Redstate

By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

By now, everyone pretty well knows about General Ricardo Sanchez's caustic remarks before a gathering of military reporters and journalists. He harshly criticized journalists and their tribe for bias and dishonesty. He took the Bush administration to task for its poor execution and lack of a strategy in this war, and he complained about the political environment in general for the overheated partisanship. The mainstream press, especially the Washington Post, was misleading in its coverage of Sanchez's speech because "reporter" Josh White focused on Sanchez's criticism of the Bush administration and underplayed the other two important points. In this, Captain Ed is right:

Yes, obviously Sanchez ripped the Bush administration -- the media had no trouble reporting that part of the speech. He also ripped the Democrats for playing partisan games and making it impossible to generate the kind of strategy needed to win in Iraq. The media didn't bother to report much of that, and it didn't report his primary focus in the speech on the media themselves for reporting the war dishonestly from the beginning. That's what I was noting in this post -- what the media left out.

But the press coverage bothers me less than Sanchez's actual remarks. For one, this:

After more than four years of fighting, American continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve "victory" in that war torn country or in the greater confict against extremism. From a catastrohpically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan to the administratoin's latest "surge" strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power. The latest "revised strategy" is a desperate attempt by an administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people.

Let's leave aside the "grand strategy" in the larger War Against Militant Islamism. For the current strategy in Iraq, Sanchez is either ignorant (which seems unlikely) or he's being dishonest, particularly when he says stuff like this:

America must mobilize the interagency and the political and economic elements of power, which have been abject failures to date, in order to achieve victory.

That sounds like a case of projection to me. Back when he was in charge, Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks wrote that "it was very clear they [Sanchez and Bremer] hated each other. They lived in the same palace and didn't talk to each other." That is not the case today. The interagency cooperation between State (Crocker) and Defense (Petraeus) is exemplary. The economic elements are also proceeding along. As for the military elements, the situation speaks for itself: violence in Iraq is dropping dramatically. Sanchez is only accurate in the poltical elements, and those would apply to the national governments in both Iraq AND the United States.

But what really bugs me about his speech is that, unlike 99+% of the military, it was in Sanchez's power to do something about it. Deebow at Blackfive said it well:

For all the naysayers out there, let me say that I do believe he gets to express his opinion, because that certainly is his right, but he was in charge of what the direction was in Iraq. He was the one that got to set the tone for the battle. He was the one to decide the direction all soldiers in Iraq would pursue.

I understand that at the higher levels of command, things begin to get very political. Turf wars ensue, people's feelings get hurt, coalitions get formed and sides get chosen. If the generals above him and the civilians and political appointees at high levels were ignoring his calls, for example, for more troops to put on the Syrian border, or to put the former Iraqi army to work on security or to move more troops into theater (like a Surge) when he was there in 2003, then they violated the tradition of not questioning the man leading the battle on the ground at the point of the spear. In my mind, I would have done either (a) do what needed to be done, or at least what could be done by my command to win the battle and answer for my decisions later (if I was relieved or replaced) or (b) request to be immediately replaced by someone who would go along with the party line at the Pentagon.

Which sort of explains the title of the post at Small Wars Journal: Custer blames Grant? Herschel Smith also puts it well:

Perhaps the General is conveniently ignoring the advances in Iraq of late, but rather than engage him on this level, let’s turn our attention to the logic of Sanchez. As soon as he became top military commander, he says, he recognized that there were "serious challenges" to the strategy. Regarding his having stayed quiet to stateside command or the civilian authorities about this, the "last thing" we want is for general officers to "stand up against" political leadership.

But if he felt so strongly about these issues, could he not have at least spoken with leadership about strategy? Don’t officers write doctrine and develop strategy? If not, then what do officers do in a war? He sounds more like a private than a Lieutenant General. But Sanchez knows that he could have said more than he did concerning strategy, and even resigned his commission. Why, then, did he not?

Because "he feared that move could further jeopardize troops serving there." But wait. If he believed that such a move would jeopardize troops, what about a Lt. Gen. who cannot discuss doctrine or strategy and who even now has no original recommendations, believed the war to be a lost cause, and waited until he had retired to say to the remaining 160,000 troops in theater (and who are preparing to deploy) that they could die in vain for a lost cause?

Are his actions now placing the troops in any less jeopardy than bringing attention to what he believed to be a failed strategy? If he had taken the actions he said he was so reluctant to take, would the possibility not have existed in his calculus to effect a change for the better, thus ensuring the greatest possible likelihood of success in Iraq?

His own words appear to indict him for caring more about the success of his career and the exoneration of him from his own failures than about either the campaign or the men under his charge. Sanchez, for whatever he was during his tenure, appears to have become a bitter curmudgeon rather than a statesman and warrior in the twilight of a career.

Sanchez should have recognized much sooner that an insurgency had started and was growing, but he apparently didn't. When it became all too obvious, he didn't implement any serious counterinsurgency measures. That didn't happen until General Peter Casey came into the picture, and even then the efforts were half-assed.

Sanchez should have recognized--as Shinsecki and other generals did early on--that our forces were significantly understaffed in the post-Saddam situation. As far as I know, he didn't say a word about it to the chain of command, which is probably why he was in Rumsfeld's favor and kept his job for as long as he did.

Sanchez complained about the State Department's shoddy performance, but did Sanchez actually do anything about it? Not from what I could tell. Sanchez and Bremer both reported to the same guys, Rumsfeld and ultimately Bush, so why didn't the U.S. Commander of Iraq and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority put their personalities aside and better coordinate their strategies and activities?

Unlike the lower-level soldiers and officers, Sanchez had the ability to change the situation on the ground. Why didn't he take the initiative? Why didn't he try to ruffle some feathers in order to get results? Why didn't he make a grand gesture or two to alter the environment? As it is, Sanchez is pointing the finger at everyone around him except himself. A couple of paragraphs in the Army Times were eye-opening:

When asked where accountability lay while he headed the forces, as well as for his part in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Sanchez said it was too late for him to do anything when he took over.

Too late!? Three months after we invaded!? The guy took charge in June of freaking 2003. If it was too late at that time, why didn't he say or do anything to help change course? Then there's this:

Jaws dropped as Sanchez glared out at the room, and then eyes rolled as he spent an hour blaming everyone but himself. Most of what he said about the military has been said before: There’s no grand strategy, the Iraqi Army should not have been disbanded, there was no planning for stabilization or recovery past the initial invasion and, "the administration has failed."

Obviously, the reporter was a little irked at Sanchez, but I can't blame him (or her). I don't know if Sanchez was "one of the worst field commanders in U.S. military history" as Abu Muqawama put it, but Sanchez's speech did nothing to turn me away from that assessment.