Obama, Odierno, and Iraq
The New York Times has an article about some pushback President Obama is getting from some military figures, notably General Odierno in Iraq, regarding his plan for a relatively rapid redeployment of forces out of the theater. Basically, Odierno thinks we need to go slower. But while I can sympathize with General Odierno’s desire for maximum flexibility and the largest quantity of resources possible, the president needs to consider the wider strategic perspective and the large global and regional costs of maintaining an indefinite military presence.
But even with regard to Iraq here, Odierno seems to me to be thinking too much in narrow operational terms. The “go slow” idea is that we should stay in Iraq in force through the elections, to maximize security and give us flexibility in terms of figuring out what to do down the road. The trouble with this perspective is that it fails to recognize that U.S. military policy is one of the important inputs into the Iraqi political process. As Marc Lynch says, going slow will poison the wells for the summer referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement, make the United States look untrustworthy, enhance the hostility of the Iraqi public to American forces, and destabilize the political situation. Ultimately, we’ll just wind up being forced out anyway. But it’ll have to be done more chaotically, and without the goodwill and spirit of mutualism that the SOFA embodies. A relatively rapid move toward withdrawal will complicate the operational situation, but it will also serve as a “downpayment” on further withdrawal down the road and establish American seriousness about getting to the point where Iraq is a real sovereign country without a foreign occupying army.
In a broader context, I think it’s just difficult to overstate the importance of ending the war and occupation in Iraq to advancing America’s broader international agenda. There were a lot of things wrong with the Bush administration’s policy, but in concrete terms the world is looking for a new approach to detention and torture, a new approach to Israel and Palestine, and a new approach to Iraq. Obama has acted decisively on the first item, has shown a lot of promise on the second, and needs to follow through on the third. Diplomacy with Iran, a renewed focus on the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation, a rapprochement with Europe, a partnership with China and our allies in Asia on the global economic situation, etc. all require us to get out of an Iraq-focused foreign policy. And the complexities of Iraq are such that the best way to do that is to get out of Iraq.
50 Responses to “Obama, Odierno, and Iraq”
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January 29th, 2009 at 11:13 am
It would be wise to be careful about making such firm predictions about an inherently unpredictable environment. Plus, the tactical judgement of those who opposed the surge is not looking very good right now [the strategic judgement about those who supported the war, of course, looks even worse]. All that said, I don’t know what the hell else we can do besides get out of there.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:15 am
“A relatively rapid move toward withdrawal will complicate the operational situation, but it will also serve as a “downpayment” on further withdrawal down the road and establish American seriousness about getting to the point where Iraq is a real sovereign country without a foreign occupying army.”
Ah, just admit it. You’re hoping Iraq is fragile enough — and Obama will withdraw troops fast enough — that Iraq’s nascent democracy collapses. Chances are, though, that Obama isn’t stupid enough to hope for that. If he’s smart, he’ll listen to Odierno, who’s been in-country long enough to know what he’s talking about.
As for your concerns about “the large global and regional costs of maintaining an indefinite military presence”, does this apply to Afghanistan, too, or is an indefinite military presence there costless in your opinion?
January 29th, 2009 at 11:17 am
The other issue, really the only one, is that Obama is the Commander in Chief, and if Odierno doesn’t want a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq he should quit. He’s free to campaign against withdrawal once he’s retired.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Rich,
Part of Odierno’s job is to offer his expert opinion. Ultimately, it’s Obama’s decision what to do, but the idea that an officer ought to resign if he expresses doubts about an arbitrary timetable advanced during a political campaign is ridiculous. If Obama wants to replace Odierno with a yes man, he has the power to do so. Odierno is free to give his candid assessment to Obama either way.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I still cannot figure out what the fuck is meant by “ending the war.” The desired outcome represents a null set–a democratic Iraq, allied with the US (and, therefore, Israel) perfectly happy with a permanent occupation. this is not on the list of possible states of the world. Writing as if it is just contributes to a sense of fantasy that the Serious People apparently mean to maintain until the Great American Hegemony Project collapses on itself.
