TIME Magazine is running what it calls a "full-throated" critique of the Iraq war by Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold (Ret.) He's one of two generals who opposed the plans before the war, calling the Iraq war "unnecessary" and a distraction from Afghanistan. As he says, "I would gladly have traded my general's stars for a captain's bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda."
So opposed was he that he resigned his position as director of operations for the Join Chiefs four months before the war ... and then kept his mouth shut until now.
I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.
Well, gee, forgive me if I don't think he should be given a lot of credit. If he was so opposed to the war, why did he stay silent? Why did he sit by for three years while others "paid in blood" for what he feels is a flawed policy? It's easy to be opposed to the war now. Why come out now? A clue is here:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.
It's a valiant sentiment to support the men and women fighting the war, and his critiques of Condi's statement and Rumsfeld's micromanaging is dead on. But we've heard all this before. Anyone following the war can see it's being run poorly from the big office at the Pentagon and that the civilian leadership has done everything to push blame elsewhere. Again, why now? Why didn't you say something earlier, Lt. Gen. Newbold, once you were retired and could without fear of retaliation? You blame others for timidity or thick-headedness. "A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent."
And, incredibly, you go on to blame Congress and the the media.
Members of Congress -- from both parties -- defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. Many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former Central Command chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views. These are the same news organizations that now downplay both the heroic and the constructive in Iraq.
Nice, cheap shots. Republicans controlled Congress and were in lockstep with the Bushies. The Dems, as minorities, have almost no power to exercise oversight. A high-profile resignation of -- oh, I don't know -- maybe the Joint Chiefs' director of operations might have provided them some political cover to get something done. And, gee, maybe it might have gotten some attention from the media, who then might have given Zinni and others' more weight. And now you say we downplay the heroic and the constructive. Is this the kind of heroism you mean?
Don't lecture us about heroism and constructive roles to play, Lt. Gen. Newbold (Ret.) You could have done something then, and you didn't. You could have been a powerful symbol, even if you would have taken a lot of flak from your old bosses. You say officers swore an oath to the Constitution, not the men appointed above them, yet you betrayed it with your three-year silence. It's been said that for evil to triumph, all it takes is for good men to do nothing. Well, you did nothing. You don't get to be considered good now.
Good for you, Chris. I wonder how we can make sure the fucker gets the message.
I don’t think I would be so quick to judge Gen. Newbold and tar him with the same brush as the administration. Its this divisiveness on the part of those opposed the war which allows it to continue. There is plenty enough blame to go around for all, The American people for being the sheep that they were/are and lead down this path by the neocons, The American Congress for shirking their responsibility and continuing to fund this expedition, The jingoist media on the right and the rest of the fourth estate who seemed to have turned information gathering and reporting into an entertainment event, and The Pentagon, who we should have known that if we bought them all these toys they were going to want to play with them. We are all culpable for not calling the current administration to task sooner. Yes in this blame game I think we will find that common sense was not very common and it takes courage now and would have taken more courage at the beginning after 9/11 to say this was wrong. As my Daddy the Admiral would say, “either you are part of the problem or part of the solution” and right now it is time to work on the solution. imho
Your tone does seem unusually vitriolic and harsh on this one Chris. While I agree that it would have done a lot more good had he made his reasons known at the time of his resignation we don’t know what pressures he felt at the time to keep his mouth shut. How often do upper echelon military leaders come out publicly against current policy? I can’t think of too many offhand and at least he’s onside now while the Bush administration is still in power and in a position to shed blood. I’m waiting for the day when Colin Powell comes out and rebukes Bush/Cheney and especially Rumsfeld for this mess. Wouldn’t it be great if he took what was left of his credibility and gave us all his undiluted views of this conflict?
I could not agree more with the substance and the tone of your post. It would seem to be self-evident that modern America is populated with folks who want a pat on the back for NOT doing what they should have done if they truly loved their country. Generally this is because they would have either suffered financially or been subject to criticism. This guy is a two-fer.
Pathetic.
Why would the Dems have “some political cover to get something done” by the General speaking up when the Dems supported the war despite a mountain of evidence that it was bad policy?
Your remarks about the media are equally incomprehensible. You want another General to go public so the media won’t have an excuse to ignore the General who DID go public? Hadn’t you noticed much of the media ignored all the evidence that the invasion was based on lies, instead putting those very lies right on the front page without challenge?
