General Barry McCaffrey, a distinguished career Army officer who was Commander of the US Armed Forces’ Southern Command from 1994 through 1996, and then Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under Pres. Clinton, has apparently sent an email to his contacts in the armed services saying
- You should understand that we are coming out of Iraq.
In 36 months we will have the preponderance of our combat forces out…
The American people are going to tell the NEXT President to shut this down.
That is our central strategic dilemma—if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
We actually will only have three years.
These are the headlines in an email, titled “From: BARRY MCCAFFREY / Subject: Re: Iraq” that got passed on to me today. The person who sent it to me is someone I trust a lot; and that person says that s/he has no reason to doubt the provenance or the veracity of the text of this message.
I don’t know how to contact Gen. McCaffrey to request confirmation of its authenticity, but might figure out a way to do this tomorrow.
The end of the email says this:
- Feel free to share this email. See you as I come in and out of the war zones.
Barry
So I’m sharing it.
The email is pretty hard-hitting in its criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. At one point it says:
- I think that the execution of the initial operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan — and the subsequent egregious bad judgment, arrogance, and micro-management of this war by Rumsfeld and team —so f’d it up that we were put in a terrible situation from the start. It did not need to be this way.
This seems to me to be consonant with– though more forcefully stated than– other comments McCaffrey has made recently. For example, this article published today says,
- Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey calls the surge and those plans “a fool’s errand” that almost certainly will produce many more American casualties and no great chance of success.
Here is the whole text of the email as I received it:
- From: BARRY MCCAFFREY
Subject: Re: Iraq
Good news that both Ryan Crocker and Dave Petreus will take the helm.
Dave is the most talented person in uniform I ever met. Ryan Crocker is the best Ambassador I have ever seen. They have a losing hand. If anyone can sort this out–they will. I will bet that by next June we will have very public expression by the two of them of the situation on the ground—-and what will be required to save our position.
————————————————————————
———–
Some thoughts. You should understand that we are coming out of Iraq.
In 36 months we will have the preponderance of our combat forces out.
It has nothing to do with achieving or not achieving our objectives.
The American people are going to tell the NEXT President to shut this down.
That is our central strategic dilemma—if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
We actually will only have three years.
The human and resource costs of the war are huge…the Administration rhetoric suggested it would be easy…. and then denied reality…Rumsfeld kept a mindless spin on the issue. Now, the expectations are saturated.
Important we get this. The political system (the voters) are not going to accept 500-1000 killed and wounded and $8 billion per month.
Again–it has to look dramatically better in 24 months or the next President begins to pull the plug.
Yes…we are losing at this point. That is what the majority of the active Armed Forces now believe, that is what the American people believe, that is what the new Sec Def said at confirmation. That is actually my own view. The glide path is down –not up. Unless there is a surge of economic reconstruction aid from Congress and the Administration, unless there is a surge of equipment that gives Iraqi Forces a major advantage over the militias/insurgents/criminals, unless the Maliki Government can present a competent face to the Iraqi people as well as the American people—then I expect that we will suffer a disaster and be out totally by early 2009.
Yes—essentially only the Armed Forces and the CIA are at war. (I understand and am grateful for the courage and dedication of all those other agencies who actually have volunteered to serve in these war zones). There is no engagement of the American people with the conflict. There is no sacrifice except for the families of those engaged. There is no tax to pay for the war. The government is bleeding money…the equipment of the Armed Forces is totally coming apart for lack of funding…the military manpower is inadequate to support the current strategy and Rumsfeld refused to support the funding to increase the numbers. No other branch of government is ORDERING employees into these combat zones to include the Foreign Service. Were it not for the brave 35,000 contractors —much of the support functions would have ground to a halt. There are few sons or daughters of senior figures in our government or Congress serving in these war zones.
(The uniformed children of the Armed Forces are being killed and wounded in record numbers).
The bottom line…we are not in Iraq to fight against Islamic extremism.
