A War of Choice
My recent postings here and here concerning the anti-war movement in America has drawn some heated comments. It has also drawn the attention of Korea blogger the Metropolitician who has a couple of posts here and here about this topic that I encourage everyone to read.Â
Let me make this very clear in my postings I am drawing my criticism towards the face of the anti-war movement which is people like William Arkin, Cindy Sheehan, and their ilk who were out in front of the US capitol a couple of weeks ago. Like it or not the Sheehans and Code Pinks are the face of the anti-war movement, just as much as President Bush is the face of the movement to stay the course in Iraq. The people that are the face of the anti-war movement hated the military long before President Bush even came around and I’m calling them on it. They didn’t just rise up because of the Iraq War, they have always been there as I mentioned in my post and are now just getting the media attention they have been craving for all these years.
If the US never invaded Iraq they would be protesting the war in Afghanistan just as hard as they are protesting Iraq now even though they claim otherwise. If the US was not in Iraq now, the jihadis would be in Afghanistan trying to kill infidels and incite ethnic violence there instead of in Iraq. The US would be taking much more casualties in Afghanistan now if the US military wasn’t in Iraq. If the US was losing 2-3 soldiers a day in Afghanistan and Al Qaida was car bombing mosques and beheading infidels, would people in the anti-war movement still be saying they support the war in Afghanistan? I think not.Â
All the people that now benefit from hindsight as Richardson pointed it out quite clearly, love to practice historical revisionism. Just look at all the Senators that voted to go to war doing everything they can now to recreate history in order to explain their vote. They are cowards and that is why I respect politicians like John McCain who make no excuses for their votes. He is holding himself accountable for what he believes instead of holding his finger in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing.
With that said, the war in Iraq was clearly a war of choice. This I have no doubts about. Since this is a Korea blog let me use a Korean War reference for an analogy. Did Truman need to send soldiers to fight in Korea in 1950? No, it was a war of choice that Truman decided to fight, to the communists total surprise, because he wanted to take a stand against communism. After initial setbacks it appeared after the Inchon Landing that Truman was right to send troops to Korea, but once the Chinese got involved it was clear that Truman had overreached and thus was stuck in stalemate against the Chinese Army in order to not provoke the Russians to become involved in the war. The dismal approval rating of Truman due to the Korean War ultimately led to him not running for reelection in 1952 and Eisenhower taking over and roughly 7 months later he signed a cease fire ending hostilities.Â
Now let’s look at Iraq. Bush fought a war of choice in Iraq because he wanted to send a message to all the tyrants in the Middle East that things weren’t going to be business as usual in the Middle East after 9/11. He wanted to force change. Iraq was the easy target to enforce change in the Middle East, because there was already troops in Kuwait including most importantly a logistics system, plus everyone hates Saddam right? Just because people hated Saddam didn’t mean people would support going to war to remove him. WMD was used as the primary reason because the administration knew they would get little support from the UN to remove Saddam or spread freedom and democracy to Iraq. The UN is more about protecting tyrants not bringing them down.
