69. Ridgway, Korean War, 159: “In the course of this interview, the record of which had been impounded until after General MacArthur’s death, the latter, Mr. Lucas reported, rated me at the bottom of his list of field commanders. In the light of all that General MacArthur had said to me in Korea, and of his subsequent statement to Senator Harry P. Cain in Washington, which follows, this presents a puzzle for which I have no satisfactory answer.” On criticism of Ridgway by MacArthur, cf. too, Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 598–99.
70. Eisenhower and Ridgway: Soffer, General Matthew Ridgway, 183.
71. Cf., e.g., Ridgway, Korean War, 113: “In General Eisenhower’s book, he reports that Seoul was recaptured after General James A. Van Fleet had taken over the Eighth Army. This is untrue.” Cf. Appleman, Ridgway Duels for Korea, 348: “Could a military man of Eisenhower’s long experience, and presumably intense interest in the Korean War at a time when he was running for the president in 1952, display such ignorance of the events?” Cf. Blair, Forgotten War, 802–3, on the Ridgway–Van Fleet tension.
72. On integration, see, again, Sandler, Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished, 252–53.
73. Blair, Forgotten War, 815–16.
74. Ridgway, Korean War, 233. On the bleak developments between 1945 and the outbreak of the Korean War (e.g., Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, the Berlin Airlift, the Czech coup, the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949, etc.), see Whelan, Drawing the Line, 27, 49–74.
75. Jensen, Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg, 104–6.
76. See Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 490–92, for some examples of Ridgway’s critical insight in both earlier and later American crises. On Korean War casualties, see Blair, Forgotten War, 975.
77. Whelan, Drawing the Line, 373–74.
78. On the controversy, and the statements of Van Fleet, again see Whelan, Drawing the Line, 319–20.
79. For Yu’s analysis of the terrible prices paid by the Chinese, see Li, Mao’s Generals, 25–27. See the examples of Ridgway encomia collected by Soffer, General Matthew Ridgway, 117; cf. 211; cf. also Appleman, Ridgway Duels for Korea, 147.
Chapter Five: Iraq Is “Lost”
1. Cf. http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx.
Petraeus had argued that to quiet Iraq, American troops would have to venture out of their compounds, and assure security to Iraqi supporters. That would lessen casualties in the long run, but surely spike them in the short term. By August and September 2010, two and three Americans had perished, respectively—the lowest fatalities of any months of the seven-year war up to that time.
2. For the hearings and Petraeus’s discomfort, cf. Ricks, Gamble, 246–47, and especially West, Strongest Tribe, 317–23. The full text of General Petraeus’s testimony of September 10–11, 2007, can be found at the Department of Defense’s online archives
(http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/Petraeus-Testimony20070910.pdf).
The remarks of Ambassador Crocker can be retrieved at
http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/2007/91941.htm.
3. For the vote and some of the speeches in favor of the war, cf.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/iraq.us;
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2002-237;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wyCBF5CsCA;
http://www.c-span.org/vote2004/kerryspeech.asp.
Senator John Kerry had offered an impassioned warning about Saddam Hussein’s likely use of WMD: “I have said publicly for years that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein pose a real and grave threat to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. Saddam Hussein’s record bears this out.”
4. The disapproval figure is based on a CNN / Research Opinion poll taken between September 7–9, 2007, just hours before the September 10–11 hearings began. For a good review of the monthly approval ratings of the Iraq War between 2006 and 2007, see the data assembled at
Pollingreport.com
(http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm).
More specifically worded polls revealed that at least half the country did not believe the surge was working—and even fewer that the additional cost in blood and treasure was worth it.
5. For Senator Clinton’s earlier desire to leave Iraq, see her 2007 interview with Iraq war veterans (e.g.,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/263224/when-vets-freedom-met-hillary-clinton-vincent-g-heintz).
6. For Obama’s appraisals of the surge, see an ABC News synopsis at
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/from-the-fact-c.html, and cf. his remarks in New Hampshire
(http://www.nhpr.org/node/13507).
For a video of Obama’s seven-minute statement at the Petraeus hearings, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIUej6VJzII.
The Washington Post reported on his call for combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013001586.html.
7. For Senator Biden’s various appraisals of Iraq, see contemporary accounts at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20676775/;
http://www.historiae.org/biden.asp;
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/05/petraeus-201005.
However, on February 10, 2010, then Vice President Biden asserted that an Iraq secured by the surge, and the prior policies of General Petraeus, could soon become one of the Obama administration’s “greatest achievements.”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcOv-AbHlCk)
8. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18227928;
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3575785&page=1;
“happy talk”
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/presidential-ca.html.
9. For a review of the upsurge in violence, see Ricks, Gamble, 45–46.
10. The New York Times ombudsman found his paper’s “General Betray Us” ad troubling—both the matter of the discounted rate, and its personal invective that went against the stated Times policy of prohibiting paid attack ads against individuals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/opinion/23pubed.html.