We are there to take down the Saddam Regime, stand up a government and security forces that can control Iraq and not threaten us or their neighbors, jump start the economy, and then get out. We are foreigners and infidels…we gave these people a huge gift by saving them from Saddam. Now it has gone very badly wrong. We have a very short period of time to turn it around and then exit.
You are still in service and you have committed your life to this struggle.
I have great respect for all of you. Remember my generation started life with combat tours in a war that consumed 58,000 dead and 303,000 wounded.
We did not lose the war because of the weakness of the American people or the lack of courage of our American soldiers—we lost because we had arrogant and unwise political leadership who never leveled with the American people—-and obedient and strategically incompetent senior military leadership. We also had a South Vietnamese government that was corrupt, incompetent, and lacked the dedication of their adversaries. At the end of the day—the Congress read the mood of the electorate— mandated a withdrawal —and then pulled the plug on resources for the war. (The war we were fighting was not actually against a Viet Cong insurgency…this was a civil war against a nationalistic, revolutionary movement that was fighting to unite the Vietnamese people and expel the French and American foreigners.
We lacked the political will to seriously confront the North Vietnamese Armed Forces on the ground. They suffered a million dead but were NEVER seriously threatened enough to even consider giving up their struggle.) At this point in Iraq, we are not considering seriously any strategy to confront and defeat the Mahdi Army, the Rahmadi rebellion, the Iranian cross-border support to the Shia, the Syrian or other support for the El Anbar Sunnis, etc.
So—I remain committed to supporting those in uniform, believe strongly that we must provide Iraq the resources to achieve our objectives, I am hopeful that we can turn this around, and grateful that Gen Petreus and Amb Crocker will take up the banner from Abizaid/Casey and Khalilzad. ( John Abizaid has been a national treasure who understood this whole thing from the start.)
I will maintain an objective, non-partisan focus on the struggle and publicly argue for issues which I believe will help. I am not running for public office. However, I think that the execution of the initial operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan — and the subsequent egregious bad judgment, arrogance, and micro-management of this war by Rumsfeld and team —so f’d it up that we were put in a terrible situation from the start. It did not need to be this way.
If we and the Iraqi government cannot achieve stability and a military US withdrawal in the coming very few years…the region and US interests are going to be severely menaced for the next 10 years or more. The Mid-East is vital to our international interests…Vietnam was not.
Feel free to share this email. See you as I come in and out of the war zones.
Barry
If anyone is in a position to provide additional information about the provenance or authenticity of this email, please contribute that information in a comment here or send me an email. Thanks!
I hope this is fake, because the general comes off as a bit of an idiot. Yes he admits we’re screwed, but he finds the dumbest way to say it.
>> We lacked the political will to seriously confront the North Vietnamese Armed Forces on the ground. They suffered a million dead but were NEVER seriously threatened.
A million dead, and you call that a “serious threat,” a “confrontation” ? Come on, be serious! That’s a slap on the wrist.
>> At this point in Iraq, we are not considering seriously any strategy to confront and defeat the Mahdi Army, the Rahmadi rebellion, the Iranian cross-border support to the Shia, the Syrian or other support for the El Anbar Sunnis, etc.
Why are we not? The general doesn’t seem to know.
Maybe he should read JustWorldNews and then he would know.
So we have 3 more years, huh? Cool! I’d hate to think the fun would be over too soon.
And then the touch of the master:
>> if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
10 years = 95% chance of success… That kind of statement is no better than what Rummy and Co used to feed us for breakfast every morning. I am sure there’s a word for it in military jargon. In mine, it’s called talking out of one’s ass.
General McCaffery ought not to use the word “vital,” since it means “a matter of life and death.” Whatever one wants to say about Iraq: no one in their right mind would even dream of maintaining that America will “die” without Iraq — any more than America died without the “vital” Vietnam that we heard so much about thirty-five years ago. The world market has already discounted the unreliable Iraqi oil supply and our own Cheney/Bush cabal has even taken to proposing massive “stategic reserve” oil purchases to artifically prop up falling oil prices!
