Military Criticism of the Iraq War
It is rare that an officer serving on active duty will openly criticize the way the Iraq war effort has and is being conducted by his superior officers. When senior active duty officers who have served in Iraq begin speaking out publicly conditions in Iraq must be beyond hope and repair.
In what is likely a career ending statement Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling said US generals had failed to prepare their troops properly and had misled Congress about the resources needed for the war.
Lieutenant Colonel Yingling has a first hand on the job view of conditions in Iraq. He has served two tours of duty. His remarks received widespread distribution as they were published in the Armed Forces Journal.
Yingling said the US had repeated the mistakes of Vietnam and so faced defeat in Iraq. He criticized the generals for failing to estimate the strength of the enemy, for under estimating the resources needed to successfully fight the war, and for misleading congress about on the ground conditions in Iraq.
Unfortunately it seems to me that the generals, from the current commander, General David Petraeus, to all of the senior officers responsible for present and past operations in Iraq, have been squeezed by the altitude of the Bush administration. The Bushies only want to hear their own delusional views as to what is going on in Iraq.
They thought the war could be fought and won on the cheap. Generals were encouraged to come up with rosy forecasts of the needed resources. You may recall that initial estimates of the number of the insurgents were that they numbered only 2,000 or so.
While no one knows the exact number it appears that initial estimates were ridiculously low. Either that or the greatest fighting force in the world has been and continues to be incapable of putting down a small insurgency.
The more likely scenario is that the greatest fighting force in the world, the US military, were trained to fight the wrong war. It is also likely the the size of the insurgency force is much larger than has been reported.
Our generals had to chose between being honest or saving their military careers.
Fighting an insurgency is difficult under the best of circumstances. Fighting an insurgency composed of a growing number of fanatics who are willing to blow themselves up in order to inflict pain and chaos on civilians and coalition forces is a most difficult, really impossible task.
At least General Petraeus seems to be making an effort to speak more frankly before congress about what will be required to prevail in Iraq. Unfortunately, even he can not bring himself to speak the absolute truth. The war in Iraq is not going to be won militarily, few if any widespread insurgences ever are, and the prospects of it being won diplomatically are equally grim.
What a mess.
Those who had no clue as to what the consequences of invading Iraq would be have been and are running the horror show. Bush has to be the man most responsible for the disaster in Iraq but he had plenty of help with men like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, and Paul Wolfowitz chipping in as co architects of destruction.
The generals who knew better had to chose between being “good loyal solders” and going along with the largely ignorant civilian chicken hawk leadership’s opinions and war plans or making career ending critical comments.
Warriors who did speak out frankly, and as it has turned out accurately, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell, were pushed off to the side and marginalized to the point that they retired.
Hats off to the outspoken Lieutenant Colonel Yingling. While his comments should be applauded by those who should be seeking the truth about the Iraq war I expect that the colonel will be rather soon seeking employment as a civilian.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