The Bush administration felt WMDs were a slam dunk case to win UN approval and thus didn’t bring up anything about freedom and democracy because doing so would cause even more UN disapproval. Remember before the war everyone wanted Bush to play the UN game. To this day I have not seen anything to change my mind that Bush knew there was no WMD in Iraq. I believe Bush legitimately believed there was WMD in Iraq, but he didn’t decide to wage the war simply for WMD. The more important reason was sending a message to the despots in the Middle East that America was committed to change in the Middle East, just like Truman was committed to standing up to the communists in Korea.Â
I think Bush like many people around the world was surprised that no stockpiles were found, however what is little reported is the fact that Saddam kept the capability to produce chemical weapons through stock piling dual use material. For example during the war my unit secured an Iraqi airbase and on it we found stockpiles of industrial chemicals like chlorine and pesticides. Why would a military airfield need stockpiles of these industrial chemicals? They must of had a heck of an insect problem and the chlorine wasn’t for the pool because there was one pool and it had no water in it. Guess who was selling Saddam all these dual use items in violation of UN sanctions? Many of our so called allies, especially the French according to this CIA report on the post-war findings of Iraq WMD programs. Actually I didn’t need a CIA report to know which countries were violating UN sanctions because all of us there during the war in 2003 saw for ourselves who was violating UN sanctions.Â
Now I’m all for debate about the merits of going to war, but what I don’t like is people using this debate as reason for pulling out of Iraq now. In my opinion the two are not related. If the US pulls out now Iraq will crumble and our enemies will be emboldened and will be heading to Afghanistan next, not to mention the massive ethnic cleansing and possibility of regional war breaking out between Iran and the Sunni nations trying to protect Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. It would be a total disaster that the face of the anti-war crowd and opposition politicians are not providing any answers to solve. Their arguments continue to be the war is illegal, Bush lied, we need to retreat from Iraq.  This doesn’t solve the problem in Iraq the United States is facing today.Â
Let’s go back to the Korean War. In 1954 should the US have pulled out of Korea because the Korean War was a war of choice? Look at the post-Korean War years following the 1953 cease fire. A communist insurgency was still active in the southern mountains of South Korea, the ROK Army was not ready to assume security of their own nation, the political situation was extremely unstable which ultimately led to military coup a few years later, labor strife, mass poverty, and little economic development. In the early post-war years it was easy to call the US intervention into Korea a total failure especially after 36,000 US soldiers died during the war compared to just over 3,000 in Iraq today. In 1954 was 36,000 US lives spent in Korea worth it? The hindsight in 1954 looked way more negatively on staying in Korea compared to hindsight in 2007 in regards to staying in Iraq.Â
However, the US stayed the course with Korea despite all the setbacks over the years and Korea is now a model country that rose up from the devastation of the Korean War due to it’s alliance with the US and the hard work of it’s own people to become an economic power and a vibrant democracy. With the benefit of hindsight today, the US won the Korean War in 1988 when Seoul hosted the Olympic Games. Who would have thought that in 1954? It is going to be the same scenario for Iraq, we won’t know if the US "won" the war until 30 years from now if Baghdad is hosting the Olympic Games for example. It is going to take continued US assistance and hard work from the Iraqis to do it. For anyone who thinks the Iraqis aren’t doing enough for their own freedom needs to read this and this. I think soldiers feel so strongly about the Iraq War because the Iraqi people are more than just statistics to us, they are real people that will really die if the United States pulls out. We in the military don’t have the luxury of staying home and debating the merits of going to war and playing the "I told you so" game. We are less concerned about the justifications of the war and more concerned with doing the job at hand, which is to help the Iraqis rise up from the grips of despotism and terrorism. We in the military can’t do that from Okinawa like the Murtha plan advocates just as much as the soldiers in Korea after the Korean War couldn’t help the Koreans rise from the ashes of war if they were left to sit in Japan.Â
The biggest failure of the Bush Administration has been communicating all this to the American people.Â
Unlike the face of the anti-war crowd that want to silence people in the military I actually encourage everyone to read what the Metropolitician has to say. Americans need to become better educated about Iraq and I feel if they do they will understand the danger of pulling out of there. If not and the US military is forced to pull out of Iraq we might as well pull out of Afghanistan as well because every jihadi who was looking to kill an infidel in Iraq will be on a one way Iranian express train to Afghanistan. After the pull out, we in the military will drive on and follow orders from the next US president, even Hillary, just like soldiers always do, but don’t come blaming us when chaos breaks out, the death count in the Middle East inflates to incredible numbers, Saudia Arabia nuclearizes to defend itself from Iran, oil prices go through the roof, economic recession hits the US, among a host of other possible disasters that can hit America from a US withdrawal from Iraq.Â
Even better yet don’t expect us in the military to go back over there to clean it up.Â
Hi GI Korea:
Thanks for writing a much more reasonable and interesting post explaining your views in more detail (and apologies for soundling like I'm giving you a backhanded compliment… not my intent).
