McCain: Iraq War Mismanaged for Years

My God! McCain is dying to become president there isn't a thing he wouldn't say.

Rumsfeld was, in my opinion, one of the best secretaries of defense.

PMIF: Meant to say "I agree that some of the criticism of DR is probably valid..."

The President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief fired Donald Rumsfeld and then he fired most of the military commanders associated with the Rumsfeld tenure at DOD. The change in leadership should tell us all something about a much needed new direction in the prosecution of the war.

Not accepting the surrender of Iraqi forces from Iraqi generals when offered and letting them melt away instead. Dissolving the Iraqi Army. Deferring to the Iraqi government when they protested our actions. Not treating Muqtada al-Sadr like he did Uday and Qusay. Not finishing the job during First Fallujah. Letting the Iraqis write their own constitution accepting Sharia law.

In other words, not being aggressive enough.

I certainly can agree with each of those. I don't know if Rumsfeld is to blame singularly on any or all. The aggressiveness issue seems to be a larger one that I have felt has been an error - especially since the Fallujah situation. I believe that WWII (and other victories) have taught us that we have to break the will of the enemy and worry about the clean up afterwards. Winning hearts and minds is a bunch of PC bullshit.

It tells me more about politics than it does about SecDef Rumsfeld.

Interestingly enough, Lincoln's problem was sticking with the wrong General for too long. After he shifted to Grant, things got bloodier, but the Union won. Maybe history is about to repeat itself, again?

that could be your BEST post ever. Ditto too.

Hasn't the time we've been Iraq been divided, more or less equally, between the country being run by a civilian administrator and the military? I am asking this seriously, not as sarcasm. Seems to me I remember when the change in authority was about to take place and thinking, well this will solve a lot of the problems. But alas, nothing really changed.

I am hopeful "The Surge" will solve a lot of the problems, but I'm also pretty skeptical too, skeptical that we won't have the gumption to do what it will take to get the job done and skeptical that even if we do we won't have the will to do it long enough to see it through.

I pray, literally, that I am wrong.

I'd agree with you if that's all Lincoln did.

Unfortunately, in the early years Lincoln appointed political cronies to lead the fight. Nearly all were unsuccessful, and many good men died.

Due to mismanagement, the union, which should have had a huge advantage over the South, nearly lost the war.

Because he does not have balls to blame CinC.

I agree with you re: Rummy. He really didn't understand how to use ground forces.

re: 24x7x365 slander campaign

You have hit the nail squarely on the head! The repeated attempts by the MSM to discredit the administration and anyone or anything that has to do with it has been unprecedented. The same forces that systematically ignored, hid and under reported the criminal activities and just plan poor administration that was foisted on us by the Clintons simply threw it in reverse and used just the opposite tactics to obstruct any and every attempt by the Bush administration to return the White House and the Presidency to an even keel.

"The idea to bring democracy to Iraq, while quite noble, was extremely naive."

This could never have been done as quickly as it was attempted. It really takes years; look at how long we occupied Japan and Germany after WWII. Germany had some tradition of democracy previous to Hitler; Japan had close to none. We did not go to war with either with the goal of establishing democracy; we went to war with both with the goal of total victory. After that, we worked on installing democracy.

President Bush said that the War on Terror would take many years, but then didn't really act as if it would. I still can't think what he was doing after his re-election. If he had prosecuted the war(s) in the ME more strongly, there would hav been quite an outcry from the left, but there has been the same outcry from the left, anyway. And moderate-to-conservative voters would not have been let down by the top-level drift and endless drip, drip, drip of bad news. We might have held the House and/or Senate. What a mess Rumsfeld, Bush, and Rice let this become. I am very sorry to say that. Perhaps the situation in Iraq/ME can still be turned around, but why was it allowed to get this way after Bush's re-election?

Time to post this again:

NRO - April 2004:

Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation (April, 2004 NRO article)
National Review Online ^ | April 30, 2004 | Barbara Lerner
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1616782/posts

Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action right from the beginning.

The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. Second, although it's painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it's simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do the job. Something different is needed and was, right from the start.

A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.

Rumsfeld's plan was to train and equip and then transport to Iraq some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani.

Jay Garner, the retired American general Rumsfeld chose to head the civilian administration of the new Iraq, planned to capitalize on that prestige immediately by appointing all three, along with six others, to head up Iraq's new transitional government. He planned to cede power to them in a matter of weeks not months or years and was confident that they would work with him, not against him, because two of them already had. General Garner, after all, is the man who headed the successful humanitarian rescue mission that saved the Kurds in the disastrous aftermath of Gulf War I, after the State Department-CIA crowd and like thinkers in the first Bush administration betrayed them. Kurds are not a small minority and they remember. The hero's welcome they gave General Garner when he returned to Iraq last April made that crystal clear.

Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to cut way down on the infiltration of Syrian and Iranian agents and their foreign terrorist recruits, not just by trying to catch them at the border a losing game, given the length of those borders but by pursuing them across the border into Syria to strike hard at both the terrorists and their Syrian sponsors, a move that would have forced Iran as well as Syria to reconsider the price of trying to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq.

