This interview with a former commander of CENTCOM begs to be read in its entirety. It is important because it reflects what thinking people in our military know in their bones but are unable to express.
Press Roundtable: Gen. Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.):
An excerpt:
"GENERAL HOAR: ...
Anyway, I think for me it’s important to say that, up front, this thing was wrong from the beginning, and so as is often the case, it’s very hard to make it right once you start down the wrong road. I’m not at all optimistic about the outcome. I think part of the reason is that our leadership – civilian leadership has got it wrong. Once the government was overthrown, the requirement from there on in was for political leadership; for the politics to take the lead, rather than the military side.
There needed to be somebody there that had special envoy status with access to the president, somebody that could call up the president and say, “What do you think?” P. J. and I were just talking about a few minutes ago about George Mitchell and Mr. Clinton during the Northern Ireland issues where there was a constant set of discussions in how we ought to do it – gaming it, questioning it – and the president was deeply involved in the issues and understood the issues, and traveled and talked. We don’t have that. By default, we’ve had three successive civilian leaders out there, all of whom in my judgment have been ineffective; one bordering on criminal, but the other two relatively ineffective as well.
And as a result, the object out there is to kill more Iraqis. I want to tell you that you cannot win this war by killing Iraqis. Now, that ought to be self-evident, but it apparently is not."
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