I would take issue with your comparing George Bush with Cindy Sheehan. As the President of the USA, Bush is more than the face of the war in Iraq: He is the chief military officer and the executive who made the decision. Sheehan has no legal standing and no power, aside from the ability to get into the media (although I think I see her in the right-wing media, as an object of ridicule or derision, much more than I see her in the mainstream media). People like Obama and Dean are more legitimate anti-war voices, and more fitting comparisons. Sheehan is more like a Bill O'Reilly or someone like that.
You are right to separate arguments about going to war vs. what to do next. But you should also separate a third debate: How the war and reconstruction have been managed. This is one area where I think the Bush administration has been incredibly incompetent.
As for what to do next… I have no magic eightball, but from what I have seen, the current strategy is not working. From some previous military planning I read, I think the idea of a massive, 500,000-person force could be a lot more effective. But Bush clearly had no interest in that approach even when he had strong support from the American people. Instead, he squandered his political capital on tax cuts and social security reform. Which to my mind, is one of the greatest slaps in the face to the US military.
I use figures like Sheehan and Bush because when you say anti-war crowd who pops to mind? The idiots like Sheehan. Now when you think of stay the course who pops to mind? President Bush and Rumsfeld.
Dean I actually give credit to because he was actually against the war from the start unlike the coward politicians trying to rewrite their voting history today. Obama he is just a politician manufactured by the media to run against Hillary. However, neither Obama or Dean have issued any detailed plan of what they would do in Iraq or how they would handle Iran or even North Korea. The only idea from the democrats is phased withdrawal which is code word for retreat we can't win. Good thing we didn't do a phased withdrawal from Korean in 1954 like I mentioned.
The occupation planning was incompetent, I know because I was there. The military leaders had their hands tied because they were not allowed to plan for the occupation because of the fear it would be leaked to the media. An occupation plan was a sign that the US was definitely going to war when the whole sherade with the UN was going on. Many of us in the military could not believe how inept the Coalition Provisional Authority was the first year there. I am convinced if the military was given the money and resources to plan an occupation from the start things would have gone much better instead of relying on the State Department civilians.
Former General Jay Garner tried to fix things from the beginning but Bremer ignored him. The civlian blowing off a military leader with deep experience in Iraq. Garner knew what was going to happen and soon got out of there. I think General Franks knew as well and that is why he retired about the time Garner left leaving General Sanchez and Bremer to run things. As history has shown they didn't run things very well, but the first year wasn't all a failure. We learned valuable lessons learned which we passed to the unit that replaced us and the military became more and more experienced in fighting the insurgency. I have no doubt that if the US has to ever do another occupation you will see the military lead it not civilians and NGOs.
Now with the US military taking the lead on reconstruction more things are beign constructed and progress was getting made. That is why Iran and Al Qaida had to step up their efforts to start sectarian violence in 2006 because they were losing. Sadr the guy Bremer freed from being destroyed by the US military in 2004 is Iran's proxy helping to flame the sectarian tensions in Baghdad while Al Qaida continues its operations in mostly Anbar. One of my favorite quotes from General Franks was that he used to say that the enemy has a vote in war. That may be hard to believe that the enemy doesn't just sit out in the open for us to pin point bomb. As the enemy gets more desperate they get more ruthless in hopes of breaking American will. Many of us in the military just find it amazing that the guys over there actually doing the fighting haven't lost their will to see this through while the ones sitting at home have. Actually after returning from Iraq and being exposed to the American media again I can understand why. Hardly watch network TV any more. Much better information out there from guys like Mike Yon and Bill Roggio.
Heck this link from Army CPT provides a good example of how to win in Anbar with analysis you will never see from the talking head on network news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbfO3LV0FhI&eu…
Now the claims that the US should have sent 500,000 men to Iraq are absurd to all of us actually in the military. We don't have 500,000 men to send to Iraq, President Clinton cut them all. That is why Bush is expanding the army and the marines. Under Clinton we went from 19 Army divisions to the 10 you have today. Imagine if we had 9 more Army divisions to use in Iraq today.
