General McCaffrey on Iraq and Iran
I don't have time to write much of anything tonight, but I thought I'd highlight some of the things General Barry McCaffrey had to say on last Sunday's Meet the Press. McCaffrey has always struck me as a perceptive guy and a straight-shooter, and I don't think his comments have yet garnered the attention they deserve (disclosure: I actually met McCaffrey a few years ago, and the encounter only reinforced my positive impression of him).
Here's what McCaffrey had to say when asked whether we need more troops in Iraq:
Here's what McCaffrey had to say when asked whether we need more troops in Iraq:
I'm not sure it's the right question. First of all, they're notHere was his response when asked how we should approach the Iranian situation:
available. The National Guard brigades--you know, we just
had Lieutenant General Blum testifying, we had the chief
staff of the Army testifying. The Army is $23 billion short,
our equipment's coming apart, we're drafting 42-year-old
grandmothers to be privates in the Army. I shouldn't have
said draft, asking for volunteers. So I don't think the combat
power is there in the Army and the Marine Corps to solve
this problem militarily.
Well, I--you know, first of all, I applaud the efforts byAnd here's what he had to say about what the war in Iraq is doing to our military:
Secretary Rice and by others, Steve Hadley, trying to start
the beginnings of building an alliance to confront the Iranians.
The notion that we can threaten them with conventional
air attack is simply insane. First of all, we're more vulnerable
than they are to having the Persian Gulf closed, to leaving
135,000 troops 400 kilometers up into Iraq with a Shia
population on our supply lines. Never mind our allies who I
think are terrified by this, the--you know, the notion that
we would use air power to go after 70-some odd nuclear sites.
The Iranians are going nuclear. It's going to change the region
for the worse in the coming 10 years, and hopefully not
provoke the proliferation of WMD, where you end up with an
Arab Sunni bomb to counter the Persian Shia bomb. So I think
the answer to this one is diplomatic, economic: build alliances,
stop threatening military action.
You know, one of the, one of the other problems that I think
the administration is trying to face up to finally, certainly the
National Security Council is, we drained $55 billion out of the
U.S. Air Force and the Navy and we're putting that money
into ammunition, medical care for wounded soldiers. We're,
we're literally giving up our modernization program for the
forces that need to be there in 10, 20 years to deter the
People's Republic of China. We don't need the F-22 to
confront the Iranian-Iraqi insurgents; we need that high-
tech capability to make sure we maintain stability in the
coming years.
So the danger is, we end up 36 months from now with
our military fundamentally broken. And that's what
I'm concerned about.
9 Comments:
“we end up 36 months from now with our military fundamentally broken.”
I take this to mean “at the end of the Bush Presidency.”
We have a problem that once again politicians, many who need to be re-elected and not the military are fighting a war. In Iraq we have a bigger problem and that is Bush the chicken hawk who weaseled his way out of Vietnam and part of his military service. He has no clue or desire to learn the art of war. He has no clue of the history of the region of even the last one hundred years. There is no long term strategy or knowledge of the true enemy. We are fighting evildoers and freedom haters.
Bush and company have sent the country into panic mode for political gain. There is no army to invade us. There is no airforce to bomb us. There is no coalition of the evil who can remove this nation from the planet.
Think about it. With one very flashy attack Osama bin Laden has sent the US government and military into a nose dive expending vast amounts of resources on fighting the wrong battle and creating more recruits for his side. He can sit back and wait while we sputter and spit and wear ourselves out. From a military strategist point of view who seems better?
Not only is this Iraqi war incomprehensible for the numerous reasons given to start it, it is also incomprehensible for the fact that we are losing the real war against Islamic terrorism for now.
Bush needs to be impeached. We can not afford to let him be the commander in chief of our military forces. He is not qualified.
But imagine all the money haliburton and the elite insiders are going to make - sure this makes Iraq a nobile worthwhile adventure.
Is anyone really suprised that the idiot alcoholic and cocaine addict grandson of one of the figureheads behind the elite group that brought hitler to power and made a fortune financing the nazi war machine (prescott bush) has become a tool of the military industrial complex today?
The bush family fortune did not come from oil - came from the nazis.
I disagree with the general.
1.Iran for all it's faults *DOES NOT* have aspirations of destroying the US or the rest of the middle east in some ultrafundamentalist religious war. That is trash-talk used to keep their own citizenry inline and focused away from the their internal civil rights problems. The way to handle Iran (and im channelling Tom Barnett here because in this case HE IS right) is to coopt them on Middle eastern security, make them "part of the coalition" and stop the ridiculous unilateral support for Israel. Think about it...Iraq's population becomes A LOT easier to deal with, if we have Iran helping and not sending arms and ammunition to insurgents. Iran wants to play with the big boys and be taken seriously. Lets take them seriously. When we DO start doing that, possibly dropping sanctions, things are going to get impossible for the mullahs on the civil rights issues.