None of this happened, however, because State and CIA fought against Rumsfeld's plans every step of the way. Instead of bringing a liberating Shia and Sunni force of 10,000 to Iraq, the Pentagon was only allowed to fly in a few hundred INC men. General Garner was unceremoniously dumped after only three weeks on the job, and permission for our military to pursue infiltrators across the border into Syria was denied.

General Garner was replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a State Department man who kept most of the power in his own hands and diluted what little power Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani had by appointing not six but 22 other Iraqis to share power with them. This resulted in a rapidly rotating 25-man queen-for-a-day-type leadership that turned the Iraqi Governing Council into a faceless mass, leaving Bremer's face as the only one most Iraqis saw.

By including fence-sitters and hostile elements as well as American friends in his big, unwieldy IGC and giving them all equal weight, Bremer hoped to display a kind of inclusive, above-it-all neutrality that would win over hostile segments of Iraqi society and convince them that a fully representative Iraqi democracy would emerge. But Iraqis didn't see it that way. Many saw a foreign occupation of potentially endless length, led by the sort of Americans who can't be trusted to back up their friends or punish their enemies. Iraqis saw, too, that Syria and Iran had no and were busily entrenching their agents and terrorist recruits into Iraqi society to organize, fund, and equip Sunni bitter-enders like those now terrorizing Fallujah and Shiite thugs like Moqtada al Sadr, the man who is holding hostage the holy city of Najaf.

Despite all the crippling disadvantages it labored under, Bremer's IGC managed to do some genuine good by writing a worthy constitution, but the inability of this group to govern-period, let alone in time for the promised June 30 handover finally became so clear that Bremer and his backers at State and the CIA were forced to recognize it. Their last minute "solution" is to dump the Governing Council altogether, and give U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, the power to appoint a new interim government. The hope is that U.N. sponsorship will do two big things: 1) give the Brahimi government greater legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people; and 2) convince former allies to join us and reinforce our troops in Iraq in some significant way. These are vain hopes.

Putting a U.N. stamp on an Iraqi government will delegitimize it in the eyes of most Iraqis and do great damage to those who are actively striving to create a freer, more progressive Middle East. Iraqis may distrust us, but they have good reason to despise the U.N., and they do. For 30 years, the U.N. ignored their torments and embraced their tormentor, focusing obsessively on a handful of Palestinians instead. Then, when Saddam's misrule reduced them to begging for food and medicine, they saw U.N. fat cats rip off the Oil-for-Food Program money that was supposed to save them.

The U.N. as a whole is bad; Lakhdar Brahimi is worse. A long-time Algerian and Arab League diplomat, he is the very embodiment of all the destructive old policies foisted on the U.N. by unreformed Arab tyrants, and he lost no time in making that plain. In his first press conferences, he emphasized three points: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani will have no place in a government he appoints; he will condemn American military action to restore order in Iraq; and he will be an energetic promoter of the old Arab excuses Israel's "poison in the region," he announced, is the reason it's so hard to create a viable Iraqi interim government.

Men like Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani have nothing but contempt for Mr. Brahimi, the U.N., and old Europe. They know perfectly well who their real enemies are, and they understand that only decisive military action against them can create the kind of order that is a necessary precondition for freedom and democracy. They see, as our State Department Arabists do not, that we will never be loved, in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, until we are respected, and that the month we have wasted negotiating with the butchers of Fallujah has earned us only contempt, frightening our friends and encouraging our mortal enemies.

The damage Brahimi will do to the hope of a new day in Iraq and in the Middle East is so profound that it would not be worth it even if empowering him would bring in a division of French troops to reinforce ours in Iraq. In fact, it will do no such thing. Behind all the bluster and moral preening, the plain truth is that the French have starved their military to feed their bloated, top-heavy welfare state for decades. They couldn't send a division like the one the Brits sent, even if they wanted to (they don't). Belgium doesn't want to help us either, nor Spain, nor Russia, because these countries are not interested in fighting to create a new Middle East. They're fighting to make the most advantageous deals they can with the old Middle East, seeking to gain advantages at our expense, and at the expense of the oppressed in Iraq, Iran, and every other Middle Eastern country where people are struggling to throw off the shackles of Islamofascist oppression.

It is not yet too late for us to recognize these facts and act on them by dismissing Brahimi, putting Secretary Rumsfeld and our Iraqi friends fully in charge at last, and unleashing our Marines to make an example of Fallujah. And when al Jazeera screams "massacre," instead of cringing and apologizing, we need to stand tall and proud and tell the world: Lynch mobs like the one that slaughtered four Americans will not be tolerated. Order will restored, and Iraqis who side with us will be protected and rewarded.

Barbara Lerner is a frequent contributor to NRO.

