The Revolt Of The Generals

Wes Clark thinks that Democrats and the military can get along. It's a curious construction - the idea that the military has to be cajoled and persuaded into standard compliance with the chain of command and the plan fact of a Democrat at the top of it. Most of the op-ed talks about how Democrats have to understand the culture of the military better, although there's a smaller bit about the reverse:

But the military will have to show some understanding as well. We don't have a monopoly on knowing what the nation's best interests are. National security now involves such spheres as law enforcement, the economy, the nation's industrial and scientific base and even such matters as health care and civil liberties. The military is just one voice among many.

Nor are our military plans and proposals beyond questioning. There's a lot of judgment involved in strategy and operations, and not a lot of certainty. The military is a cautious institution, and plans and options sometimes reflect just the opinion of the most senior person in the room. Even hard military "requirements" should stand up to public scrutiny. So when new members of Congress, Hill staffers and political appointees question tactics, techniques, troop levels and programs, we have to continue to treat these questions seriously and answer them with respect and diligence.

I wonder how Gen. Clark would react to this news. It really doesn't sound to be like the military is treating a signature campaign promise of the incoming President-elect with respect or diligence.

U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling U.S. troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the U.S. military has never accepted and a way of blocking President-elect Barack Obama's proposed plan for withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.

The New York Times picks this up by discussing the semantic games being played at the Pentagon to keep a substantial presence in Iraq.

Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.

“Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back,” said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual [...]

For his part, General Odierno made clear that the Iraqis still needed help — and that the United States would hardly disappear. “What I would say is, we’ll still maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq, even after the summer,” he told reporters.

Military officials say they can accomplish that by “repurposing” whatever combat troops remain. Officially, a combat soldier is anyone trained in what are called combat-coded military occupation specialties — among them infantry, artillery and Special Forces — to engage the enemy. But combat troops can be given different missions. From the military’s point of view, a combat soldier is not so much what he is called but what he does.

You can argue that this is no different from what Obama promised during the campaign - he acknowledged that there would be residual forces after the removal of all combat troops within 16 months, and he did not commit to having all troops out by 2013. But that was before the SOFA signed by the President and the Iraqi government that set down a series of mandates, with troops out of major US cities by the summer, and completely gone by the end of 2011. While Obama has agreed with this in principle, either he or (I would argue) the military is jumping through hoops to try and technically keep to the agreement while in practice voiding it altogether. In fact, Gen. Odierno is adding responsibilities by replacing British troops in southern Iraq with US forces early next year.

Siun at FDL summarizes the state of things here.

So what’s the story? We know the Iraqis want us out - and they have just refused to approve any extension for troops from the UK and other countries. Any fair referendum in Iraq is most likely to do the same - and any extension of the occupation will draw intensified attacks from Iraqi nationalist forces. It's not like Gates and crew won't have a war to fight - in fact, the latest reports are that they are speeding up the deployment of US forces to Afghanistan. So why would US generals be so insistent on a longer occupation?

And more importantly, what is Obama going to do about it - and what are we going to do to make certain Obama knows we expect a full withdrawal – preferably starting yesterday.

I would add that these creative loopholes being applied to the SOFA just increases the anger at the US presence and the determination on the part of Iraqis to remove it. They have every reason not to believe that the US will live up to their obligations in the agreement, and at some point they will fight against it, whether at the ballot box if they get a chance to nullify the SOFA and expel US troops immediately, or more dangerously through the application of force and the resumption of hostilities.

I assume that the calculation on the part of the military is simply that they don't want to be blamed for losing a war. There are issues of pride and honor at stake. If Obama rejects their planning and actually withdraws, they are well-positioned to blame him should things fall apart in Iraq. And by the way, things probably WILL fall apart - there isn't much goodwill between the various parties, and while Maliki has been accumulating power, it was notable that his attempted purge of the Interior Ministry fell flat, with the Interior Minister freeing everyone captured and condemning his own government for the raid. And of course the shoe thrower has peeled back the discontent with the occupation from the surface. He is not in complete control, and since no effort has been made at political reconciliation, just for propping up a puppet and helping him become a strongman, there's no way he will be in our absence.

That is not a compelling reason to stay. We have a signed agreement to leave in an orderly fashion, and failure to do so would be catastrophic for both the troops that are staying there in the face of betrayal, and for our image in dealing fairly with the Muslim world in a new Administration. If this is Obama directing this little two-step, then as Siun says, he needs to hear from us. If it's the generals, then it's the opening salvo in a predictable bit of brinksmanship, where the military tests the young leader to see how much they can bend him to their will. There are very large majorities who want us out of Iraq. Obama wouldn't need to tap any political capital to keep his word. We'll see if he's as good as it.