The real outcomes involve a state run by Shiites, tolerant of an independent Kurdish Sunni substate, allied with Iran, and dependent on oil revenues to survive. Or a state run, as was Iran under the Shah, by an American client installed by force, and maintained by tyranny. But the Iraq that signs the SOFA agreement, tolerates a permanent occupation, and has a representative government is not on the list of available options.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Get. Out. Now.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am
What. About. Afghanistan?
Simplistic anti-war lefties. Why do you keep ignoring the other war? Will you stop ignoring it after we get out of Iraq?
January 29th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Hey Fred, I hear what you’re saying, but when the military starts telling the president that his goals are unrealistic, then the military has lost sight of its mission. Yes, the generals and admirals are there to provide advice and warn against the consquences of certain actions. But Obama’s made it pretty clear – he wants the majority of troops out in 16 months. This is not unexpected, and the Pentagon brass has already started its planning process. For Odierno to say, well, I don’t think we should do that and I’m not going to plan accordingly (which is the tone I get in the NYT article) brings back shades of MacArthur.
If Odierno doesn’t wise up and recognize the Commander-in-Chief’s direction, then he needs to step down. That’s all there is to it. As for Afghanistan, Bush certainly ignored that festering wound for six years. I’m sure it will be okay until Petraeus submits his new strategy to the CINC.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I always try to remember that many of the stories in the NYT or WaPo are planted by the neocons.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:44 am
The biggest difference between Afghanistan and Iraq is less oil. Plus Afghanistan is on the OTHER side of Iran.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:52 am
It would be wise to be careful about making such firm predictions about an inherently unpredictable environment..
That is far too timid. The reality in Iraq is that there is a major unresolved tension or dispute for power. And it appears to require one further phase of civil war to fight and settle it. The U.S. has sided with the long term inviable and ancien regime faction in that dispute, i.e. the Badrists and Maliki. (Just like the U.S. did in Vietnam, btw.) Is it wise to keep the U.S. military there merely to violently prop a hollow facade of externally provided constitutional democracy against the Sadrists, who are the desired constituents thereof but who insist on ownership and authorship?
January 29th, 2009 at 11:55 am
A relatively rapid move toward withdrawal will complicate the operational situation, but it will also serve as a “downpayment” on further withdrawal down the road and establish American seriousness about getting to the point where Iraq is a real sovereign country without a foreign occupying army.
Actually, we are there at their invitiation so this is misstated. The doves want to spin Odierno’s expert opinions in the worst way possible, that’s fine and it’s no surprise. I don’t know his motivations or what he’s thinking, but it could be that he feels a go slow approach will avoid a disaster which he would be blamed for if it occurred. Or maybe he feels we should go slow because a disaster would be bad in itself regardless of its effect on his career or on America’s “security.”
But Obama is the Decider so he’s free to take his advice or not. But if Iraq is a disaster after the US leaves, Obama will be blamed whether it’s his fault or not.
Of course doves will blame Bush, but it will be Obama who pulled out. (He can always point to the Iraqis who asked us to leave.)
January 29th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
What. About. Afghanistan?
Simplistic anti-war lefties. Why do you keep ignoring the other war? Will you stop ignoring it after we get out of Iraq?
What makes you think I wasn’t talking about both places?
January 29th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Ah, just admit it. You’re hoping Iraq is fragile enough — and Obama will withdraw troops fast enough — that Iraq’s nascent democracy collapses.
This is how you know it’s safe to ignore him; he’s still stuck in 2002.
You buncha Saddam-lovers. You just hate democracy.
Simplistic anti-war lefties. Why do you keep ignoring the other war? Wow, talk about projection; an Iraq War dupe accusing the people who’ve spent the last six and half years trying to get people to pay attention to Afghanistan accusing the other side of ignoring Afghanistan.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Notice how little advice about the right way forward the Iraq War dupes offer.
Every question of foreign and military policy is first and foremost an opportunity to start a slap fight with their domestic political opposition.
Such has it always been with this war. They have no other thoughts beyond how much they hate liberals.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
What. About. Afghanistan?
What is your real question? We have been in Afghanistan for 7 years with the only obvious plans being (a) fob off the locals and (b) beat the Taliban away from our bases until (c) we kill ObL and (d) then withdraw.
