Iraq War: Tommy Franks

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Andrew Bacevich reviewed Tommy Franks' autobiography American Soldier (2004) in A Modern Major General New Left Review Sept-Oct 2004.  Bacevich is not one to tip-toe around controversial territory:

As newspapers once treated the local archbishop with kid gloves lest they invite the charge of being insufficiently respectful of the Church, so in recent years otherwise free-swinging critics have generally given generals and admirals a pass lest they appear to violate that ultimate diktat of present-day political correctness:  never do anything that might suggest less than wholehearted support for our men and women in uniform. As a consequence, those who occupy the uppermost ranks of the armed forces have become the least accountable members of the American elite.   (my emphasis)

This is one of the real problems of the kind of idolatry of the military that the Christian Right in particular promotes.  In the name of "honoring the soldiers", often what happens is that delinquent and/or incompetent generals get away with things they never should.

As Bacevich explains:

Consider: when Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez assumed command of coalition forces in Iraq in 2003, the first stirrings of an insurgency had begun to appear; his job was to snuff out that insurgency and establish a secure environment. When Sanchez gave up command a year later, Iraq was all but coming apart at the seams. Security had deteriorated appreciably. The general failed to accomplish his mission, egregiously so. Yet amidst all the endless commentary and chatter about Iraq, that failure of command has gone all butunnoted, as if for outsiders to evaluate senior officer performance qualifies as bad form. Had Sanchez been a head coach or a ceo, he would likely have been cashiered. But he is a general, so the Pentagon pins a medal on his chest and gives him a pat on the back. It is the dirty little secret to which the World’s Only Superpower has yet to own up: as the United States has come to rely ever more heavily on armed force to prop up its position of global pre-eminence, the quality of senior American military leadership has seldom risen above the mediocre. The troops are ever willing, the technology remarkable, but first-rate generalship has been hard to come by.  (my emphasis)

He writes that "American Soldier adheres to, and therefore helps to legitimate, an emerging literary tradition: the military memoir as narrative of national redemption."  And he elaborates:

Whether of the manufactured or handcrafted variety, virtually every one of these narratives conforms to a prescribed formula. The protagonist, after an upbringing spent acquiring a profound appreciation for American values, joins the armed forces and serves as a young officer in Vietnam. This war becomes the pivot around which all else turns - Franks, for example, titles the chapter describing his own Vietnam service ‘The Crucible’. From his experience in a lost war, the protagonist derives certain essential truths that he vows to apply if ever called upon in some future crisis to serve in a position of authority.  Upon returning home from battle, although dismayed to see his countrymen shunning those who served and sacrificed, he soldiers on, rising through the ranks during a lengthy apprenticeship.  When his moment finally arrives, he orchestrates a great victory, by implication showing how Vietnam ought to have been fought.  In vanquishing the enemy, he also helps heal old wounds at home, promoting both reconciliation and national renewal.  Somewhat less loftily, in recounting this triumph the protagonist also makes use of every available opportunity to settle scores with old enemies and critics.

Franks is shy to take credit for his accomplishments:

Sustaining the case for the general’s induction into Valhalla requires that he demonstrate that he, and he alone, bears responsibility for the victories won in Afghanistan and especially Iraq. ... Depending on the issue, but especially in matters related to national security, decision-making at the summit involves as few as half a dozen serious players.  To show that when it came to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq he was really in charge, Franks must demonstrate that in the strategic interaction at the top his was the dominant voice. Franks must show, in short, that his role involved much more than simply following orders.

As Franks knows but does not acknowledge, contemporaneous reporting had suggested otherwise. The press had credited Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld with devising the methods employed in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his own inimitable style, Rumsfeld had nudged, cajoled and browbeaten a plodding theatre commander into embracing a novel approach to warfare that on successive occasions produced spectacular results - so at least the story went. Not so, Franks insists. From 9/11 on, he was the one driving the train: ‘centcom “pushed strategy up”, rather than waiting for Washington to “push tactics down”.’ At great length - this book gives substantially more attention to campaign planning than to fighting as such - Franks explains how he patiently educated the President and the Defence Secretary about contemporary warfare and brought them around to his own vision for how best to take down the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

Although Franks professes to hold George W. Bush in the highest regard, the commander-in-chief emerges from this account as an affable, cliché-spouting airhead. Bush cheerfully presides over various briefings, offers a few random questions, and wraps things up with pithy admonitions like ‘Great job, Tommy. Keep it up. We will do what we have to do to protect America.’ Rumsfeld comes off as a more formidable interlocutor, repeatedly testing his field commander’s patience and kept in line only through the most careful management.

