Conversation With a Prominent Iraq War Critic
By Bruce Kesler
Joseph L. (Joe) Galloway, who just retired as military editor for Knight Ridder and is co-author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, is a friend who isn’t shy about expressing his criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After all, when he met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he told him, “I want you to know that I’m going to keep kicking your butt, to keep you focused.”
Recently I turned to Galloway’s 41 years of reporting experience, which have taken him from Ia Drang in Vietnam to his trips to Iraq only months ago, to get a picture of what’s happening over there. Surprisingly, his view isn’t so different from the Administration’s.
Galloway’s criticisms of the U.S. invasion of Iraq are, in and of themselves, not uncommon: “We need not have invaded at that time. We had Saddam in an imperfect box”; “incompetence [due to] meddling by people without military experience [and] arrogance [with a] plan warped, ham-strung, and almost perverted [in that it lacked] detailed planning”; “job number one was to take down the Taliban and pursue them everywhere, but we diverted 90 percent of our resources to Iraq”; “we didn’t send enough troops to do the job.” Joe has also expressed his anguish over the loss of life and limb by any U.S. soldier or Marine—the ordinary Joes with whom he’s imbedded as a latter-day Ernie Pyle.
The most common responses to these objections are familiar today: Everyone with access to the intelligence services of many nations believed that Iraq possessed WMDs, and Saddam himself encouraged this thinking; the sanctions were leaking like a sieve; planning for the aftermath of the war was adequate for commonly expected problems, but very few analysts foresaw the extent of a pre-planned and developed Sunni insurgency; the Taliban was taken out and 75 percent of its leadership has been eliminated; more troops may well have fueled increased resistance, and weren’t available anyway. To boot, this line of argument is largely irrelevant now, except importantly in preparing for future military commitments. Democrats may harp on these debates over the start of the war, largely to exploit war-weariness for electoral gain, but they’re all moot points at this juncture of the conflict.
Most important, however, is whether the sacrifices made thus far may yet yield a satisfactory outcome. The consequences of this war are crucial for Americans—for America’s role in the world, for Iraqis, and for others abroad who may sooner or later depend on the U.S. for their fate.
Galloway told me that our military has gained much successful—and painful—experience that’s coming to bear on how we’re fighting in Iraq. For example, they’ve implemented a method known as “clear and hold,” used in population centers, the countryside, and along the borders, which is more effective than the previously used tactic, “sweep and leave.” He reports, too, that today we’re seeing the “standing up of the Iraqi Army—some of which is quite good—is good news.” The main problem now for Washington and Baghdad is that the “American people are fed up with it.” Galloway attributes Congressman John Murtha’s speaking out, regardless of its faults, to this sense of exasperation.
Under the best of circumstances, barring a real civil war of large contending armed forces escalating from the lower level sectarian violence, Galloway sees a gradual drawing down of U.S. forces during 2006 to perhaps 50,000 by the 2008 elections, and foresees such a force remaining for several years thereafter. However, citing Senator John Warner, Galloway says that if a larger civil war should break out, we should simply leave the fighting to the Iraqis and clear out.
I asked Galloway to compare the political situation in Baghdad to that in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Galloway called South Vietnam a “military dictatorship” that was “semi-orderly,” compared to the “not even semi-orderly” early-stage democracy in Iraq. Although there is sound evidence of corruption and thefts of public funds by Iraqi politicians, intriguingly, Galloway thinks a pecuniary motive could serve as Iraq’s salvation.
He says the “best thing the Iraqis have going is that they are politicians, all serving a constituency…who will end up operating from enlightened self-interest to share the oil money.” And he agrees with Charles Krauthammer that the most important thing is “getting a place at the table for the Sunnis.” The alternative for the Sunnis, “almost all of the insurgency,” is to be “driven out or killed.” Galloway doesn’t think the country will split up, but if it does, the Sunnis will become another source of regional instability as “Palestinian-type refugees.” He says U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad is doing a “pretty good job of keeping their feet to the fire” in urging the Iraqis to arrange a reasonable accommodation with each group.
Galloway emphasizes that it’s the “Iraqis’ war to win.” At the end of our conversation, he said: “I hope and pray” for a satisfactory outcome which, “in the context of that country and region…won’t be Jeffersonian.”
Given that President Bush needs to be more resolute in leading the American people in war, and in holding back discouragement over our prospects for victory, it doesn’t sound to me as if there’s too much disagreement between one leading war critic and the Administration’s pronouncements and policies.
Bruce Kesler owns an employee benefits consulting firm in the San Diego area. He is a contributing writer for the Democracy Project.
