The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq (49 page)

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”
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/opinion/22ohanlon.html
).
O’Hanlon earlier in July (with Kenneth Pollack) had opined, “A War We Just Might Win” in a
New York Times
opinion piece
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/opinion/30pollack.html?pagewanted=all
).
And see the reports of the surge’s progress, given as a lecture by General Raymond Odierno in March 2008
(
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/the-surge-in-iraq-one-year-later
).
West,
Strongest Tribe,
assesses the value of the Anbar Awakening, quite apart from the surge, 365–66.

44.
On the Anbar Awakening, see Kagan,
Surge,
79–81, who argues that the uprising was independent of the surge but quickly and skillfully exploited by Generals Odierno and Petraeus. For the efforts of MacFarland and H. R. MacMaster, cf. Moyer,
Question of Command,
239–42; cf. 233–34; more on the nature of what worked during the surge, cf. Gericke,
Petraeus,
149–53.

45.
For the changing political positions concerning the surge, as it increasingly seemed to work, review a debate over its success held at the Council on Foreign Relations in May 2008:
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/has-surge-put-iraq-path-success/p16185
.
Steve Simon, “The Price of the Surge” (
Foreign Affairs,
May/June 2008), argued that the surge’s short-term success had actually made things worse by encouraging the quasiofficial use of Sunni tribal militias. Well into late 2008, war critics still maintained that the surge had not worked; cf. P. Hart, “Spinning the Surge: Iraq and the Election”
(
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3611
).

46.
See a review of some of these factors in P. Mansoor, “How the Surge Worked,” August 10, 2008
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080802918_pf.html
),
who credits the numbers and strategy of the surge, as well as the leadership of Petraeus, as the catalysts for other positive developments. See, too, his
Sunrise,
concerning Mansoor’s pre-surge commands. For a review of the “surge did not work” school of thought, see a synopsis by R. Haddick, “This Week at War: What If
the Surge Didn’t Work,”
Foreign Policy,
April 15, 2011
(
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/15/this_week_at_war_what_if_the_surge_didn_t_work
).