Agree. Now, as a newbie, who sheepily figured Colin HAD to know the goods (grew up in hi security household, tho leftish politically)….what should/could we Americans have done/do? I am heartily ill over it, weep at the carnage, leaping lousy constructed reconstruction, and beyond voting…based on what? websites? blogs? What can we do to effect any changes? Feel much like Jon Stewart….maybe this makes sense to someone, but not to me and maybe I’m not getting the picture, but it stinks right now. I am sincerely asking.
Granica
I would argue that the timing of his condemnation has to do with preventing the current push to get up a war against Iran.
“We all got it comin’, kid…,” William Munday says to his angst-filled young fellow assassin in “The Unforgiven”.
Ain’t it the truth.
The Iraq invasion stunk from well before the get-go, and the media STILL minces around the fact that former General Collin Powell and the current president and vice presidents of the U.S. stood up before the citizens and Constitution they swore to serve - and in the face of the U.N. and the world - that they had “irrefutable proof” Iraq represented an imminent threat. The Pentagon and intelligence services conspired in it, the media exploited it, and your elected representatives went along with it out of political expediency. The greqat majority of the American public went along with it, too, because we were afraid or angry or confused - and because the Afghan de-botchery provided only John Walker Lindh as a lame measure of revenge for 9/11.
If we didn’t understand that much was amiss in what we were being assured by all the above institutions regarding the motives and the likely outcomes of the invasion, we were terribly dumb, ignorant,or indifferent - or wildly, off-the-track idealogues.
Even the Dixie Chicks knew, for crying out loud.
This guy wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“We all got it comin’, kid…,” William Munday says to his angst-filled young fellow assassin in “The Unforgiven”.
Ain’t it the truth.
The Iraq invasion stunk from well before the get-go, and the media STILL minces around the fact that former General Collin Powell and the current president and vice presidents of the U.S. stood up before the citizens and Constitution they swore to serve - and in the face of the U.N. and the world - that they had “irrefutable proof” Iraq represented an imminent threat. The Pentagon and intelligence services conspired in it, the media exploited it, and your elected representatives went along with it out of political expediency. The greqat majority of the American public went along with it, too, because we were afraid or angry or confused - and because the Afghan de-botchery provided only John Walker Lindh as a lame measure of revenge for 9/11.
If we didn’t understand that much was amiss in what we were being assured by all the above institutions regarding the motives and the likely outcomes of the invasion, we were terribly dumb, ignorant,or indifferent - or wildly, off-the-track idealogues.
Even the Dixie Chicks knew, for crying out loud.
This guy wouldn’t have changed a thing.
I would also suggest his criticism has come now because it is a safe distance from when the war was started and protesters were called traitors and terrorist-lovers. Now that we’ve turned out to have been pretty prescient, it takes absolutely no sacrifice on his part now to come out and make his statement.
None. When it would’ve been a sacrifice, he decided not to sacrifice. Now that it’s safe, he’s publicly anti-war.
Previous post by Dadler. Stay safe, Chris.
Peace.
Previous post by Dadler. Stay safe, Chris.
Peace.
Hindsight is a great thing, Shoulda, coulda, woulda, we are all guilty of it. My question still is - how does this help to attack Gen. Newbold (RET)? If Colin Powell spoke up now would we consider his action any less for not standing up to the neocons in the beginning? If any one knew then Powell did. Powell had his contacts in the Pentagon. Powell had been all over Washington for most of his career and knew the Middle East. Powell had to have had his doubts but he did nothing. A lot of people are still in denial about Iraq. I get no comfort from saying I told you so. I would rather be working towards a constructive way to resolve this situation.
I have to agree. How many people might have prevented the Iraq fiasco if only they had spoken up?
How many people died in the 3 years this guy was silent?
Like Fukiyama, sorry but you don’t get a free pass. You did/didn’t do the right thing at the right time and many thousands have suffered, died or been maimed.
Hey, speaking up now is better than speaking up never. Don’t be so judgemental and get thrown off the track of the real villians….Bu$hCo! Please, don’t attack Bush’s enemies…Newbold is saying the right thing, forget about his timing.
Stay focussed on how to get us out of the messes caused by Bush’s evil swagger.
First thing, congratulations once again and maybe for a final time on your (current) blog/website. It is really helpful to read your alternative point of view about the news, whether what you have written might seem agreeable or not on any one occasion.