Oh, I get so sick of our country’s civilian and military “leadership” spewing nothing but hyperbole and bullshit when they obviously don’t know their proverbial asses from the proverbial hole in the ground. Just ask General McCaffrey what happened to his “Drug War” once our military overthrew the Taliban who had suppressed heroin production in Afghanistan! Soon now, it looks like we’ll have the Taliban AND the drugs back in Afghanistan with only an additional $10 billion bill for doing nothing about either! Where do we get these morons of ours? And why do we keep promoting instead of cashiering them for systemic failure even below the lowered expectations of Sheriff Dick Cheney and Deputy Dubya Bush?
Thirty-five years ago, we used to go to the Moon in only three days. Now we don’t even know if we can get back there by 2020. Why? Because we’ve squandered incalculable energy and resources on decades of Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism: useless porkbarrel posturing that has produced little of value but “warrior” wards of the state like General Barry McCaffrey who wouldn’t know a “vital” national interest from just another run-of-the-mill Surplus Ordnance Expenditure Expedition against hapless foreigners who never attacked or threatened to attack America.
Oh, why do our generals hate the English language? What did the English language ever do to them? Not exactly a “vital” question about flagrantly misused superlative adjectives, but one of at least passing interest nonetheless.
Helena,
I am surprised about your interest in this email. I agree completely with both Bernard’s and Michael’s comments above. The fact that he may be smarter than the average military brass is simply reflective of the fact that the point of reference is sub-zero. To paraphrase Bernard, a lot of his macho-talk is 100% colorectal phonation. Ultimately he is a military person (remember, the same ones who are trained and paid to kill others) and it is deeply painful for him to admit that the military’s defeat is just that: the military’s defeat. We have heard it all before: there was no political will, or else we would have … Give us all a (peaceful) break for god’s sake. What he and people like him are never willing to admit is that unless you commit wide scale mass slaughter (and quite often, even when you do), this is no longer the age for direct colonial adventures to succeed with sheer military might; wishful thinking, dreaming of the good old days of gun-boat power projection. Look at Palestine: people living in camps and shanties for three generations, preyed upon by one of the world’s strongest militaries, supported and funded by the world’s largest economic power, colonized and harassed on a daily basis, but still not crushed and defeated. Sickeningly shortsighted typical military macho talk.
Helena,
I am surprised about your interest in this email. I agree completely with both Bernard’s and Michael’s comments above. The fact that he may be smarter than the average military brass is simply reflective of the fact that the point of reference is sub-zero. To paraphrase Bernard, a lot of his macho-talk is 100% colorectal phonation. Ultimately he is a military person (remember, the same ones who are trained and paid to kill others) and it is deeply painful for him to admit that the military’s defeat is just that: the military’s defeat. We have heard it all before: there was no political will, or else we would have … Give us all a (peaceful) break for god’s sake. What he and people like him are never willing to admit is that unless you commit wide scale mass slaughter (and quite often, even when you do), this is no longer the age for direct colonial adventures to succeed with sheer military might; wishful thinking, dreaming of the good old days of gun-boat power projection. Look at Palestine: people living in camps and shanties for three generations, preyed upon by one of the world’s strongest militaries, supported and funded by the world’s largest economic power, colonized and harassed on a daily basis, but still not crushed and defeated. Sickeningly shortsighted typical military macho talk.
I don’t have any answer to your question concerning the authenticiy of this email. But here are some remarks :
1) the whole mail points at the urgency of the situation
2) It doesn’t offer any alternative plan; only that the surge won’t make a difference..
3) It doesn’t directly call for a much larger surge.. but seems to imply it.
4) It calls for sacrifices on the part of the Americans, not only the troops and their families.
It’s interesting since it seems that
1) The statement whether authentic or not seems representative of what must go in the minds of the military personnal.
