people do you think will die?
WO: when you start these kinds of things, you have to take what youve bought into. You have bought into this situation, so youre going to have to live with the casualties.
HH: And so how many do you think that will be?
WO: I dont know. You dont know, either. So why do you keep asking me a question that Im giving you an answer to?
HH: I know, but do you have a scale of magnitude?
WO: No, I dont.
HH: And as a result, that doesnt matter, though?
WO: And so you can sit there and fantasize any scale you want to, to scare people into continuing to do stupid things.
HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, We must continue the war to prevent Irans influence from growing in Iraq. Thats one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe thats a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?
WO: Sure. Theyre going to get them.
HH: And should we do anything to stop that?
WO: No.
HH: Why not?
WO: Because we cant. Weve already squandered what forces we have, and were going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet wed get nuclear weapons. Well, thats the approach weve taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy weve used to keep to prevent them from getting them.
HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.
WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.
HH: Yes, but the fact remains that theyre very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you dont think we should do anything to stop that?
WO: No.
HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei
WO: If we can look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.
HH: Are the statements
WO: Now thats the policy of proliferation that we pursued.
HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?
WO: No.
HH: Why not?
WO: Because Ive done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shahs time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. Theyve had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the others been toward us.
HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?
WO: They might well have been.
HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?
WO: Yes.
HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?
WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.
HH: Could you be wrong about that?
WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.
HH: Are you gambling with Israels future, then, to allow a radical regime
WO: No, Israels gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.
HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?
WO: Thats up to them, but I think itll make it worse for them. Israels policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, youll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And Ive talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. Youre making it much, much worse for Israel.
HH: Are you familiar
WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmerts policies and Bushs policies, I would fear for my life.
HH: Are you familiar with
WO: So I would say the policy youre advocating is a very serious threat to Israel.
HH: Are you familiar with Mullah Yazdi?
WO: No.
HH: Or 12th Imam theology?
WO: No, Im not.
HH: Would that matter to you if those
WO: No.
HH: It doesnt matter if theyre Millennialists who want to bring in
WO: No, it doesnt. It doesnt.
HH: So what they think and what their intentions are dont matter, General?
WO: You dont know what their intentions are. Youre just listening to their rhetoric.
HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?
WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can Id pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that its very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, wed pay him off and bribe him.
HH: Now General, you are a distinguished and long-serving member of the American military, in the Military Hall of Fame, youre a Lt. General. I actually served alongside of you in the Reagan administration when you were running NSA. So I mean no disrespect by this next question.
WO: Yeah, youre obviously going to call me a son of a bitch or something.
HH: No, Im not. No, Im not, General. I would never do that, because I esteem your service quite a lot, and I know your reputation as an intelligence professional, because I was the special assistant to Bill Smith running the FISA stuff, when you were over at NSA. So I know your credentials, and I esteem you. But it sounds like
WO: I am a hard-liner.
HH: You would have been with which party in Great Britain in the 30s? Let me ask it that way. Was Churchill
WO: I was its not analogous to today at all.
HH: Why not?
WO: Because its completely different. Germany was a powerful industrial company that had been dealt a terrible injustice with the Versailles Treaty.
HH: 70 million
WO: Lloyd George and the Clemenceau struck a deal, and didnt even invite the Germans who and remember, it was an armistice. They were not defeated and invaded by France and Britain and the U.S. It was an armistice, and they werent even invited, and they were forced into a terrible period. Hungary was truncated. It essentially opened the door to Hitler, and it certainly opened the door to the Nazis.
HH: Yes, but did Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain ignore the statements of Hitler, and put it down as just rhetoric?
WO: This is Ahmadinejad is not he does not have German industry. He does not preside over a country which was becoming the major industrial power in Europe.
HH: Yeah, but he will have
WO: Hes in a backward country with a group of people who are becoming poorer and poorer as a result of his policies.
HH: But he will have
WO: And if you cant see the difference between that, then Im very disappointed in your judgment.
HH: But General, he will have the weapons that Hitler aspired to and never acquired. So in many respects, his 70
WO: In another situation where we have many more of them, which ensure his annihilation.
HH: But it hes not deterrable because of theology, does that matter? Earlier, you said no.
WO: How do you know that hes not deterrable?
HH: I take very seriously what Yazdi writes, and what Ahmadinejad says.
WO: Well, are you going to youre betting your future on what he says.
HH: No, I am unwilling to allow Iran to have nukes, and I think we ought to take
WO: Well, you dont have the power to keep him from
HH: Of course not. Im just advocating. Im just a pundit. Im just a radio guy.
