Officers debating the war

NY Times:

Here at the intellectual center of the United States Army, two elite officers were deep in debate at lunch on a recent day over who bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq — the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him.

“The secretary of defense is an easy target,” argued one of the officers, Maj. Kareem P. Montague, 34, a Harvard graduate and a commander in the Third Infantry Division, which was the first to reach Baghdad in the 2003 invasion. “It’s easy to pick on the political appointee.”

“But he’s the one that’s responsible,” retorted Maj. Michael J. Zinno, 40, a military planner who worked at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the former American civilian administration in Iraq.

No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public.

“You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said.

As the war grinds through its fifth year, Fort Leavenworth has become a front line in the military’s tension and soul-searching over Iraq. Here at the base on the bluffs above the Missouri River, once a frontier outpost that was a starting point for the Oregon Trail, rising young officers are on a different journey — an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq.

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One can hope that the debate would be more knowledgeable than the one outlined above. The sainted Shinseki line does not fit with the facts. It was the Centcom staff, not Don Rumsfeld that determined the size of the invasion force. In fact it was more than adequate to the task of deposing Saddam. The problems came after Tommy Franks left when Gen. Abizaid insisted on a small footprint force similar to that used in Afghanistan. It was his refusal to increase the force after the insurgency materialized that caused our troops to be frustrated with a whack a mole approach to tapping down the enemy rather than protecting the people as is being done now with Gen. Petraeus. One of the constraints on the size of the invasion force was the small funnel through which they had to enter the country. Had the 4th ID been permitted to enter through Turkey it would have significantly changed the dynamic of the war and made it much more difficult for the insurgency to have its western base. The best debate on these issues can be found at the Small Wars Journal.