Basically what you have now is that all the combat military units are either in Iraq or preparing to replace those that are there. The US military is heavy with personnel in the Air Force and Navy that are not in combat roles in Iraq. When you look at total end strength of the military it looks large but when you actually count the ground pounders that do the job on the ground the Marines and US Army divisions there is no where near 500,000 available to rotate to Iraq.
This troop surge that everyone is talking about. These are not spare extra soldiers were sending over there. They are in fact guys that were slated to deploy in the fall were instead moved to deploy in the spring and summer. Than guys already over there had their tours extended. All the surge is, is a changing of plane tickets. That is why Congress can't cut funding for the surge because the funding for their equipment, training, and deployment has already been funded since they were going any way.
Here is the beginners guide to the surge:
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/007609.ht…
Damn this comment is long, it like another blog posting, but I feel I have to provide details to the point I'm trying to get across. Now if anyone actually wants to understand the point I'm trying to make is a whole other issue because many people find it easier to just say Bush lied!
That is a good point that I can't remember hearing people talking about before.
People want milk chocolate thoughts that melt in your mouth with ease.
Things like, "Bush knew there were no WMDs in Iraq." But, you don't even hear people saying that —- you simply hear them say something like, "The pretext to go to war was a lie (and not finding stockpiles of weapons proves that)." They don't actually allow a thought to process long enough to tack on that other part, but that is what they mean, and by calling it a lie, they also mean the administration knew they would find no stockpiles beforehand.
I firmly believe —- despite how ferverntly they spit this stuff out ——- it is all a game to them. That is why in part they don't want people to press them into extended thought on it…
Anyway, I wasn't gung-ho about Iraq at any point before it started out.
I hated the no-fly zones and wished we would actually have a real policy on Iraq – do something or do nothing – stop this ineffectual bullshit….
….so, when Bush pused for doing something, it was a choice I could support enough.
And I think we could accomplish something very much worthwhile – just as we did with Germany, Italy, Japan, and others after WWII and then after the Korean War. It will take some fundamental decisions by the Iraqis as a whole, but it is still worth the costs.
And at this date, I am still ——— THANKFUL ——– the amount of bloodshed, death and destruction, during the main fighting days was not MUCH GREATER than what it turned out to be…..
…..and if the US (and Western) media liked Bush, they would still be singing the praises of how it turned out and praising things like the formation of the government, prevention of full fledged fragmentation into 3 waring ethnic groups, and the trial of Hussein and what not.
The reality is ———- whatever problems there have been and still are ——– things have been achieved in Iraq, and things have been avoided in Iraq, that pre-war critics warned were the worst case situations that were nonetheless likely to happen….
…..now, what we have is the worst case, right?
Fuck the press……
Speaking of worst case scenarios do you also remember all the prediction of a massive humanitarian and refugee crisis in Iraq from the media? Do you remember the predictions of Saddam blowing all his oil wells and causing a environmental disaster? The list goes on and on about things the media and critics were wrong about but when the media is wrong they are never held to account.
The US military has done a lot of noteworthy things in Iraq that no one thought possible and will continue to do great things in Iraq. You just won't hear the media giving the military any credit for it. They rather talk about Gitmo and Abu Graib.
Since this is a Korean website and since I served in a Marine rifle company in Korea in 1950-51, I will make a brief statement regarding the topic above.
By invading Iraq President Bush has done irreparable harm to our country, to the military, to the reputation of the United States around the world, and most specifically to our effectiveness in the war against terrorism. I don't look to Cindy Sheehan and the protesters in DC for support, though they are certainly entitled to express their views. I look rather to Marine generals Anthony Zinni and William Hoar, both of whom served as CENTCOM commanders in charge of keeping Sadaam under control, men who warned against invading Iraq. Many other top military leaders spoke out against Bush's rash and disastrous policy including General William Odom who headed the National Security Agency under President Reagan. He called the invasion of Iraq the greatest strategic blunder in United States history. And if you want to hear another authentic voice, go back and listen to Senator Jim Webb's 9-minute response to Bush's SOTU address. Compare this former Marine and Secretary of the Navy under Reagan and his family's military credentials with those of Bush and the other Neocon draft-dodging chicken hawks ("5 deferments Cheney") who led our country into this disastrous war.
