I probably won't dwell on this topic past today so don't send anymore…but I thought I'd share a few more e-mails I've received on the topic. This first one is from Cecil E. Newsom…
I personally thought Donald Rumsfeld's answer to the troops was very close to telling them to go screw themselves.
When you are attacked by someone else, you go to war with the army you have. But when you had over a year to plan and are surrounded by experts on the subject of waging war, you create a plan, get what you need, and go to war. This guy didn't do that. He went to war with a configuration of men and machines created to prove a point. He had been told that to secure the peace would take about 300,000 men, and he chose to go with less than half that.
And lastly, he topped it off with a bit of blatant lying. Armor sure as hell does stop a vehicle from being blown up. Newsmen have commented repeatedly about shells bouncing off tanks and other armored vehicles.
And this one is from Jim Atkins…
I just read your comments about Greg Cox's reply to your previous blog. I teach junior high here and about half of my students are from Marine families (the major industry here is the Marine Air-Ground Combat Center, the largest Marine training ground in the world). Do I support our troops? You bet I do. Those men and women are some of the finest people I have ever met, all of them willing to lay down their lives for the United States. Duty and Honor aren't just words to the Corps.
Do I support the war? Not anymore, not after finding out Bush, Powell, Rice and Rumsfeld lied to us at every turn; about Al Qaida ties, about WMD programs, about nearly everything. At this point, Iran and North Korea are really making WMD and we can't do anything about it, because we are tied down in a mess of our own making. Osama is running around loose because all our forces are cleaning up insurgent psychos in Iraq. Arrogance, hubris, whatever; they got it, and we will be paying for it.
I haven't yet had to deal with a kid losing a parent; most of the casualties from our units have been younger men without families. It's kind of in the back of your mind all the time.
Lastly, here's another one from Greg Cox…
Thanks for your comments to my comments. We did prep for this war. We're getting things done; we're making some mistakes, and we're correcting those mistakes. Regarding 'what if the mistakes were ten times worse,' well, the obvious answer is we'd need to make ten times the effort to correct what's wrong. Because we're committed to accomplishing certain goals. Goals that were set out before we went into Iraq. Goals have certainly been adjusted some, but probably not too much.
I think it's very much worth remembering that before we went into Iraq, there was (we thought at the time, as well as other countries) solid intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons situation.
Some questions:
Okay – you've just been given the job of Secretary of Defense. Regarding where we are now in Iraq – what things do you think the coalition and the U.S. forces must get done before moving the majority of the troops out? How long do you think it should take to get those things done – about when would you, SecDef Evanier, estimate you'll be able to pull out the majority of the troops?
Lastly, after we went into Iraq, of course, it was a whole different situation. What things have been accomplished by coalition forces that you supported and/or saw as positives?
I don't think I'd agree that we're correcting mistakes at a speedy-enough rate compared to how rapidly we're making them. We're certainly not admitting mistakes at any sort of decent clip. One of the things that scares me about this Administration is that no matter what happens, the official line seems to be either, "Yes, that's just what we meant to do" or "It was somebody else's fault." (They also have a related propensity for losing court battles and then claiming victory. See this article in Slate for a good example.) There's this sense that it's vital to look "on track" even when you aren't, even if that means soldiering on in the wrong direction.
I think goals have been adjusted a lot since we went into Iraq. The big goal, and the reason we didn't wait a few more months and prep our troops better, was that Saddam had those Weapons of Mass Destruction and might use them at any moment. Remember back when people like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter were fools for thinking he didn't have them? When Colin Powell went before the U.N. with charts and graphs and the best intelligence the United States could muster and "proved" they were right where we knew they were? In almost any other field, you'd be shamed into another line of work for such a monumental screw-up and you'd have to go sell snow tires at Walmart for the rest of your life. In the Bush Administration, you just change the rationale for invasion, say that's what it always was, fire no one for incompetence and barrel right on with the war. I'm still amazed there wasn't more outrage over this bait-and-switch, even if it was an honest mistake.
As for what I'd do as SecDef…well, if I were Bush's Secretary of Defense, I think I'd get up and say we've made a lot of mistakes there and we're going to bring in better miltary strategists and start listening to them instead of trying to prove Rumsfeld's silly theory about how it was possible to win on the cheap. And then I'd go back to my office and type out the letter of resignation that will be demanded of me within the hour. (I'd probably make up some lame excuse about how I might not have paid the proper taxes for a nanny I'd employed.) How long might it take to withdraw our troops? I dunno. Rumsfeld recently said four years which, since he said it, probably means eight. Maybe more competent leaders could manage it in four.
What positives do I think have emerged from all this? I thought the early efforts in Afghanistan were for the better. Recently, I've read so many conflicting reports that I'm not sure if things have improved there or gotten as bad as they've ever been. In Iraq, I think the downfall of Saddam is a positive, though he clearly was not as great a threat as we thought. I suspect in hindsight, history will judge his removal as a good thing, though one for which America paid way too high a price in terms of lives, money and resources that should have been put to more pressing matters.
One last thing about the Rumsfeld Q-and-A that launched us into this debate: According to this article, "Army officials were meeting late yesterday to decide whether to ask Armor Holdings Inc. to increase production from 450 Humvees to 550 Humvees a month at its O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt plant in Cincinnati after the firm claimed it could expand production." Do we think they would have met late yesterday on this topic if that soldier hadn't asked Rumsfeld that question? Planted or not, it did some good. The Administration has been embarrassed into doing something they should have done months ago.
Thanks for the interesting discussion, Greg. The next thing I post here will be something happier and will have nothing to do with people dying or politics or any other depressing subject.