On the ad, cf. Ricks, Gamble, 245–46. Cf. Michael Moore:
http://michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/heads-up-from-michael-moore;
Nicholson Baker, Checkpoint (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004); on Gabriel Range’s 2006 docudrama, The Death of a President, see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090100858.html;
Charles Brooker, The Guardian, October 24, 2004.
11. On the American losses in Afghanistan, see
http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx.
On the prebattle confidence of a “cakewalk” in Iraq, see one example from K. Adelman “Cakewalk in Iraq” (Washington Post, February 13, 2002): “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”
12. What allied governments wished in 2003 and in 2006 were very different things. For a discussion of the role of American allies and the war, see Shaw-cross, Allies, 221–26.
13. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:HR04655:@@@X
(where readers can be directed to the text and vote on the resolution).
14. George Bush admitted later that the flight onto the Abraham Lincoln and the carrier’s banner were a public relations “mistake” that gave the wrong impression about the status in Iraq, despite qualifiers made evident in his speech. For the president’s later remorse, cf. H. Roswenkrantz, “Bush Says He Regrets Use of Iraq ‘Mission Accomplished’ Banner,” ’ Bloomberg News, Nov. 12, 2008. In fact, the banner may have referred to the completion of the Abraham Lincoln’s tour, rather than victory in Iraq.
15. On the problems with the Bremer appointment, see Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 505–7, 509–16. For the fights over postwar Iraq in 2003–2004, cf. Feith, War and
Decision, 422–32. For the wish list, see Franks, American Soldier, 544–45. For a defense of Jay Garner, see G. Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq: Regime Change, Jay Garner, and the ORHA Story (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2011).
16. For the general pessimism in and out of the military about the increasing violence of 2003, and the supposed reasons for the American failures, see the review of Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 498–505. On the problems of the Bremer proconsulship, cf. Feith, War and Decision, 448–53.
17. On the controversy over “de-Baathification,” disastrous in the short term, perhaps salutary in the long term, see Robinson, Ends, 70–71; Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 515–19; Feith, War and Decision, 432–37. Cf. Moyer, Question of Command, 216–17. Bremer himself at the time took credit for the move, and yet later argued that he had not made the decision to disband the army. Rumsfeld in retrospect thought that he might have been able to intervene and stop the decision, despite Bremer’s direct conduit to the president (Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 518–19).
18. On the unwise Bush taunt, cf. Wawro, Quicksand, 565–68.
19. Strangely, General Sanchez, the ranking officer on the ground in Iraq at the time of Abu Ghraib, in his memoirs called it a “grotesque blessing,” criticizing his being unfairly scapegoated for the debacle while in turn blaming the Bush administration for creating a climate of harsh interrogation that was more culpable than his own lax command. See Sanchez, Wiser, 375; 456–57. And for a critique of the Sanchez appointment, see Jaffe and Cloud, Fourth Star, 127–29.
20. See Ballard, Fighting for Fallujah, 12. For the failed first siege, see the analysis of Moyer, Question of Command, 229–31.
21. Cf. Ballard on the aftermath and costs of Fallujah, Fighting for Fallujah, 95–98. For a different appraisal of the battle, see Holmes, Fallujah, 17–21.
22. The Iraqi Coalition casualty count provides a monthly total of U.S. and coalition dead and wounded in both Afghanistan and Iraq at
http://icasualties.org.
23. See Robinson, Ends, 19–20. Contrast Matthew Ridgway’s almost immediate publication of a pamphlet on why Americans were fighting in Korea—“Why Are We Here? What Are We Fighting For?”—as soon as he arrived in Korea.
24. Bush, Decision Points, 367.
25. For the Revolt of the Generals, and the various positions of the individual officers, see Ricks, Gamble, 37–45.
26. On the bombing of the Golden Mosque and its effects on American strategies, cf. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 687–90.
27. Almost no one identified themselves formally with any particular strategy other than the general goal of quelling the violence and withdrawing American troops as quickly as possible. On the bleak scenarios in 2006, see Ricks, Fiasco, 430–39; Gamble, 3–29; and cf. his Washington Post piece on Anbar: Washington Post, September 11, 2006.
28. See Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 508–23. The secretary of defense argued that his commanders in the field did not present proposals for troop increases; the supporters of Generals Casey and Abizaid conceded that that was true, but suggested the generals were given the impression that they were to reflect preexisting Department of Defense wishes for a smaller profile.
29. On the Sanchez tenure, cf. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 500–503. For complaints about the failed efforts to train the Iraqi army before the appointment of Petraeus, see Packer, Assassins’ Gate, 304–9. The bleak assessment is found in Hashim, Insurgency, 389.
30. Opposition to a sometimes mentioned huge and counterproductive proposed surge of 100,000 troops was not the same as opposition to a much smaller one of 20,000 to 30,000. For the key distinction, see V. D. Hanson, “Do We Have Enough Troops in Iraq?” (Commentary, June 1, 2004). The question was not just whether to surge or not to surge, but how many troops to surge and what sort of mission and tactics were to guide them.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/nothing-succeeds-like-success-11274?search=1.