Any other options basically require a lot of American money and an agreement with the Pakistanis about power. Ideally we could prop a major city in Afghanistan as its modern social and economic center, and promote basic economic development in others, leaving feudal warlords to run the rest of the country. But that would be in a running conflict with these warlords’ drug crop economies, which also force Russian action to stem the flow. And there are the many unemployed and unemployable Afghani men who will end up fighting in the civil war Indus Valley plain Pakistan is in with its hill tribes.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Fred- I don’t mean to fetishize the president-as-commander-in-chief, just to point out that Odierno can advocate as he likes until a superior tells him that advocacy time is over. Then he can execute the plan (heck, he can formulate the plan, save for the governing principle), or quit. I don’t know that we are at that point yet, but “pushback” can be interpreted as continued objections even though Obama has told them how it has to be, and that’s not acceptable at any point in the chain of command.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
It’s amazing what lengths people (specially Zionsists and Neocons) will go to justify spilling American blood in the mid-East. If we had never been there in the first place, they would never have had a reason to resent us and attack us.
And to wish for a “democracy” in the mid-east is ridiculous and hypocrital. The only true democracy just elected Hamas to power and we don’t support them. How much more hypocritacal can our leaders get ??? To answer that, just look at the blood-thirsty terroristic leaders of Israel and what they say all the while committing the Palestinian Holocaust.
We have no business in Iraq, Iran, Israel, Saudi, or the rest. We have supported tyrants there and thus forced the peasants to resort to the tactics they now use. Had we not been there supporting such repressive regiines, those countries would have evolved naturally and, most likely, would have ended up with much more tolerant and democratic societies. It is the repression we’ve supported that’s caused such backward thinking there. We are directly responsible for the terrorism we experience now.
The blood-thirsty leaders of Israel want more anti-Semitism (Jewish revulsion), not less. It’s is thru this spreading of anti-semitism that cause more immigration to Israel of the world’s Jews. Without such immigration, the Jewish population of Israel would be in the minority in ten years or so.
And for terrorist state of Israel to complain about Iran becoming nuclear, it shows their contempt for the world. They, the original terrorist in the region, have had nuclear weapons for years…..and refuse to join the Nuclean Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran is a treaty member, as is most of the rest of the Arab/Muslim world. This shows just how much contempt Israel has for the world and just exactly how ignorant they think non-Jews are.
It is the thirst for blood of Israel and America’s blind support for such a blood-thirsty brat of a state that has led us into a perpetual state of war. Israel revels in that perpetual state of war. We being mostly a Christian nation, however, have a moral objection to the continual killing that is an integral part of supporting such a terrorist regime. Supporting this spoiled blood-thirsty brat of a nation has cost America precious American blood and treasure that has put us in a position to not be able to pull ourselves out of this economic mess we are in now.
Had we not been spending billions (trillions ???) to be the proxy in Israel’s wars, we could have already solved our current economic problems. George Bush (traitor) threw the war against Al Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to go into Iraq and attack a CIA asset led state. If a sports player had thrown a game like that, he would have been prosecuted.
It is way past time to pull our troops out of all those mid-east countries. It is way past time to be a true free market society. And in doing so, we need to bring home all our F-16s in Israel, stop our billions of dollars going to that terrorist regime (we give Israel more than all other combined….what a damn shame), and let Israel stand or fall just like any business in a free market economy.
Then they can give witness to the world just how much their G-D is with them. If their G-D truly wants them to rule over Jerusalem, then they only need thier G-D and not our F-16s and the massive amount of our tax dollars they’ve been getting. There is the true hypocrasy of the radical blood-thirsty Zionist Jews.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Odierno is free to give his candid assessment to Obama either way.
It’s a good thing for Odierno to give Obama his candid assessment. Not so good for him to give it via the news media, though.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
well…Shinseki in 2003….
January 29th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Obama is smart enough, as is my Parakeet, to know that no matter when, how fast, or how slow, we leave Iraq that the Iraqi’s will commence to choose their leaders in their own time honored way. And it won’t be with voting booths and purple thumbs. He made a promise, and he will keep it and take the heat when things go inevitably south. If he doesn’t, the people who voted for him, including moi’, will make his presidency miserable.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
It’s a good thing for Odierno to give Obama his candid assessment. Not so good for him to give it via the news media, though.