Before Bush launched his "war of choice" President Mubarak of Egypt warned him that if he invaded Iraq he would create a hundred more Osamas, and now four years later Osama is still on the loose and as Mubarak warned, the number of would-be Osamas and terrorists around the world is growing.
Bin Laden must delighted with the leadership of our "Decider."
A final note: I served under Truman in Korea; he was my president. So, let me assure you of one thing: Bush is no Truman.
Charles "Doc" Hughes
The debate over going to war is fine and good but it doesn't matter to me or the US military fighting the war now. Right now people need to offer legitimate strategies for Iraq instead of political posturing and I told you sos. That is why I give McCain credit he has stuck to his guns and offered legitimate policy advice on Iraq.
Just for the record I don't think Bush is another Truman, he just finds himself in a similar situation in Iraq that Truman found himself in during the Korean War.
Once again I pose the questions if 30 years from now Baghdad is hosting the Olympics would we say the sacrifice in Iraq was worth it?
Does anyone think the 36,000 lives lost during the Korean War was worth it today?
By the way "Doc" I commend you for your service during the Korean War. It is truly a forgotten war that many lessons about history could be learned from that leaders ignore today. It is also quickly becoming the revisioned war in Korea as the leftists in the country are rewriting history to slime the brave US veterans that fought in that war.
All those names saying it was a terrible idea doesn't do anything for me.
If Korea was a strategic position worthy of the sacrifices of war and to kick off (or accept or whatever) of the Cold War that would poise the world on the brink of nuclear holocaust for decades —–
—–why would it be difficult to say that establishing a democracy in the oil-rich, global economy-driving Middle East (besides Israel)????
Truman was OK throwing troops back into South Korea after HIS military thinkers said the line of defense should be Japan and cut Korea out, but Bush is no Truman for trying to do —– what? at minimum put an end to a STUPID situation typical of bullshit politicians —- which was the "no fly zones".
I like Colin Powell, and I like Bush Sr., but their defense of not finishing Iraq War I by taking out Hussein's regime and trying to do what we are doing now makes me highly disappointed.
"Nation building" is difficult, time consuming, expensive, costly in other ways, and can always lead to failure, but we saw after WWII that doing so can be HIGHLY BENEFICIAL for more DECADES and DECADES if we suceed.
Many experts said democracy in the totalitarian nations of Germany, Italy, and Japan (espcially Japan) was impossible. It was not.
Expending a lot of national resources to build a working democracy in Somalia wasn't worth it. Doing it in Bosnia and Kosovo really didn't seem worth it going in, but we didn't end up spending great amounts of resources to accomplish something there.
But, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY a person can say accomplishing it in Iraq, in that region, would NOT be GREATLY benefical for the US (and everybody else in the world except Iran, Syria, and also Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so on).
The line about "thousands of Bin Ladens" —-
—— was stupid back before the war started and it is grossly stupid now.
How many jihadists flowed through Afghanistan over the long years???
Pulling even people from the US……
But, Iraq War II is what is really making them hate us enough to train to kill us….yeah….right…..
I really believe that even if after Gulf War I the US took out Saddam and occuppied Iraq eventually the terrorists would have came then too. Think about the despots in the middle east do not want democracies that threaten their hold on power. The Saudis pretty much told Bush Sr. that and that is why he did not remove Saddam. The Saudis just wanted business as usual in the middle east after Gulf War I not massive change and Bush Sr. complied. If he didn't comply how long before you think the Iranians would be doing the same crap in 1991 that they are doing now? Hezbollah was still well established in 1991 and it would be easy to get them to start ops in Iraq. The sunni governments would respond with their own operatives as well. The bottom line is that an occupation in Iraq in 1991 would not be easy just like an occupation now would not be easy. The only real difference I see between 1991 and now is the size of the military. We had a much larger military then until Clinton cut it to what is today which we are currently in the process of regrowing.
