The Unlikely Dissident
Ricks on Odierno. A Washington Post surge series kicks off today with an “unlikely dissident,” a look at Odierno’s role in shifting US strategy from moving out of the cities to moving into them, from drawdown to victory. A couple of highlights and related links below:
As commander of the 4th Infantry Division in the Sunni Triangle, Odierno led troops known for their sometimes heavy-handed tactics, kicking in doors and rounding up thousands of Iraqi “MAMs” (military-age males). He finished his tour believing the fight was going well. “I thought we had beaten this thing,” he would later recall.
Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as “fairly desperate, frankly.”
So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above him, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top commander in Iraq and Odierno’s immediate superior.
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Odierno was determined to operate differently on his second tour of duty, but he will not talk about how his transformation occurred. “I think everyone’s changed,” he said, brushing aside the question in one of a series of interviews in Iraq over the past two years. “We’ve all learned.”
But one impetus, Odierno agreed, was the severe wounding of his son in August 2004. Lt. Anthony Odierno, then in the 1st Cavalry Division, had been leading a patrol near Baghdad’s airport when a rocket-propelled grenade punched through the door of his Humvee, severing his left arm.
“It didn’t affect me as a military officer, I mean that,” Odierno said one evening in Baghdad much later. “It affected me as a person. I hold no grudges. My son and I talked a lot about this. He was doing what he wanted to do, and liked what he was doing.”
But he said it did deepen his determination. “I was going to see this through — I felt an obligation to see this through. That drives me, frankly. I feel an obligation to mothers and fathers. Maybe I understand it better because it happened to me.”
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In a recent interview, Odierno expressed surprise that a book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, published just as Odierno took command in Iraq, credited White House aides and others in Washington with developing the surge. From Odierno’s perspective — and that of many other senior officers in Iraq — the new strategy had been more or less conceived and executed by himself in Baghdad, with some crucial coaching from Keane in Washington.
“We thought we needed it, and we asked for it and we got it,” he said, referring to the strategy. “You know, General Petraeus and I think . . . I did it here, [and] he picked it up. That’s how we see it. And so it’s very interesting when people back there see it very differently.”
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While he believes the surge has achieved some important tactical success, Odierno appeared uncertain of its long-term impact, specifically whether the improved security has created the breathing space for Iraqi leaders to foster reconciliation among the nation’s warring factions — the strategy’s long-term political goal.
As 2008 proceeded, not only were some top Iraqi officials not seizing the opportunity, some were regressing, Odierno worried one day last November as he sat in the Green Zone office he had inherited from Petraeus.
“What we’re finding is that as Iraq has become more secure, they’ve . . . moved backwards, in some cases, to their hard-line positions, whether it be a Kurdish position, an Arab position, a Sunni position, a Shi’a position, a Da’wa position, an ISCI position” — the last two being the major Shiite parties.
Obama is likely to find Odierno and other generals arguing passionately that to come close to meeting his commitment to keeping U.S. troops safe, keeping Iraq edging toward stability and maintaining the pressure on extremists, he will need a relatively large force to remain in Iraq for may years.
When asked what sort of U.S. military presence he expected in Iraq around 2014 or 2015 — well after Obama’s first term — Odierno said, “I would like to see a . . . force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000,” with many troops training Iraqi forces and others conducting combat operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq and its allies.
One of the points he would stress to the new commander in chief, Odierno said, would be “the importance of us leaving with honor and justice. ”
“For the military, he added, “it’s extremely important because of all the sacrifice and time and, in fact, how we’ve all adjusted and adapted.”
Good luck with that. I get the idea the commander in chief is more concerned about servicing his own self-image agenda in exiting.
Whole thing here. Live online discussion Monday at noon with Ricks and Biddle, submit your questions here. Ricks blogs at Foreignpolicy.com where he is discussing generalship today and lists his upcoming events.
Great vid, Worth The Risk: describes one captain’s gamble, reconciling with the insurgents. (One editorial observation on that, given the current bent of US foreign policy. The process described is a negotiation between combatants who have come to recognize their mutual interest and are willing to look for a way out of pitched combat based on mutual respect. Not to be confused with negotiating from a position of weakness with unchallenged and deceitful sponsors of terrorism who seek to dominate an entire region. It’s a nuance you could launch a nuke through.)
More re Capt. Cook, excerpted online from Rick’s surge tome book, Gamble: “The Insurgent Who Loved Titanic.” A fascinating dialogue between Cook, a Sunni insurgent and a former colonel under Saddam now in the Iraqi security forces.
Ricks’ Iraq books:
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:49 am Comments (3) on Sunday, February 8, 2009
3 Responses to “The Unlikely Dissident”
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February 8th, 2009 at 9:53 am
[...] A video of Cpt. Cook’s risky efforts at reaching out to the Sunni tribes who had been targeting his men in Salahuddin can be found here. All courtesy of Jules, who has a great deal more. [...]
February 9th, 2009 at 7:47 am
It’s an odd dynamic, truly. In almost each conflict we have gotten into, at first we have top commanders who don’t seem to be able to function well. Then, after a period of time, commanders are found who excel.
Mostly, as I’ve seen, it’s that the kind of general you get in peacetime is quite different than those who are battlefield-competent. We saw this play out in Iraq, where we frankly didn’t do that well in quashing the insurgency, until the Petraeus/Odierno team were placed in command.
February 9th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Oh heck, it’s been like that since the Revolution. We puttered about until Washington was appointed. In the Civil War, we almost lost the nation until Lincoln got things sorted out with Grant & Sherman. WWII went badly for the first few engagements. It’s always that way, and always will be that way. We muck it up for the first part of the war, spend the middle sorting things out and readjusting, then pound the hammer home and wrap things up.
Just sayin’…