Hell to Pay
With Iraq in chaos, the Pentagon looks for answers-and licks its wounds
Cultural shift. The military anticipated being able, by now, to draw down U.S. troops, whose numbers have moved upward to 145,000-the highest figure since December due because of overlap during troop rotations. But that seems highly unlikely now. Last month, Pentagon officials gathered some 50 counterinsurgency experts together as part of an effort to assess the lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to military officials, they cited missteps that included using too much force in Iraqi neighborhoods, which resulted in alienating the populations there. Next month, a revised counterinsurgency field manual-the first in 20 years-will emphasize a cultural shift in the way soldiers and marines train and fight, military officials said. Parts of the revised manual read like a Zen handbook, including such nuggets as, "The more you protect your force, the less protected you are," and, "Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction."
In light of that, some military officers are wondering what sort of signals it sends that a general with a reputation for kicking down doors will soon become the No. 2 commander in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, leader of the division that captured Saddam Hussein, is headed to Baghdad in December as the commanding general of the Army's Third Corps. He replaces Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, a widely admired general known for emphasizing quality-of-life issues for the population, like providing water, electricity, and trash collection.
These generals "have two very different approaches to the war," says Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense planning think tank. Before his first tour to Baghdad as commanding general of the 1st Calvary Cavalry Division in March 2004, for example, Chiarelli sent his company commanders to attend city council meetings in Texas to sensitize them to local politics, according to Lt. Col. John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife, a study of counterinsurgency. "We're going to pull him out and replace him with somebody who views things very differently," says Krepinevich.
"Center of gravity." Odierno's reputation as a commander with a penchant for tough tactics, chronicled in Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks's book Fiasco, is "not undeserved," says a senior defense official. "But," adds the official, "he's a smart man who was there early in the fight." Certainly, he is a soldier who knows the devastation of war. In 2004, his son Tony, also an Army officer, lost an arm while serving as a platoon leader in the 1st Cavalry, which was commanded by Chiarelli at the time. It was Chiarelli who called Odierno to tell him the news.
The general is also a Defense Department insider. As a former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was the military's liaison to the State Department, a fact many see as a possible plus in the interagency challenges that await him in Baghdad. Critics, though, see his appointment as furthering Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's flawed approach to Iraq. "He's celebrated by Rumsfeld as the guy who got Saddam, but who cares? Who got the Iraqi people? Not us," says another senior defense official, who requested anonymity. "Rumsfeld is thinking Hitler, fascists, the guy on top. It's so old school it's almost like the Cold War: The center of gravity is not hearts and minds but the dictator. What's missing is the people. It's like we go to the baseball game and we tackle the pitcher," he adds. "Suddenly on the scoreboard we're losing 55-0. Well, you morons were busy tackling the pitcher."
The op-ed column by Kristol and Lowry didn't create much of a stir in military circles, where talk about needing more troops in Iraq is hardly new. "It's clear that the military doesn't have sufficient forces to secure the country," says Krepinevich. But that's not what President Bush says he's hearing from his top commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey. "I asked General Casey today, have you got what you need?" Bush recounted at his Friday press conference. "He said, 'Yeah. Got what I need.'"
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