[…] p>Michael Hurt and Richardson, with an assist from GI Korea, have echanged posts and comments concerning the issue of partisan revisionism on the topic of WMD in Iraq before the Iraq War commenced. Michael Hurt relates, ”There are a lot of people like me, who always thought (and still do) that there wasn’t enough justification to go to Iraq.” Richardson responds, “My response to that was that the reason most people (referring to Americans, in this case) were against the invasion of Iraq is that they believed our troops would be decimated by WMD.” GI Korea states, “To this day I have not seen anything to change my mind that Bush knew there was no WMD in Iraq. I believe Bush legitimately believed there was WMD in Iraq, but he didn’t decide to wage the war simply for WMD.” Both Richardson and GI Korea accuse ooponents of the war of revisionism. […]
Don't you think there's a pretty huge difference between staying the course in 1950s RoK and staying the course in 2000s Iraq? Clearly, ethnically homogenous, out of the way Korea would be somewhat simpler to control than strategically important, ethnically and religiously diverse Iraq. Sure there was some low level insurgency, but nothing like the explosiveness we have seen in Iraq where tens of thousands of civilians (at least) have been killed over the last 4 years.
We may yet see substantial improvement in Iraq. But clearly things appear to be getting worse, not better. For my money, the way to improve things is to ramp up American troops, consolidate command under people who know how to fight an insurgency, and dramatically increase development funding. Unfortunately, all of that is extremely expensive, and highly unlikely to be approved. So what does that leave? Withdraw American troops to the fringes, let the civil war unravel as it will, and then assist as possible when its over. Ethically dubious? Yes. But really the only thing that is realistic at this point.
673,000 South Koreans died during the Korean War, Iraq has a long way to go before even comes close to comparing to the Korean War in terms of civilian casualties and combat deaths. Iraq is much more critical to US strategic interests than Korea ever was, yet our politicians are prepared to quit in Iraq yet when you compare it historically to similiar wars Iraq has actually compares fairly well and is no where near being a lost cause.
Korea may be ethnically homogenous but it is a clan based culture with a rivalry between Kyeongsan and Cholla provinces that has gone on for centures since the three kingdoms period being the largest rivalry. Based off this clan rivalry that is how the communists were able to gain a foothold in southern Korea because the Cholla people always felt discriminated by the Kyeongsan province that traditionally controlled the government. Thus the people in Cholla province were most likely connected to the communist insurgency.
The US did not take casualties from the communist insurgency after the Korean War because the ROK Army was used to fight them. The US took over responsibility over key sectors of the DMZ in order for ROK Army units to deploy to southern Korea to destroy the insurgency. However, this doesn't mean that the US Army didn't take casualties from the insurgency during the war. Many of the claims of North Koreans wearing civilian clothes were actually home grown communist South Korean insurgents who had plagued the South Korean country side for years prior to the start of the Korean War. How many US GIs were killed by South Korean insurgents will never be known.
In the post-Korean War years the US lost 739 personnel total. The last casualty coming in 1994 when a US blackhawk was shot down. Another 814 soldiers died from non-hostile injuries serving in Korea since the end of the Korean War.
Yeah, but how many Korean civilians died after the Korean War ended? Relatively few Iraqi civilians died before the end of hostilities compared to the numbers that have died since. The discrepancy is bound to demoralize both Iraqis and Americans. Perhaps if Bush had been less eager to declare victory, people might not be so quick to criticize the current level of casualties. The current level of instability is highly uncondusive to investment and normalization of life which are the prerequisites for rebuilding in order for a thirty or forty year "victory plan" to work.
It is possible that Korea could have been destablized through provincial or clan rivalry, but for whatever reason, communists were unable to do so.
It is somewhat curious that American politicians seem so eager to leave Iraq, no matter what the consequences. At this point its really not an option. Perhaps Bush should have thought about that before launching the attack, or at least prepared for a seriously protracted occupation.
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