Bobzhuman

Letter written by Col. Mike Walker, USMC (retired)
Generals Odom and Petraeus

Let me preface with the remark that I am both
disappointed and, in no small part, ashamed of the
personal partisan attacks on our military
professionals, past and present. Now it is General
Odom turn to be in this dishonorable line of fire and
next it will be General Petraeus.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with what
someone has said or written. It is wrong to attack
their character and integrity because you cannot take
having your edicts challenged. General Odom is a
great American. General Petraeus is a great American.
To pose otherwise is moral wrong.

The party zealots just do not get it. Let me see if I
can help to clearly define this issue. About a
century and half ago, during the bloodiest and most
divisive war in our history, General Winfield Scott
Hancock wrote:

“We are serving no one man; we are serving our
country.”

Too many politicians, living in the safe comfort
dearly bought by our citizens in uniform, seem unable
to accept this reality. Worse yet, some unabashedly
pat themselves on the back for the too frequent
disservice of putting partisan political gain ahead of
service to the nation. We, who are serving or have
served in uniform as Hancock did all those many years
ago, do not and will not. It is worth repeating:

“We are serving no one man; we are serving our
country.”

Now, on to my inadequate opining on General Odom’s
comments of 2 April 2008.

My major difficulty with the General’s comments is the
simplification of the people who live in Iraq into
single-word groupings such as the Sunni, the Shi’a,
the Kurds, etc. This strips away the essential
texture and complexity of the situation in Iraq and
the region making meaningful analysis too difficult.

It is reminiscent of the Cold War excesses about the
communist monolith or indivisible solidarity of the
USSR. Unqualified use of similar overreaching terms
hinders rather than help in our understanding of the
ground truth in Iraq.

The Sunni Arabs are not a single bloc. They share a
common religious and ethnic heritage but are more
diverse than is commonly understood. Part of this is
tribal; part is regional; part is political. Whether
they were raised in an urban or rural setting plays a
role. Their relative position within the Ba’athists
party and the defunct Saddam regime plays a part as
does the role of religion in their life. This is as
true for the insurgents who fought against us as for
those who fought with us. Similar arguments can be
made in regards to the Shi’a and Kurds.

Similarly, the actions that led to reaching the
“tipping point” in our favor al Anbar cannot be
described in terms of “the Sunnis did this” or “the
Sunnis did that.” The General is right when he states
that al Qaeda in Iraq, our most ruthless opponent,
only became a real threat when it became part of the
Saddamist’s plan to defeat the Coalition. That
decision turned into a strategic miscalculation on
their part.

We were only able to exploit that mistake because the
Coalition worked tirelessly to present a superior
alternative, a vision of a better Iraq, a brighter
future. He is also correct to point out that turning
point when the Saddamist’s broke with al Qaeda and
allied themselves with the Marines was a result of
actions that began years before the surge. The
process followed in al Anbar offers a way forward in
winning the fight in Iraq. The keys are the
development of Iraqi security services, outreach to
all Iraqis (friend and foe alike), strengthening the
government through elections, and economic
empowerment.

A purely tribal engagement model is problematic as the
General states. There are indeed cases of tribal
groups simply being temporarily bought off with no
long-term solution in the offing. But those cases are
exception, not the rule in al Anbar. The complexity
stems from the difficulty many Americans had with the
ease in which Iraqi leaders transitioned between roles
of tribal sheiks and western-style secular businessmen
and professionals. I recall hearing fellow Marines
refer to so-and-so as a Sheik to accentuate the tribal
influence on events. I also recall these same Iraqis
as referring to themselves as Engineer so-and-so,
Doctor So-and-so, etc. There were some who did
primarily use the title of sheik but there were more
cases of Americans misapplying or misunderstanding the
term in their dealings with Iraqi leaders in al Anbar.

The critical point in regards to al Anbar is not that
we risk losing the progress made there by continuing
to buy off local sheiks, however fleeting the gains
from that policy are. What is important is the
scheduling of local elections this October will go a
long way in healing the political divide with the
government in Baghdad.

Where we really risk losing our gains in al Anbar is
in the failure to ignite the private sector economy.
Without economic freedom there can never political
freedom. Without economic security, there can never
be military security in al Anbar. Where are the
returning detainees to go if there is no hope of a job
that provides a chance to build a career or support a
family?

