“Even those who learn from history
are surrounded by those who are doomed to repeat it.” – Chuck B. on Twitter,
April 12, 2016.
The Iraq War tested four
four-star generals: John Abizaid, George Casey, Jr., Peter Chiarelli, and David
Petraeus. This is their story. (The
Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United
States Army by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, Random House, 2009.) Each of
them had a correct view of the challenges and answers. However, without being
able to work together, their efforts could not support and reinforce each
other. They were not in conflict
against each other. Rather, their assignments – and their acceptances of those
roles – left them distanced in space and time from each other. Beyond the specifics of the Second Gulf
War, this is a book about leadership, leadership styles, and the natural limits
to the complete fulfillment of our goals. The narratives here are richly detailed. The writing is tight
and active. The authors were the Pentagon correspondents for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington
Post.
Each of these four generals is
an outside-the-box creative thinker. Each is competitive, driven, focused and
intelligent. All hold advanced
university degrees. Though
Petraeus and Casey are connected by family ties within the military general
staff, Abizaid and Chiarelli came from blue collar homes. Whereas Casey and Abazaid graduated from
West Point, Chiarelli and Petraeus earned their commissions through ROTC. On their way to the top, each took
detours within the military. Chiarelli and Petraeus
taught in the social science department at West Point. “Sosh” is a fraternity
of strategic planners and political thinkers whose connections in the Pentagon
allow them to help younger peers get their careers back on track with
assignments to combat brigades. Interestingly, Lt. George W. Casey, Jr. first
met Lt. David Petraeus through their mothers. Casey’s father was a two-star general. That put Elaine Casey
in the same social set as Peggy Knowlton, also the wife of a general, and
George Petraeus’s mother-in-law. When Casey was finishing Ranger School, his mother called him and told
him to introduce himself to Petraeus who was headed to the 509th Parachute Infantry, the unit Casey had just left. (page 21)
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| USA Today |
Ethnically Syrian, Gen.
John Abizaid is a second-generation American whose foreign language in school
was French. He learned Arabic
later, completing his MA from Harvard in Middle Eastern Studies with a year at
the University of Jordan in 1979-80. In 1985, Major Abizaid was assigned to a
UN mission during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. His experiences gave him an understanding of the problems
that the US would face in Iraq. He believed that sectarian divisions, discord,
and violence are endemic to the Middle East: no military solution is possible.
He accepted the Powell Doctrine: crush the conventional forces of a
conventional opponent and get out before you get bogged down in another
Vietnam. As the commander of CENTCOM, Abizaid was responsible for the work of the other generals who were charged with delivering a successful conclusion to the invasion of Iraq.
Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. earned
his BS in International Relations at Georgetown in 1970. An ROTC student, he expected
to repay the army with four years and then go to law school. Instead, he followed his father, Brig.
Gen. George W. Casey, Sr., who was the commander of the 1st Air
Cavalry Division when he was killed in Vietnam. (His father also attended Georgetown,
earning an MA in international relations in 1958 before completing an MBA at
George Washington in 1965. Much more in Wikipedia, of course.) Casey, Jr., went
on to complete his MA in international relations at the University of Denver in
1980. “George had become an expert
in navigating the middle ground between his Georgetown friends and his family.
He generally supported the war [in Vietnam], but wasn’t the kind of person to get in
arguments or begrudge his friends their opinions. Neither was his dad.” (pp.
6-7)
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| NBC News |
Serving in Kosovo in 2000 was
Casey’s experience in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. Having labored to
broker a ceasefire for one village, he saw the truce shattered when rifles and
hand grenades were found in the home of the village mayor who had been on the
negotiating committee. It taught Casey
that the US military cannot keep the peace in a country that does not want the
peace. But, like all soldiers, he
served those who called. “Just
three months before the invasion [of Iraq] he assembled a small group
of active and retired officers that was rushed to the Middle East to deal with
electricity generation, clean water, and other expected postwar problems.” (p.