WO: Okay, nobody has the power to do that right now.
HH: The United States could deny him nukes, couldnt it?
WO: No, it cant do it, because weve used our military up. We cant occupy the country. You can bomb and set it back. You will not prevent it.
HH: Bombing and setting it back, would that be a good thing?
WO: No.
HH: Why not?
WO: Because youll end up doubling or quadrupling or to the tenth power the number of enemies youve got in the area. We will never solve the situation in the Middle East, and bring some kind of stability there, until we work out some kind of deal with Iran. Now Iran has tried to make a deal with us when we were invading Afghanistan. And we just pushed them off.
HH: Now General, have you read the book, The Looming Tower?
WO: No.
HH: Are you familiar with Qutub, the founder of
WO: Look, Im running out of time.
HH: Okay, Ive got three more minute, four more minutes. Are you familiar with Qutub, the founder of the Muslim Botherhood?
WO: No.
HH: All right. When you write that we must prevent, that, We will not be able to prevent al Qaeda in Iraq, what do you think al Qaeda will do
WO: Be able to prevent them in Iraq?
HH: Well, Ill read your paragraph here. We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al Qaeda in Iraq as one of the reasons you offered on Sunday for people who are arguing to stay in Iraq.
WO: Right.
HH: And then you go on to say, Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to question.
WO: Thats right.
HH: Now they are deterred by our presence there, are they not?
WO: No. Theyre absolutely ecstatic over it. Theyre killing us. They couldnt get to us otherwise.
HH: Do you believe that safe havens for al Qaeda will empower them to strike the United States again as they did on 9/11?
WO: Look, theyre getting one back in Afghanistan. Theyve got one right now in Pakistan. Theyve got them in other countries. If you get out of Iraq, theres one thing, two or three things you can be sure of. They cannot operate effectively in Kurdistan right now. The Shiites will catch them and decapitate everyone they can get their hands on. Most Sunnis dont like them. They deal with him largely because they provided them suicide bombers, et cetera, to take on the Shiites. With us getting out of the scene, and if the Shiites were to win that civil war, the al Qaeda will be gone.
HH: And why do you believe we havent been attacked since 9/11, General?
WO: I dont think weve been attacked in Iraq. Theyve been killing us left and right over there. Its over 3,000.
HH: Why have we not been attacked in the United States since 9/11?
WO: You dont know and I dont know. Mr. John Millers done a very good study saying they dont have the capabilities. Theres a very lot of intelligence evidence that suggests they dont have the capabilities to do it.
HH: And did we
WO: All these so-called cells that the last administration, or this administration seems to have discovered here turned out to be mythical.
HH: Would Libya have disarmed its nukes and chemical weaponry, General, if we
WO: Its not analogous. If you are trying to pay a general rule to cause something to happen in all countries, that is you know, Id flunk you on a sophomore international relations course.
HH: Im asking whether or not you thought the Libyan disarmament had anything to do with our invasion of Iraq?
WO: None.
HH: And do you believe that the Oil For Food scandal would have been detected if wed left Saddam in power?
WO: Look, we would have been less worse off, much better off, had the food scandal gone on, and Saddam were still there.
HH: Fair answer. Last question, General, do you think David Petraeus is a competent officer?
WO: Hes a very competent officer. I dont think he can afford to tell you what he really thinks about the prospects of counterinsurgency working.
HH: You believe when he testified to the Senate under oath that he was misleading the Senate?
WO: I dont know. Youll have to ask him.
HH: You think thats a possibility?
WO: Well, have you ever been up there?
HH: Yes.
WO: To do that, when there was a civilian master sitting on your side, and making sure you dont say anything they disagreed with?
HH: Oh, I have testified under oath before Congress with civilian
WO: Yeah, but if youve been in a uniform with a civilian political
HH: No, I told you Im a civilian, but I
WO: with a politico keeping you in line?
HH: Are you really
WO: Yeah, the officer has a real dilemma here. He can do one of two things, and I used to discuss this with General Goodpastor who worked six years for Eisenhower in the White House. Should an officer, when he really disagrees, resign? Or should he knuckle down and do the best he can to get on inside? You can argue that both ways. When a lot of officers, my contemporaries, saw no senior officers resign in Vietnam, and we were unhappy about that, and you saw this young officer now, who was a colonel in the Army, H.R. McMaster. McMaster wrote Dereliction of Duty, damning the joint chiefs for not standing up to McNamara during the Vietnam War. Im sure somebodys going to do this on some of the senior officers today. The officers whove tried to stand up to it within have were destroyed by Rumsfeld.