7 posted on 11/02/2006 9:10:53 AM EST by Matchett-PI (To have no voice in the Party that always sides with America's enemies is a badge of honor.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1730632/posts?page=7#7

Rumsfeld's Prophecy Has Come True
By Cal Thomas October 26, 2006
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/rumsfelds_prophecy_has_come_tr.html

At lunch Monday with a small group of columnists, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld handed us a speech he'd delivered in 1984 on the occasion of his receiving the George Catlett Marshall Medal.

It was Oct. 17, three weeks before a critical election that would give Ronald Reagan an overwhelming electoral victory. It was also a time when voices in the media and Democratic Party were calling for the United States not to introduce Pershing II missiles into Western Europe to counter missiles the Soviet Union had placed in Eastern Europe. The left wanted an accommodation with Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan believed in victory over communism, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of the Soviet bloc nations is testimony to his sound judgment.

Even before those exciting events, Rumsfeld saw another threat coming in as the tide of Soviet communism rolled out. He spoke of terrorism. Remember, this was 1984, 17 years before 9/11 at a time when most of the world thought terrorism was an isolated phenomenon confined mainly to Israel.

"Terrorism is growing," Rumsfeld said then. "In the 30 days ending last week, it is estimated that there were 37 terrorist attacks, by 13 different organizations, against the property or citizens of 20 different countries."

Even then, Rumsfeld noted terrorism is "state-sponsored, by nations using it as a central element of their foreign policy... terrorism has a home."

He said terrorism works because even a single attack by a small and weak nation can influence public opinion and lower morale and can "alter the behavior of great nations." Isn't that precisely what is happening now? As the terrorists watch the American electorate grow tired and frustrated with the war against insurgent terrorists in Iraq, do they not think all they have to do is hold out a little longer and America will sign anything and do anything to preserve the lives of its people? Why should they believe anything else?

Using a justification for fighting terrorism that would resurface in the current war, Rumsfeld said, "Terrorism is a form of warfare and must be treated as such... weakness invites aggression. Simply standing in a defensive position, absorbing blows, is not enough. Terrorism must be deterred."

In his 1984 speech, Rumsfeld said terrorism cannot be eliminated, but it can be made to function at a "low level" that will allow governments to function. He repeated that thought at lunch and added that the United States is somewhat at a disadvantage because the terrorists don't have a media that challenges their policies, they have no hierarchy and they "get to lie every day with no accountability." Speculating again about the future, Rumsfeld said, "there will be no conventional wars in the near future and no way the military can win or lose a war."

I asked him what he meant. He replied, "We're socialized into believing the American military can go find somebody and kick the hell out of them, or find a battleship to sink, or an air force to shoot down. You can't do that in the 21st century."

Noting the length of the Cold War, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - who was also at the luncheon - agreed the terrorists can be deterred "if the American people will just give us the time."

Later that day, I spoke with Haley Barbour, Mississippi governor and former Republican National Committee chairman, about the apparently slim GOP prospects in the coming election. Noting how the polls show Iraq has hurt Republicans, Barbour said, "The public gets tired of long wars."

That is precisely what Osama bin Laden and his bloody associates are counting on. Their plan for victory is to exhaust the United States.

In 1984, Rumsfeld recalled Winston Churchill's lesson from World War II that weakness invites aggression. And he warned, "Ours is a dangerous world, a world in transition."

We have now transitioned from dangerous to even more dangerous. If we grow weary in this battle, we can be sure our enemies won't flag. They are prepared for a long war. We'd better be, for to be unprepared and to lack resolve means the war will come anyway, but with greater intensity and with more American (and European) casualties.

Cal@CalThomas.com

8 posted on 11/02/2006 10:02:36 AM EST by Matchett-PI (To have no voice in the Party that always sides with America's enemies is a badge of honor.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1730632/posts?page=8#8

69 posted on 02/19/2007 3:56:25 PM EST by Matchett-PI

I agree with you and with McCain. But I'd add that it wasn't just Rumsfeld's errors. It was also the inability of this administration to effectively convey their message or vision regarding the importance of this war.

Was it Churchill who called war a series of blunders leading to victory? We had massive errors in military judgment in the first years of WWII. Iraq is no different. It's perfectly fine for McCain to point out these errors. He's not saying anything he hasn't said before--that we didn't sent enough troops, etc.

Of all the candidates running for the GOP nomination, McCain is the only one (other than maybe Rudy) whom I trust to fight a strong and effective war against the Islamists.

This much is self-evident, regardless of who is saying it...

" Rumsfeld never put enough troops on the ground to succeed in Iraq."

I hate to say this but I agree with McCain. the reality is the management of Iraq has been abysmal (remember the Iraqi police acacemy debacle?) Rummy was intent on proving his point of view regarding smaller forces to the detriment of our fighting men and women. Unfotunately, reality is something that some Freepers aren't interested in.

The difference is Roosevelt and Churchill were able to learn from their mistakes. Bush's attitude seems to be to not do anything different until he has no other choice and then give only a token response.

Rumsfeld Memo on Iraq Proposed ‘Major’ Change (What if this had been known before the elections)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1747568/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1747732/posts

McCain can't handle the tough questions he is encountering.