2.China is not the Enemy. Their entire economy depends on ours. Even in 10 or 20 years we will likely still be one of their biggest trading partners. Generals like McCaffrey cant get past that bullshit "but theyre COMMIES!!!" view of things. Chinese are communists in name only, in 10-20 years their economy is going to force so many political changes its not funny. The last thing WE will have to worry about is being a TARGET. (I expect if civil war broke out, the communist leaders would probably petition US to come HELP).
In short, F-22s are awesome toys, but hell if we actually need them for anything. Focus on maintaining the shit we have now, and training more men and women......multibillion $ toy projects are a waste of money.
Thats my opinion for what it's worth. McCaffrey obviously has the "outgoing" school of thought on world security, the new school says "state on state warfare is dead"
Im sure he's well intentioned though.
Brandon M
Unfortunately, the "outgoing" school of thought can circle the building and come in through the back door in less time than you might imagine. State on state warfare is dead at the present time. Why do you think it will be dead 20 years from now? And do you know how long it takes for development of sophisticated weapons systems?
I'm just about the last person who wants to defend the Military-Industrial Complex. They are a tremendous danger to the future of, not just this country, but the entire world. However, when you look at what a well-run country should be doing, one of those things should be preparing for wars everyone (well, almost everyone) wants to avoid having to fight.
Do you really think China wouldn't use military force, or the threat thereof, to gain some advantage? I'd suggest you look at what they're doing to try and resolve the "Taiwan issue" and extrapolate from there. Also, how long do you think Krazy Kim in North Korea would stay in power if he ceased being useful to China? Yet he is allowed to have his toy country with his toy army and toy nuclear weapons and threaten South Korea and Japan. If the US were to have no credible threat to counteract Kim, would you put any money in South Korean stocks?
I'd have to say that, for the future health of this country, we need to stop the idiocy in Iraq, and reallocate the money being thrown down the rat-hole over there so that, in 20 years, we have a military that can handle whatever challenges it needs to.
The precise allocation of resources will not be to anyone's liking, and the level of overall allocation will no doubt be higher than any of us want to pay, especially if the next Congress resembles this one -- which I sadly suspect it will more than I will like.
I was never a fan of McCaffery - largely because of his work at the helm of the 'war on drugs' movement in this country. He continually spouted nonsense, and dismissed research that would support the idea of dispensing with the war that cannot be won (Iraq is another). I wonder if we'll ever mature on the drug issue.
But, I am surprised at his comments. He apparently is not a reflexive 'defend the Administration party line' shill that I thought he was. He said some interesting, truthful things on MTP, and that is to be applauded. His mention of Chinese deterence is not, in my opinion, because he suspects that they'll 'do something militarily;' rather, it is just another iteration of mutual deterence so that they don't get any ideas of doing something.
India and China are the next big 'threats' to this country--if you define threat as meaning 'taking our capitalist ideals and shoving them in our face.' If only we as a country focused on what is important--funding education and educators at the levels that are needed is a good start--we could do more to 'deter' than we could with the 'old and busted' routine of constant, never-ending military build-up. Imagine what we could do if we put our money into such things, and not in the pockets of no-bid military-industrial contractors. I suppose that would label me as a 'socialist' in some circles. But doggone it, some things NEED to be socialized, I think.
Barry McCaffrey is known to me to be a fine combat officer, probably the finest (certainly the most aggressive) general in the field in Gulf War I. As a prognosticator he has his flaws: on the eve of the invasion in March, 2003 he said we'd suffer over 3,000 KIA before we reached Baghdad.
Certainly Lady Bird Johnson and her heirs will have more cause than anyone to celebrate Halliburton's hard-earned successes.
McCaffrey made excellent sense and commenters above make many good points as well.
The U.S. has everything to gain and almost nothing to lose from engaging the Iranians directly. Our policy should be to strengthen the hand of progressive, nonjihadist, nonexpansionist elements within Iran.
If what's eating them so badly is concern it's only a matter of time until we wage a war of aggression to bring down the ruling regime, we should be prepared to bargain with them in good faith on that basis, the payoff for them being that we won't do what we have no earthly business doing any way.
If worse comes to worse, we can contain a nuclear-armed Iran. If we could contain the U.S.S.R. for decades, Iran shouldn't be too tall an order.
Of course, to deal with the Iranians (or any other country) effectively, we need a government that knows its butt from its bunion. As things stand, Bush & Co. couldn't be trusted to arrange a mutual nonaggression treaty with Monaco.
The entire action in the Middle East has much more to do with China than it does with anything actually taking place in the ME. Not that I agree with such action, because I do not. But the neo-con thought process is for us to secure the world's oil supply so that we can control the pace of China's economic development rather than the other way around. As China's economy continues to expand, its reliance on the U.S. will gradually diminish. This follows much the same path as the United States' burgeoning industrial revolution of the late 1800s.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home