This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Unasked Questions
Before Keane chose to focus on Iran, I had jotted down a line of questioning about the surge, mostly as a way to help those of my classmates who still appear not to know where to look for objective information and analysis.
I was confident that his answers or non-answers would be instructive regarding the widespread misunderstanding of what the surge in Iraq was really all about.
In short, during the fall of 2006, CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid and the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, in formal testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, strongly advocated that the U.S. NOT send additional troops to Iraq. They argued that refusing to reinforce would be the only way to ensure that Iraqi politicians would finally get the message that they had to put their own house in order.
Just before the mid-term election in 2006, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chose to support his commanders. In the view of the neocon hardliners in George W. Bush's administration, Rumsfeld (of all people) was going wobbly on the Iraq War. Immediately after the election, Rumsfeld was ousted and was replaced by Robert Gates in December 2006.
Also, in December 2006, James Baker, the former Secretary of State and White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush, announced the results of the highly regarded Iraq Study Group. Rather than advocate sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, the ISG did the opposite, urging a drawdown.
In addition, most, if not all, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were against the surge. However, with Keane and the neocons ascendant, and Gates and Gen. David Petraeus (an extremely close associate of Gen. Keane) waiting in the wings, Bush cast aside the advice of his field commanders, the Iraq Study Group, and the top brass at the Pentagon. Soon, Abizaid and Casey were gone, too. And Petraeus became, well, Petraeus ex machina.
My tentative plan at Fordham was to ask Gen. Keane how in the world he and his neocon allies succeeded in persuading President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to ignore the experts and opt rather for a surge. And how does he reply to those who say it was simply a case of postponing the day of definitive defeat in Iraq until Bush and Cheney could ride west into the sunset?
Gen. Keane, I would ask, How do you justify the deaths of more than 1,000 additional U.S. soldiers and countless thousands more Iraqis in exchange for sparing Bush, Cheney and the neocons the embarrassment of having the catastrophe in Iraq hung firmly around their necks?
Perhaps someone else will get a chance to pose such questions to Gen. Keane sometime soon.
A shorter version of this article appeared originally on Consortiumnews.com.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
