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In the U.S., people have been watching a debate between military men. Put three military men together in a room and you might get three or four alternatives as to what might be the best military strategy.
Today a retired colonel has risen as a critic of the strategic thinking of those generals in whom President Bush and his supporters are placing hope. I'm referring to Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor, who left the army in 2004 after 28 years of service. He is a decorated combat veteran with a Ph.D. who writes for the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. History holds examples of men like MacGregor, who are not at the top of the command structure, holding a superior perspective than those who are.
On the News Hour on February 1, MacGregor spoke of the U.S. military operations in Iraq becoming "symbols of humiliation" for the Iraqi Arabs and "large-scale conventional sweeps [making] far more enemies than we killed." He continued:
If you look at all the so-called rules of how you conduct counterinsurgency operations, none of them call for these large, conventional sweeps that we conducted under General Casey. In terms of killing, wounding, incarcerating thousands of people, this sort of thing produced and continues to produce enormous quantities of enemies, people that hate the United States of America.
Military leaders today, including General Casey, Commander of the Coalition Forces in Iraq from 2004 to January 26, 2007, are sophisticated enough to tie military matters together with social and political considerations. So too is his replacement, General Petraeus. But giving too little emphasis on this and too much on control through the application of military force has been a part of the mistakes the U.S. has made in Iraq. And today we have some who see an application of increased military force as the solution to "our problem in Iraq." Senators McCain, Graham and Lieberman are leading the Senate in favoring this strategy and in supporting the Bush administration's planned "surge" in Iraq. The purpose of military force is supposed to be toward a political end. Time will tell whether the increased use of force will work.
Copyright © 2006 Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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