West, Strongest Tribe, 366–67, points out all the additional troops requested would not have been salutary until the Americans found the proper strategy and unity of purpose.
31. See Robinson, Ends, 18–22, 27–29. Robinson makes a good attempt to identify at an early stage those officers and civilians identified with the surge and those opposed—contingent upon the realization that all sorts of surges of various sizes were being proposed, and often prominent policymakers, in and out of the military, seemed to hedge their bets, in order to be able to claim support for the surge should it work, or to emphasize their own opposition should it fail. On the politics of the summer of 2006, cf. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 692–703.
32. There are various accounts of the principals involved in the surge; all agree that they centered their critiques of the war on promotion for a supreme command under General Petraeus. For the various factions, see West, Strongest Tribe, 216–23.
33. Petraeus’s April 9, 2004, comprehensive remarks about his experience with the 101st Airborne Division can be accessed at
http://washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=1733.
See Ricks, Gamble, 508–11, on Petraeus’s interview with the Washington Post, and his growing number of critics: “David tends not to build teams, or think about what happens afterwards. It’s the Dave Petraeus Show.”
34. For the Newsweek cover story, see
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/newsweek-cover-can-this-man-save-iraq-75166612.html:
“Both the president and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met with Petraeus before he was sent back to Iraq with his third star. ‘They told me, “whatever you need, you’ve got it,” ’ he says.” On the training of the Iraq army, see Moyer, Question of Command, 226–27. For Sanchez’s anger, see Wiser, 318.
35. On the Petraeus team, cf. Robinson, Ends, 104–13, West, Strongest Tribe, 216–20. See Bush, Decision Points, 364–65, for his decision to go with the colonels. The advocacy of the surge from the vice president’s office is found in Cheney, In My Time, especially 446–58. For samples of Powell’s pessimism in the interview, see
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,120754,00.html.
36. A sampling of neoconservative depression on the eve of the surge is the theme of D. Rose’s November 2007 essay “Neo Culpa” in Vanity Fair, accessed at
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612.
P. Galbraith’s February 2007 New York Review of Books essay “The Surge” can be accessed at
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/mar/15/the-surge/?pagination=false.
Galbraith had earlier authored a book arguing for the trisection of Iraq, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 208–24, and was later involved in controversies over his diplomatic and business interests in Kurdistan.
37. For the formal AEI blueprint for the surge, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” chiefly authored by Fred Kagan, with the help of some seventeen other prominent AEI scholars, see
http://www.aei.org/files/2009/01/30/20070111_ChoosingVictoryupdated.pdf.
See the full quotation on page 45: “It is time to accept reality. The fight in Iraq is difficult. The enemy will work hard to defeat the coalition and the Iraqi government. Things will not go according to plan. The coalition and the Iraqi government may fail. But failure is neither inevitable nor tolerable, and so the United States must redouble its efforts to succeed. America must adopt a new strategy based more firmly on successful counterinsurgency practices, and the nation must provide its commanders with the troops they need to execute that strategy in the face of a thinking enemy. The enemy has been at war with us for nearly four years. The United States has emphasized restraint and caution. It is time for America to go to war and win. And America can.”
38. A sampling of Bush’s January 2007 poll ratings can be found at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/22/opinion/polls/main2384943.shtml.
39. For the six new principles of securing Iraq, see an accessible version at
http://www.savethecolors.com/WordPress/publications/Overview-2007IraqPlans.pdf.
40. For the text of Biden’s speech, see
http://www.c-span.org/executive/transcript.asp?cat=current&code=bush_admin&year=2006.
For a sampling of congressional reaction, see
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Congressional_actions_regarding_President_Bush’s_2007_proposed_troop_“surge”_in_Iraq.
41. An account of the opposition from Fallon is in Ricks, Gamble, 230–37. For the premature political anxiety over the progress of the surge, see Cheney, In My Time, 456–64.
42. The change from forward operating bases to small urban billets is discussed in Kagan, Surge, 32–34; cf. Robinson, Ends, 97–99. And for the headway made in 2007 in Anbar Province, cf. 134–37. I joined an on-the-ground fact-finding mission led by Col. H. R. McMaster in October 2007 through many areas of Anbar Province, the former hotbed of Sunni resistance, and found the area far quieter than on an earlier trip I had made during February 2006 that coincided with the attack against the mosque at Samarra. One radical change was the presence of small numbers of Americans in ground-floor apartments throughout the downtowns of many of the most troubled Anbar cities. For press accounts of the Reid-Pelosi letter, cf.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070613203802.7yla5iav.
The text of the House resolution is found at
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.CON.RES.63.
For “reckless escalation” and the Obama proposal, see the January 31, 2007, Chicago Tribune article, accessed at
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/democrats-work-to-stop-reckless-escalation-of-war-in-iraq.
Cf. Obama’s appraisal: “But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else’s civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants. The time for waiting in Iraq is over. The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close. And the need to bring this war to an end is here.”
43. For a synopsis of various December assessments of O’Hanlon and Campbell, see their condensed New York Times essay “The State of Iraq: An Update”
The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq Page 36