Perhaps most unsettling is General Odem’s view on the
actions taken a few days ago by the Iraqi security
forces to rein in Sadr’s army. He characterized them
as disturbing. In this, I believe he is just plain
wrong. They were essential. Muqtada Sadr is Iran’s
last best hope for establishing suzerainty over Iraq.
The model is a variation of Iran’s efforts in Lebanon.

Sadr’s recent actions during the fighting Basrah are
an attempt at a replay of his past confrontations with
Coalition and Iraqi security forces. He gets a bloody
nose militarily but comes out stronger politically.
His forces are always outmatched but not a complete
rollover for his opponents. When the situation on the
battlefield inevitably turns against him, he calls for
ceasefire to escape an untenable military position in
order to rebuild his militia, the Madhi army.

What is different now is that Sadr’s political
position, rather than being strengthened, as in the
past, is now more perilous after the recent military
setback. This time, as the AP reported, “the major
political parties have closed ranks” against Sadr.
The LA Times quoted a Maliki supporter in Parliament,
Sami Askari as saying that although the action
directed that all parties disarm their militias,
“everyone understands this means mainly the Mahdi
Army.” One of Sadr’s legislators, al Rubaie was
quoted by the AP as saying that “Even the blocs that
in the past had supported us are now against us and we
cannot stop them from taking action in parliament.”

The major difficulty for Muqtada Sadr is that he is
not recognized as leading Shi’a cleric. He is a
strongman. He does have a following. But he is seen
as an illegitimate religious leader by the majority of
the Shi’a in Iraq and this is a fatal shortcoming for
anyone hoping to become their leader. That he has
sought refuge in Iran for the last year makes the
claim that he is a stooge of extremist Iranian mullahs
all the more damaging to his hopes of gaining support
amongst the Iraqi people.
In the past, the Shi’a political parties backed Sadr
because they saw his militia as a counterweight to al
Qaeda and its radical Sunni supporters. Now with al
Qaeda power ebbing, they no longer see the Madhi army
as such a good thing. Sadr has been forced to offer
up the disbandment of his militia.

General Odom points out that the most significant
obstacle to the plans of Muqtada and the Iranians is
the decision of Iraq’s Shi’a to look to their own
clerics rather than Persian surrogates. When the
deep distrust of Iran by many of Sunni is added to the
equation, the possibility of defeating Sadr’s army
becomes a realizable goal.

As Askari added in the LA Times article: “You can’t
put one foot in the political process and with the
other act in an army against the national government.
No one can accept this.” This is a clear declaration
that the “Hezballah/Hamas” model that follows Iran’s
game plan, is not only unacceptable to the Sunni
minority but the Shi’a majority as well.
This also brings into play the role of the Kurds. The
Kurds are the best practitioners of real politik in
Iraq. I sat in on several meetings with some of the
leading Kurdish politicians in Irbil during my first
tour in Iraq and they were the most united (by Iraqi
standards), sensible and calculating of the major
ethnic groups in Iraq. They will protect what is in
their best interests and are more willing than any
other political block in Iraq to compromise to attain
them.

They effectively contained then deescalated the 2008
Turkish-KKP military clashes in northern Iraq by
working within the Iraqi political system. Further,
they are supportive of the role the United States has
played in Iraq but are also willing to work
independently to further their goals to include
working with the Iranians.

This raises General Odom’s point regarding engaging
Iran. If any group could serve the role as an honest
broker between the United States and the Iranians, it
may well be the Iraqi Kurdish leadership.
Nonetheless, I harbor no illusions about the violent
revolutionary role Iran is playing within the region
and the Muslim world in general and cognizant of the
failures of past administrations to find any manner of
viable modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic.
Iranian actions beginning in 1979 and continuing on
through today have been the single greatest cause for
violence and instability in the region.

There is nothing in General Odom’s arguments to lead
me to believe otherwise. For those reason, I am very
pessimistic that anything, other than grief, will come
from any outreach to Iran for the foreseeable future.

The war in Iraq is the Coalition’s to win or lose. We
control our destiny there. It will be a long war as I
have been arguing for a number of years now but long
does not equate with defeat. And quickness, to
include any proposal for rapid withdrawal, does not
equate with victory.

Semper Fi,

Mike