[Dialogue] Iraq: Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution: US General

[George Holcombe]

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General William Odom Tells Senate
Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution

TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ

By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.

2 April 2008

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor  
to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007,  
when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has  
worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy.  
Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old  
strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects  
for success.

I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging  
instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president  
claims.

Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military  
solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the  
level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to  
strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but  
today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far  
more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and  
Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant  
inseveral other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the  
notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.

More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action  
and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his  
Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political  
solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.

No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and  
the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown  
over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea  
that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes  
me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.

Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK  
groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a  
choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its  
commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the  
former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States  
will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.

Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other  
Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be.  
Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to  
cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full  
credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are  
their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their  
financial plight.

Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis  
welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al  
Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a  
residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The  
Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not  
allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest  
al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda  
public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs.  
They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy  
this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn  
that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned  
with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for  
their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the  
cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day.  
And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are  
increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals  
forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and  
they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We  
merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the  
same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the  
government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political  
reconciliation.

Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with  
the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some  
remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden  
to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power  
to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and  
occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation  
is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local  
military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.

This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less  
progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that  
needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At  
the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and  
Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We  
are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the  
Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being  
asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and  
finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political  
centralization. He describes the process as building the state from  
the bottom up.

I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to  
explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case  
where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to  
a central government except through bloody violence leading to a  
single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of
feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is  
the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.  
It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the  
English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia  
and Kosovo.

How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective  
state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United  
States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to  
consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US  
expense.

To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over  
extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you,  
you should make them clarify how long the army and marines  					can  
sustain this band-aid strategy.

The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order.  
Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the  
region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not  
a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires  
revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his  
threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its  
support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and  
supports them only because they will kill more Americans in  
Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s  
policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw.  
It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they  
know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its  
limits.

No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US  
steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than  
a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy  
has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the  
very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.

Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must  
include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that  
give us a better chance to achieve our aim.

A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely.  
I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a  
cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make
sense.

First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training  
element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at  
all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe  
and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I  
have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training  
foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to  
command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short  
on military skills.

Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard  
that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to  
political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw  
or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to  
prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it,  
but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders  
who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the  
public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is  
whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos,  
we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will  
be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country  
which no American leaders seems willing to assume.

Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional  
instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and  
our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable.  
Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly  
backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the  
sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.

I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the  
commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.

Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.

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George Holcombe
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