Americans do pre-emptive strikes well
It's everything 'post-emptive' that they do wrong, as an exhaustive new book shows
Lorne Gunter
The Edmonton Journal
Sunday, March 19, 2006
There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth since the White House released an updated U.S. national security strategy on Thursday.
The cause of the grinding and griping? With the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq fast approaching (March 20), American planners insist pre-
emptive military strikes remain a "sound" option whenever a rogue state threatens the United States with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
"We do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack.
"When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize."
How, the critics have asked, can the Pentagon and White House stick with the doctrine of pre-emption when their pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein and Iraq has been so unsuccessful?
The truth is, the Americans do pre-emption very well. Their pre-emptive assault on Iraq was a spectacular success -- just 20 days from beginning to end.
It's "post-emption" they have trouble with.
In a fascinating and exhaustive new book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor argue that the White House and Pentagon got nearly everything about the invasion right (except perhaps the reason behind it -- weapons of mass destruction), but have done almost everything since wrong.
Gordon, the New York Times' chief military correspondent, and Trainor, a retired Marine Corps general who has been a media analyst and now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, point out flaws and glitches in the way the invasion was planned and carried out. But those were mostly minor.
They reserve their most stinging criticism for the inconclusive and ongoing occupation: too little thought to post-war reconstruction, too few soldiers to secure a peaceful occupation, a slow response to looting in Baghdad and a failure to restore civil order, too much confidence in the Iraqi people welcoming coalition forces as liberators, no backup plans when initial expectations proved wrong, naivety about the depth of hatred between Shiites and Sunnis, and not enough emphasis placed on closing Iraq's frontiers against an influx of insurgents and terrorists, principally from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan.
Even before U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki was publicly castigated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, in the spring of 2003, for recommending "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed to win the war and the ensuing peace (Shinseki called for 380,000), Rumsfeld had decided on sending far fewer. Prior to 9/11, Rumsfeld had largely busied himself with reforming the American military, making it leaner and more capable of rapid reaction. When the war on terror presented itself, he saw an opportunity to put his theories into action.
Just four days after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, when President George W. Bush's closest war and security advisers convened at Camp David to plan a response, Rumsfeld was already advocating Afghanistan and Iraq as targets, with small forces that could slash into the hearts of each country, win quickly, turn over governance to domestic leaders and withdraw. When Gen. Greg Newbold, then Joint Chiefs of Staff deputy director of operations, explained that a force as large as 500,000 might be needed in Iraq, and for several years, Rumsfeld shot him down, foreshadowing the later attack on Shinseki.
Cobra II is far from a polemic. And on post-war realities, it is a bitter pill for the war's planners and supporters.
But buried among the level-headed critiques is this gem that undermines the case of anti-war types who insist "Bush lied" to get the U.S. into war, that he knew Iraq had no WMDs but maintained it did anyway to justify invasion: "The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defence."
Saddam lied about Iraq's WMDs, not Bush.
The White House was clearly wrong about WMDs. It may even have been guilty of hearing only what it wanted to hear from its own intelligence agencies and prematurely dismissing the reservations of a minority of analysts who doubted the weapons claims.
But it wasn't deceitful.
Saddam had fooled nearly everyone, including the men closest to him.
The French, German, British, Russian and Chinese intelligence services all believed Saddam had WMDs, just as the CIA and other U.S. departments did (with a few exceptions, such as former State Department intelligence director Greg Thielmann and former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who have since attracted cult status among the war's opponents).
Gordon and Trainor estimate that far from being a threat to the U.S., Iraq wasn't even a threat to its neighbours. Saddam was maintaining a elaborate WMD ruse only to solidify his domestic grip and frighten away foreign enemies.
But you know what they say about hindsight.
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