Franks, of course, pretty much ignored the aftermath of the blitzkrieg/"shock-and-awe" drive to Baghdad:

Although Franks had speculated that ‘postwar Iraq might be modelled on post-World War ii Japan or Germany’, he shows little indication of having grasped the political or economic challenges that nation-building might entail. After the fall of Baghdad, Franks was on the phone to General Richard Myers, the jcs chairman, offering up bright ideas: ‘Dick, we need a major donor conference - hosted in Washington - to line up support, money and troops, as rapidly as possible.’ But by then it was too late; events were already outrunning the ability of the United States to control them.

Bacevich isn't much impressed with Franks' presentation of his brilliant successes in the Iraq War:

Franks asserts that ‘there’s never been a combat operation as successful as Iraqi Freedom’. Only the narrowest definition of success makes that claim sustainable. In fact, the tangible benefits accruing from America’s victory over Saddam Hussein have been few. In a sense, the us-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 bears comparison to Germany’s invasion of Norway in 1940 or its lunge into Yugoslavia the following year. At the moment of execution, each seemed to affirm impressions that the German military juggernaut was unstoppable. But once the dust had settled, it became apparent that neither victory had brought the Nazi regime any closer to resolving the main issue. Each had saddled the Wehrmacht with burdens that it could ill afford to bear.

Bacevich also makes some important observations about an issue that has been much discussed in relation to the Vietnam War, in particular, civil-military relations:

Keeping civilians where they belong and reasserting a professional monopoly over the conduct of warfare requires drawing the clearest possible line to prevent politics and war from becoming tangled up with one another. Whereas Westmoreland, remembered today as too much the political general, allowed the Whiz Kids to intrude in matters that belonged under his purview, the subalterns who experienced the frustrations of defeat but then stayed on after Vietnam to revive American military power have vowed never to let that happen again.  They insist that the conduct of war be recognized as their business and theirs alone.  Hence, the general-in-chief who (like Franks) experiences combat vicariously in the comfort of an air-conditioned headquarters nonetheless insists on styling himself a chest-thumping ‘warfighter’.  He does so for more than merely symbolic reasons: asserting that identity permits him to advance prerogatives to which the officer corps lays absolute claim. This is my business; the suits - Franks would likely employ coarser language - should stay out.

It is the sort of sharp distinction between war and politics that Douglas Haig or Erich Ludendorff would have appreciated and understood.  But what gets lost in drawing such distinctions - as Haig and Ludendorff lost it in World War I - is any possibility of strategic coherence. Fighting is, of course, integral to war. But, if in ways not always appreciated by or even agreeable to those who actually pull triggers and drop bombs, war is also and always profoundly political. Indeed, if war is to have any conceivable justification and prospect of utility, it must remain subordinated to politics. Effecting that subordination lies at the very heart of strategy. In the tradition of which Franks is an exponent there is a powerful tendency to resist this formulation. Thus, although the author of American Soldier mouths Clausewitzian slogans, when it comes to the relationship of war and politics, he rejects the core of what Clausewitz actually taught. And in that sense he typifies the post-Vietnam American officer.  (my emphasis)

And he gives us this insight into the strategic problems of the Cheney-Bush administration:

Here we come face to face with the essential dilemma with which the United States has wrestled ever since the Soviets had the temerity to deprive us of a stabilizing adversary—a dilemma that the events of 9/11 only served to exacerbate. The political elite that ought to bear the chief responsibility for formulating grand strategy instead nurses ideological fantasies of remaking the world in America’s image, as the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002 so vividly attests. Meanwhile, the military elite that could possibly puncture those fantasies and help restore a modicum of realism to us policy instead obsesses over operations. Reluctant to engage in any sort of political–military dialogue that might compromise their autonomy, the generals allow fundamental questions about the relationship between power and purpose to go unanswered and even unrecognized.

Into this void between the illusions of the political class and the fears of the generals disappears the possibility of establishing some equilibrium between ends and means. Instead, the United States careens ever closer to bankruptcy, exhaustion and imperial overstretch. The [US] today has vast ambitions for how the world should operate, too vast to be practical.  It wields great power, though not nearly so much as many imagine.  But there exists nothing even approaching a meaningful strategy to meld the two together. In American Soldier, Tommy Franks helps us understand why. (my emphasis)

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05