HH: Who would that be?
WO: Pardon?
HH: Who? Who?
WO: Well, Shinseki was probably the first one.
HH: Shinseki, though, had been, when he announced that we need 200,000 troops, had already announced his retirement, General.
WO: He hadnt announced his retirement. He had a set period, four years in the Army. He wasnt announcing his retirement, and he had more than a year left to go, and he was urged out precisely because he did that.
HH: All right, there are different accounts of that.
WO: And he was publicly abused by Paul Wolfowitz for having done so. And there were lots of other generals over there look, a lot of them just pull their heads down. I did that in the Vietnam model, not when I was a general, but as a Lt. colonel.
HH: And has any last question, General, has any general officer of the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines resigned in protest over this war?
WO: No, I think the Marine general who was the J-3, I cant remember his name right now, says he did.
HH: Batiste?
WO: No, thats an Army major general. Whether they did that for that reason or not, I dont know. But they have, as I say, Im not sure that you can argue that they should, or you can argue that they should stay in. Goodpastor used to argue that they should stay in. I argued that they should not do so. Goodpastor persuaded me that I might be wrong. I think you can make that case both ways.
HH: Last question, General, do you believe you could be wrong about all this?
WO: Of course.
HH: I thought I knew as a professional youd say that. Thank you for your time, General William Odom, and for your service.
WO: Okay, right. Bye.
End of interview.
Just shows how leftist Generals can be as idiotic and blind to the dangers of terrorism. Wesley Clarke is another example of a moron who went up through the ranks under Clinton but is dumb as a bucket of rocks. Immediate withdrawal is NOT an option!
I just listened to this interview with Odam and dont know what to think.
I was shaking my head in disbelief at 95% of what he had to say
I'm stunned and speechless (and a bit sad)...
He only wants to get a few million democrats killed, maybe it's worth it.???
Perhaps the General is less than pleased with his pension and just wants to tour some left wing talk circuits for big bucks
There are quite a few of them out there prostituting themselves to the MSM for 15 minutes of fame. They are beneath contempt...
Some of what he says makes sense. You need a constitutional order for real freedom, and Arabs may very well be incapable of it.
And it may be true that we are giving other countries an ideal opening for anti-Americanism, because they can afford to sit back and badmouth us while we do all the dirty work.
But when he gets to Saddam's killings, he is completely off the mark.
And he is also off the mark about Iran being harmless. If that idiot Carter and the French hadn't overthrown the Shah, a lot of our current problems would never have arisen. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two biggest sponsors of terrorism around the world.
Muslims are, indeed a problem. It's a question if they can ever live in free societies, because their elites are, indeed, corrupt and vicious. On the other hand, they have spent the past 1,500 years conquering the world and killing Christians. Are we supposed to just back off and let them pull another 9/11 on an even larger scale?
Ignoring the problem certainly isn't a solution.
Who needs enemies with generals such as this?
While I respect and honor his service to our country, I can't imagine how he can possibly not see that if we pull out, we lose more that Iraq, we lose any shred of credibility with our allies who have stood with us.
The terrorists win.
Our military will go back to handing out food and will no longer face down evil and oppression. Back to treating terrorism as a "police matter".
"WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but theyre illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation....
Heres what constitutes a constitutional order. Its not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British dont have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, thats irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So Im looking at countries where the rules have been made stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865."
Great quote.
He's gone native. Native being transnational progressive.
One of the great failings of the Bush administration is not getting the facts of the mass graves and the atrocities of Saddam better known to the American people. All during S's trial, the anti-American DBM could have shown mass graves, people shredders, etc. side-by-side with S's face. Instead they chose to show S. mocking the procedings.
General Odom strikes me as a media hound. He has been bashing this administration for many years. The best way to be loved by the DBM is to bash Pres. Bush.
PING...
This is what I heard....in all of its horror.
It's just unbelievable, where do we get such people?
Lord have mercy.
"As we begin to move out, countries who are not very cooperative with us, or wish us evil, are going to be worried about the aftermath. We cannot stabilize the whole region by ourselves. Were going to need really important allies, not just our allies that weve bought to come in there with us for the invasion. And were going to need them both on the borders of Iraq, and were going to need Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and others to help us."
Can't disagree with the above.
If this is truly a GWOT, get some others fully involved, getting tired of the U.S. being mercenaries for the Arab countries...
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