162)
Tasked with restoring the nation
while fighting the insurgency, Casey’s plan was to draw the resistance into the
government to defuse them, to make them part of the solution, and let them
hassle out their problems within the structure of the government. That, too, failed.
Western political theory
accepts majority rule that is always limited by constitutional law and tradition. That did not apply in Iraq. The authors do not mention that Saddam
Hussein ruled like other strongmen by balancing his opponents against each
other, while also favoring his power base. That meant oppressing the majority
Shiites and minority Kurds, and giving power to the Sunnis. The fall of Saddam
Hussein left the Sunnis at the mercy of the merciless Shiites who now
controlled the government of Iraq.
Also here, the reader today can
see the roots of the ISIS Caliphate. Back then, moderate Sunnis united with the
Shiite authorities to fight radical Sunni Islamists from Al Qaeda who were
making life hell for everyone. But
it was too little, too late.
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| Conservative Treehouse |
Peter Chiarelli earned his BS in
political science at Seattle University where he did his ROTC. (He later
completed a master’s in public administration at the University of Washington
in 1980. He was granted an MA in national security strategy from Salve Regina
University. Wikipedia.) Rejected three times for law school - poor at
standardized tests, apparently - he entered the army. Sent on orders first to earn the master’s, Chiarelli was
tapped for the social science department at West Point. He loved the challenge
of teaching. He did not have to take a position personally in order to advocate
it. In one class, he said that the US invited the attack at Pearl Harbor by
encircling the Japanese and threatening them. Disagree as they did, the cadets were only allowed to argue
back with facts. It was good training, both for them, and for him.
Chiarelli’s goal in Iraq was to
win the war by rebuilding the economy. Instead of big-ticket projects to
highly-placed defense contractors like Bechtel, Chiarelli wanted many small
projects paid for immediately to clean the streets of garbage, to restore
electricity to neighborhoods, and
to distribute clean water. He was
successful. Sunni fighters left
their guns behind to do the simple and dirty work of civil engineering in their
neighborhoods. When the money
stopped, they went back to being insurgents, and life got worse for everyone. The
Sunni grievances were real. Shiite death squads under the cover of government
legitimacy as police and security forces pushed the Sunnis out of mixed
neighborhoods. The government
closed the only bank in Sadr City, forcing Sunnis to travel through deadly Shia
territory. Gen. Chiarelli’s rebuilding faltered.
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| The Telegraph (UK) |
General Petraeus was the most conventional of them though his
winning strategy was contrary to the wisdom of the time. (Petraeus completed
his doctorate from Princeton while he was teaching in the social science
department at West Point.) Petraeus pushed for the deployment of 21,000 additional troops – called “The
Surge” – to bolster the failing occupation. However, rather than stationing them in huge bases with
swimming pools, and a BX the size of a Walmart, he placed them in 120 small
detachments close to the civilians. They also worked as advisors and supporters
to the Iraqi police and army who were tasked with keeping the peace. The first advantage was that the Iraqi
people, civilians and military both, would stop seeing the occupying force as
distant and aloof, but in and of them as collaborators. Moreover, the soldiers
would come to know the people, not only gaining valuable intelligence, but
also becoming less likely to stereotype the locals. More to the point, the
strategy came with an exit policy: eventually, the US forces would minimize,
and the Iraqi role would strengthen. The first happened. The second did not.
In the Middle Ages, military authority and civil authority
were identical. As Europe reawakened, the military was subordinated to civilian
control. Ever less often did dukes, kings, and emperors lead their troops into
battle.The capture of Napoleon III at Sedan in 1871 was the dunce’s
after school lesson. And military
dictatorships are notoriously unsuccessful. So, the modern army carries out the orders it is given. The
Second Gulf War was not just winnable: it was won. The fifth largest army in
the world melted and evaporated. We then met them again in a new fog of war, a war that could not be
won. Sometimes, being brilliantly
intelligent is just not enough.
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