I’m not sure this is what’s happening, but I could be wrong. It could be that the Times is trying to stir up some drama.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Odierno played a big part in igniting the Iraqi insurgency: his division treated every Iraqi as an enemy before trouble even started. He’s the guy who filled up Abu Ghraib with randomly-arrested people.
He’s a damn fool. I wonder if Obama knows that.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Fred sure likes dancing with straw men.
Is he the cowardly lion, the tin woodman, or Dorothy?
January 29th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Or the squirrely wizard hiding behind the curtain.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
well…Shinseki in 2003….
… made his critical statements testifying before Congress . . .
January 29th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
well…Shinseki in 2003….
answered questions he was asked while testifying before Congress.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Here, by the way, is a photo of Gen. Odierno from a few years ago . . .
January 29th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Has Obama asked permission from AIPAC and professional victims in Tel Aviv yet?
January 29th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
answered questions he was asked while testifying before Congress.
Well he should of resigned if he didn’t agree with the President according to the doves. Double standards just like the IOKIYAR conservatives.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Peter K,
You mean one person on one thread, whose opinion has been disputed by numerous other doves?
You’re one of those people who can’t get out of bed in the morning without a nice shot of victimhood.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Deep thought: If Iraqi democracy can only survive with a permanent military occupation by foreign powers then obviously the Iraqi people don’t want that version of “democracy.”
The sooner our citizens jettison the childish idea that the Iraq War Crime was about “freedom,” the better off we and the Iraqis will be. The War was fought to turn Iraq into an American client state. We hoped to put in a place a pro-American (and pro-Israel) government that we could lever against OPEC. Old-fashioned Lord Palmerston politics. Viscous. Sleezy. Dishonest. All the way down the line. Haditha is a metaphor for the whole war.
Now can’t leave because, gosh darn it, those Iraqis will cheer that we are leaving. They may even throw shoes at us. And we will see the images on TV. And that’s just too much for our fellow Wingnut Neanderthals–Odierno included.
Boo hoo. It’s time to go. Unlike wars, war rrimes are not won; they are ended.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
The guy looks like a certified asshole.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
If we really cared about Iraq we would not have carpet bombed the country, tortured them, destroyed their water treatment plants and power grids, etc. After we’ve more than decimated that nation, we are concerned with their “security”. Hah. We can’t protect them from cholera.
I think we should stop trying to save face, and face our demons.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
It’s bizarre in the extreme to see supporters of mass murder like Fred and Peter K whining about what will happen to the Iraqis. They didn’t care when we were slaughtering them. They only care now as a front for beating up on those who were right to say there was never any rationale for killing innocent Iraqis.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
If I was charged with getting out of Iraq I would be saying the same things. That being said, Ordierno has always put short term tactics ahead of long term strategy so it shouldn’t be that difficult for Obama to recognize Orderno’s limitations and get on with it.
“Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.
The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for “grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers [were] unable to figure out who was of value and who was not,” according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division’s detainee operations by the Army inspector general’s office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.” Fighting the Insurgency One Unit’s Aggressive Approach ‘It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong’ Ricks WaPo 7/24/06
January 29th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Don’t overanalyze this
Odierno is a right-wing tool. He’s not presentable enough to run a political game of his own, so he is presumably doing Petraeus’ bidding. But that, figuring out what political game he’s playing, is the extent of the subtlety involved here. Looking for actual nuances of policy in his statements is not a useful pursuit.
January 30th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Naming James Jones as National Security Adviser was a smart move. Obama can be the nice guy above the fray and the NSA will be the hatchet man who lays down the law and tells Odierno that he’s either on the bus or off the bus and the train’s leaving the station, so get off my plane (to mix metaphors slighty).
Before he started civilian clothes, Jones was the Marine Commandant and NATO Supreme Commander.
February 2nd, 2009 at 7:17 pm
i’m not sure i know enough to leave a comment about what odierno said or didn’t say as i wasn’t in the meeting and only msm and some blogs are stirring the pot without any references to back it up. but i can tell you that i feel alot of animosity from both sides of the aisle on this. if michael had left out all his hatred for hebrews and neocons his statement actually presented his premise fairly well. fred is misunderstood. all he is saying is once the liberals have their way with” out of irag “while they were preaching afganistan should have been the focus they will only want out of there also. thats all he said nothing more. can i get a life now?
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