About this guy’s view on the war, I would just ask, is any war a nice tidy event? If it were, they wouldn’t call it war.
His critique seems rather confused. It’s not clear whether he is criticizing the war as a matter of principle or with respect to its administration.
The first criticism has now become a rather moot point. The second one perhaps can only serve now as a point of reference for future wars, which I hope in any case might be avoided.
I understand that a lot of people who write in here hate Bush from a pre-adopted political perspective. Others hate him because they are pacifists and reject any head of state that could initiate a war. Others hate him because they see no justification in this particular war.
These are all valid points of view, and its clear none of these people would likely give the Bush administration credit for anything whatsoever.
At the risk of being jeered and heckled by some of these folks, however, I’d say that one point should be born in mind.
The Bush administration, whether by design or in a bungling reaction to circumstance (you can be the judge of that), brought focus to a situation that had been ignored by previous administrations for years.
Whether it was by Bush or by some other president, something had to be done in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein served as a not-so-tight lid on a pressure cooker.
Remember, he declared war on two countries, causing thousands of deaths, shot missiles at two other countries, and turned guns and gas against his own people causing thousands more deaths. The U.S., whether it liked it or not, was in Iraq before Bush even took office. Remember the “no-fly zones?” Sooner or later the situation was going to be resolved either by Saddam capitulating to U.N. demands, or by force.
Would the situation really be so much better now if Saddam had been left in power? So far we don’t have any reports of the current government in Iraq ordering actions similar to Saddam’s.
The events and intervention in Iraq have brought focus to the long-ignored fact that geographically, economically, historically, and politically, the country is central to the Mideast.
Given this, I’d say it’s up to world leaders to henceforth pay MORE attention to what is happening there and not ignore the situation as in the past.
Finally, even if the scope of this blog is expanded, I’d say its important that Chris Allbritton and other writers there keep focused on Iraq as a central piece (maybe THE central piece) in the puzzle of Mideast and world politics.
I take a “cybernetic” view of our system. It isn’t successful because of superior morality, indeed one can go elsewhere and see larger portions of the population willing to sacrifice and struggle for beliefs. It’s a set of feedback systems and balances. The bulk of the forces are not driven by mastery of most facts, they use a few truisms, by logic or even enlightened self interest. They are for the most part irrational and prone to various sorts of stimulus.
Historically the system has given great leeway to the executive, obviously necessary for accomplishment, more so in terms of war since this is potentially a life and death conflict. However at some point it becomes clear that certain paths are destructive, eg. we have a classical system of “negative feedback” like steering a boat where you correct when too far off course, leading to a path which is a bunch of zig zags.
At this point the system is making such adjustments. When one remembers that the “power” is a large variety of views each with egos then the explanations and logics given will vary widely, this is what is happening.
Moral purists tend to be bothered by the hypocrisy and to wish for stances based on reasoned, ethical decisions (as they see it) and feel that kudos for character should only go to those who exhibit these things. Pragmatists know that in management that the old fashioned style of ripping the non perfect to shreds, loasding them with guilt, making them grovel is not always the best way to run an organization and that individuals cooperate more if they are allowed various sorts of psychological rewards and yes delusions.
Thus the majority will convince themselves that they behaved with dignity, intelligence and courage and that various choices were based on these things. They always do.
There are some who insist that the stick is always better than the carrot and that the feckless must be punished. They are of course necessary in some portion because this is a complex system built of relatively simple logics known as individual human opinions. There needs to be some sting for poor choices, but too much is counter productive.
ttj - your argument misses the point entirely. Saddam Hussein was not an immediate threat to the US. Osama bin Laden was and is. Bush by going after Iraq chose to ignore the immediate, clear and present danger in order to go after the neo-con pet project and in the process has fatally undermined our capacity to deal with the immediate threat by strengthening OBL and his movement by giving them clear evidence to support his position that the US is at war with Islam. I don’t believe that we are at war with Islam but for many our occupation of Iraq is the biggest and best recruitment poster that OBL could have hoped for. That is the point.
As a side note, if you think the Iraq war is such a good idea, enlist. I am sick and tired of arm chair pundits talking about the need for this and the need for that but who are unwilling to serve. Do you know anyone who is having to figh this war? I doubt it.
