They don’t need a new general to be hawkish. Since the treat him like the reincarnations of Washington and Grant rolled into one, it’s no surprise that they promoted him.
I’ve been reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq lately, and one thing that emerges is that in the view of the author (and of many political and military leaders), Odierno is a brute who thinks force will solve every problem. My copy of *Fiasco * is at home, so I can’t throw in any quotes, but the message was while Petraeus’ forces were actually making allies, Odierno’s forces were doing nothing but making enemies through their brutal tactics and complete lack of understanding of counterinsurgency tactics. So, does Odierno’s appointment put the last nail in the coffin of any hopes that might have remained for Iraq?
Add to that, that Petraeus’ avowed field of specialty is counterinsurgency – which might have been helpful in the on-the-ground command in occupied territory, but is less clearly relevant to a theater command.
Thank goodness for Amazon’s Search Inside feature:
The thing is, *Fiasco * is a pretty even-handed book. The author, Thomas Ricks, has a lot of respect for the military, and thinks there were a lot of people in the military who knew what mistakes were being made in the planning and execution of the war and the occupation. But these people were ignored or silenced. IIRC, Ricks has no use for Odierno, though.
I wonder if in some sense, they’re kicking Odierno upstairs in a sort of Peter Principle kind of way. If he’s in a higher command, he’s divorced somewhat from things relative to what he’d be as a Corps commander, so maybe the brutishness will be muted somewhat, in the same way that a psychopath Lieutenant would get a lot more opportunities to shoot Iraqis as a platoon commander than if they promoted him to Captain and put him on some battalion staff somewhere.
I see what you’re saying. But my impression is that Petraeus was successful as a ground commander, and took along with him the lessons he had learned on the ground when he was put in charge of the whole shebang, which is why things are slightly less of a clusterfuck now than they were previously. Now you replace Petraeus with someone who was a failure as a ground commander, and…what follows? Not success, I’m betting.