Dem critics are saying W is replacing generals who won’t tell him what he wants to hear (that the Iraq War is winnable) with generals who will, and who will support his new “surge” plan for Iraq. Is there another explanation?
(Meanwhile, John Negroponte is resigning as National Intelligence Director to take the #2 job at the State Department – see this thread. Connection with the above? Who knows?)
Shoomaker was a very odd, and probably bad choice for COSA. He was called out of retirement to take the job. That is to say everyone else in the Army was found somewhat lacking by Rummy. He grew up in the Green Toupees and Black World. Neat guy, nice to dogs. Not mainstream Army.
Petraeus is an incredible guy. They say you could tell how far he had run by looking at his aide. Years ago he got shot on a training range. Darn near killed him. After a couple of days in the hospital he was trying to escape and doing one-armed push-ups. Tough as parrot lips.
More importantly, he is also a wise and educated man, he is now heading Leavenworth the Army’s capstone training base. A smart cookie. If anyone can pull this out of the fire, he can. (I still wouldn’t bet too heavily in his favor this time.)
Casey, Old as Old Army gets. His dad was killed in Vietnam. Has every job you ever heard of. Respected more as a planner than as a trainer. Probably little old for the job. But then nobody asks me.
If Casey is going to become Army Chief of Staff, GW isn’t getting rid of him. For one thing, as Chief of Staff, Casey has to dig up the additional forces that GW wants for the surge.
I hadn’t heard that Casey is moving up to the top spot. This shows me that the speculation about GW getting rid of opposition to a troop increase and other Iraq strategy and tactics is off the mark.
The Dem criticism doesn’t fit with the appointment of Petraeus, who did an exceptionally good job commanding the 101st Airborne in Iraq, showing an understanding of what needed to be done there, and who by all accounts is an honest and morally brave man. And as David points out, if he’s getting rid of honest generals, he wouldn’t PROMOTE Casey, would he?
I think the explanation is really quite simple: Bush is trying to Look Like He’s Doing Something. The truth is that Bush doesn’t know what to do, really, and to be honest the only right thing he could do would be to bring the troops home at once; since he refuses to do that, he has To Do Something, and shuffling the managers is, at least, Something. He’ll continue to just mix things up at random until January 2009.
If things don’t work, and you haven’t any idea how to fix them, a shitty leader’s first move is to demand success even more vehemently, without directing how to do it. When that fails, as of course it always does, the second move is to fire and shift personnel. Bush is simply at stage two.
This is the military version of a terrible baseball team firing the coaching staff.
I think there’s another possibly explanation - Rumsfeld had his own reasons for keeping the generals he had, and now that he’s gone moves are being made that Rumsfeld can no longer block.
I have to put in with RickJay on this one. If BushCo has the intelligence that God gave mayonnaise — which is a GD topic in itself — they are quite aware that the situation in Iraq is beyond redemption and are attempting to shuffle and reshuffle the deck as much as possible in order to postpone the inevitable until the watch changes.
(Corroboration here . YMMV as to whether the article is plausible, but my impression is that Biden is “smarter than the av-er-age bear” regarding foreign policy and intelligence matters.)
Not necessarily. I don’t think Bush at this point could politically handle firing the top commander in Iraq. But since General Casey came out against the increased troop levels that the President now supports, he has to go. Bush can’t simply reshuffle and send him to another equal command because that will look like Casey was essentially fired. If you can’t fire him, and can’t move him laterally, then the only option left is promotion.
I don’t know what Petraeus’ position on increased troop levels in Iraq, but I would be shocked if he is against it.
I’m not sure what the explanation is, but this one doesn’t make sense. Gen. Abizaid has repeatedly said he believes the war is winnable, and also repeatedly said he does not think the key issue is troop increases (when grilled on this by McCain he said around 20,000 troops could help short-term in Baghdad) but the continued training of Iraqi troops.
Abizaid has been blunt yet more than confident that victory is possible throughout the whole thing. I have a lot of respect for General Abizaid, because he has not been afraid to say the situation is bad but unlike most SDMBers he’s not a defeatist and certainly thinks Iraq can be stabilized.
Also, we should probably stop using the terms win/lose. We’ve already won our war, we toppled the Ba’athist regime and destroyed the military of Iraq. This is Iraq’s situation now, and the only winner or loser at this point is going to be the people of Iraq, which is why we owe it to them to not bring all the troops home as RickJay says, that would be incredibly immoral.
Starting the war on a flimsy pretext was not particularly moral. Neither is holding people indefinitely without charging them. Nor is the use of torture. And moral people wouldn’t send prisoners to countries where they could be tortured.
It’s almost laughable to speak of the present administration and moral in the same post.
All the same, the words “succeed” and “fail” do remain relevant.
You seem to be assuming we can prevent or shorten or lessen the body count of the (already ongoing) civil war by staying. Guess what? We can’t. And another 20,000 troops aren’t going to make it any more possible. it’s just going to mean more Americans killed and more Iraqis killed.
I don’t think starting a war on “flimsy pretexts” is moral or immoral, nor do I think holding people without charging them is moral or immoral.
But what does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China? Do we punish 20 million Iraqis by pulling out suddenly, instantly destabilizing their country even more? Because of the alleged sins of the Bush administration, the proper response is to punish the Iraqis? That doesn’t make any sense to me, at all.
You can roll your eyes all you want, but not a single thing I said was factually incorrect. If we leave and Iraqi collapses does that really affect you at all, BG? Does it affect the manner in which you enjoy your breakfast in the morning? Does it affect Americans? Not really, no, it doesn’t. However it has a huge impact on Iraqis.
We aren’t fighting what I would call a war any more, that’s why I said our war is over, and it is without question our war was a decisive military victory.
I have no idea how we can influence the body count. This emphasis on body counts by liberals is confusing to me. Wars and conflicts aren’t about body counts, you don’t measure success in terms of number of enemies killed any more than you measure failure in terms of allies killed. Wars are fought to achieve specific goals, you measure the relative success of a military venture primarily based on whether or not those goals have been achieved. In my mind, if a military act is justified, that means it is important enough that you can’t really worry about the body count, or use that as a limit to your actions.
The issue is the stability of Iraq, not the body count of Iraqis or Americans or et cetera, I have no idea in what manner we can influence the body count, but I certainly do believe we can indeed create a stable Iraqi state that will last in perpetuity after we’ve mostly withdrawn our soldiers. You obviously don’t think that is the case. Personally I think General Abizaid had it right, he thinks it’s possible, and that it’s not going to be easy.
Are you serious? Starting a war without solid grounds isn’t immoral? Imprisoning people with no stated reason isn’t immoral? Sixth Amendment: “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial… and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation”. Many right-wingers (I use this term somewhat pejoratively, and I am not calling you one) say that those in Guantanamo Bay are terrorists, thus violating the presumption of innocence.