Anna,
lookie here http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osamatape.html fake tapes fake bin ladens
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/articlesosama.html
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osama_dead.html
Do a seach on the General you will find a lot of information of what he has been up too since he left.. look at his company and see what he is doing and who he is aligned with.. he knows 911 was an inside job, hell he was a joint chief. … either that he is the dumbest Joint chief of staff this country ever had. which I don’t think so.. Chips anyone?
Yes, he should have spoken up as soon as he saw the problem. But even speaking now, when he doesn’t pay much of a price, is worth something. It makes the chorus louder. And given that Bu$hCo’s cutthroat crew seem to be planning a remake of the war with even bigger special effects, we need as loud a chorus as we can get.
As a Marine you know the General would not openly question the Sec of Defense. In briefings we are not privy to I am sure he said some of his mind. At that time if you were not onboard with Rumsfled you were being relived of command. What Marine wants that? Wise up, if you served you know what i mean.
Semper Fi Fuck Iraq
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think this is part of a larger effort to defrock Rumsfield, and as Granacia pointed out, avert a military action in Iran. Rumsfield made a lot of enemies at the Pentagon due to his high handed methods and a lot of folks would like to see him go. In the past few weeks not only has Newbold spoken out but also Paul Eaton, Anthony Zinni, and last but certainly not least Collen Powell… all retired Generals.
As far as why he and others were not compelled by their conscious to act sooner to I would look to two main points.
The first being loyalty to their service and those with whom they served. If you have never been part of the military service then you simply cannot appreciate what a powerful force this sense of loyalty can be. It would be difficult at best to criticize Rumsfield without also criticizing those who worked with him. The immediate instinct of most service members is to deride those who speak out as whiners or folks with an axe to grind, and for a General Officer it is that much worse.
Second, the obligation to protect “sensitive information” and a belief that in any event the die had been cast. What was going to site in his early protest that was not classified? All operational plans are classified at least at the secret level, and at his level top secret. Unless he was privy to information of clear wrong doing, not just wrong headedness, he was obligated by duty to maintain operational security. For him, this amounted to a difference of opinion not really a matter of public discourse.
As for S. Sinder comments, and those in the article amounting to accusations of cowardice toward Newbold; I would say that they are a bit unfair. Besides the above mentioned reasons of military culture, Newbold may well have had a lot to lose in making his comments and indeed may still. The military industrial complex and the neocons in general have very long arms, and while his military retirement will insure he has a roof over his head and food on the table, he is burning a lot of bridges by speaking out, and is not likely building any new ones.
To anna: while I agree that Iraq has become a distraction, and a rallying point/ recruiting boon for jihadist, I would argue that that at the time it was believed (and still is) that UBL was largely marginalized and AQ crippled. Essentially UBL has become an icon and is only awaiting death to fulfill his ‘destiny’ to be a great martyr for the cause. All we can really do is help him rise to that status.
By the by, if you had not surmised by my tag, I’m in the military and have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Amen. Why is it that no one in the Bush administration can resign on principle, no matter how blatant the provocation?
Once upon a time, back in the l970’s, Republicans had the guts to stand up to a President out of control. But now, even when lives are at stake, they’re cowed.
Think how different things could have been if Powell, Clarke, and some of the generals now covering their butts had resigned rather than go into an insane war on false premises.
In his crucial warning on Iran, Sy Hersh mentions that members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are contemplating resignation if Bush orders a strike.
Is that a threat, or a promise? We need more than words, this time.
Jeeeze, where’d all the flag waving “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” patriots go?
There’s certainly valid criticism in this piece. There is something quite hypocritical about coming out against the war so vehemently - 3 years down the road.
To phrase the criticism in the terms that this general has - honor and sacrifice and young blood and all that - and stay silent during that time speaks volumes. It says that all those tragic consequences of this war were subordinate to whatever his reasons were for his silence. Ouch.
But I strongly condemn the link Chris provided (“Is this the kind of heroism you’re talking about?”). You accused the general of taking a cheap shot at the media, and then you throw that out there.
I suppose to you, someone who writes for Time and has a chance to plug a Time article, there have been no deeds other than that incident (OK, maybe Abu Graib, right?). No acts of bravery, heroism, or nobility as the general refers to, huh? I guess if it didn’t appear in Time, it just didn’t happen.
That line seeks to outright deny any potential for any positive acts on behalf of any US military person here. That’s a shameful lie and you know it.
Talk about a cheap fucking shot.
orangeducks Baghdad