2) Aka : other we quit, or we double (but a real double, not the fake Bush double). Aka : we need much more troops and also much more financial means to sustain the Iraqi economy. But if the American people doesn’t support the war, then we should leave and admit defeat.. The defeat would be that of the American people, who wasn’t supportive of the effort of the army (aka it’s not my fault, it’s Rummie and co and in the end, it’s the US people’s fault).
3) Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this statement is the analysis that the American people won’t support a longer war, should it cost more sacrifices in terms of taxes or human lives. It remembers me a computer game named “colonization” in this game there was a rule, where no democratic government was able to declare war to country which wasn’t directly threatening/invading it. You had to change the government to a dictature in order to be able to declare an aggressive war. Under the light of the Iraq war, this rule should be modified in the sense that democratic countries may well declare war, but only as long as it doesn’t cost sacrifices to its people. Or in order to show that a democracy can deviate into soft dictature without notice of its citizen and then allow war.
4) The fact that this kind of statements are now circulating in the army (and spilling over) shows that not only the US public has lost confidence in this war, but also the troops, which is a good sign, because even the worst dictators can’t do much with a demoralized army.
Impeach Bush and Cheney, bring all these war criminal in front of the HAgue for a real trial and condemn them to prison for life and condemn US to pay compensations in order to rebuild Iraq infrastructures and economy.
Those brave 35,000 private contractors! If only we had more such selfless folks willing to sacrifice themselves in Iraq and other undisclosed, unaudited situations, I’m sure the confidence interval for success would go up to 99% over the lifetime of their contracts.
Actually, isn’t Barry himself somewhat of a private contractor these days??
A remark traditionally attributed to the Duke of Wellington: “As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, ‘I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.'” Substitute your own list of genuinely awful generals, but mine would surely include Abu Abizaid, Clueless Casey, Mediocre Meyers, Pretentious Petraeus, Pathetic Pace, and Maniac McCaffrey.
Now, we hear once again from newbie Secretary of War Gates that criticism of our manifestly incompetent political/military “leadership” somehow “emboldens” an “enemy” whose boldness — not to mention effectiveness — has only increased over the course of the last four years. Given Wellington’s observation of his hapless subordinates in relation to our our tendentious team of tyros (from the commander-in-briefs on down), we can only hope that the “enemy” dies laughing when he reads of our plans and the “percussively sublimated” (i.e., “kicked upstairs”) personnel chosen to once again fail at what doesn’t need doing.
Well this screed is typical of what we hear these days from a lot of self-pitying Washington hawks who have had their wings clipped. Three of McCaffrey’s themes:
1. The idea of the war wasn’t a big mistake to begin with; but the civilian leadership fucked it up big time and made us military guys and pro-war pundits look bad.
2. In addition, the lily-livered American people have no stomach for the fight. They abandoned us (the military), won’t pay for our equipment and won’t volunteer for duty. Even the foreign service won’t send enough help. If they were with us we would win this thing, but they chickened out. They won’t sacrifice for the great cause, so we’re screwed.
3. We gave the Iraqis a tremendous gift by invading their country and blowing up a lot of people and stuff, including Saddam, but those blasted Iraqi ingrates haven’t picked up the ball.
I tried checking http://www.snopes.com to see if this email was listed as true or a hoax, but it was not on their website. URL for his bio page on the Sourcewatch website is http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Barry_McCaffrey
If you think this is genuine then I have several bridges around here to sell you – believe me, no gerneral officer would ever write such stuff.
I think it’s fake. The vocabulary and phraseology
seem wrong. Can you imagine a general saying
“the equipment of the Armed Forces is totally coming apart for lack of funding” instead of saying
“current funding rates for maintenance are not
keeping pace with need”?
I think it’s some execrable neocon writing in the
voice of a general, using the authority therein to
prepare the base of the Republican party for a
distasteful truth that they cannot receive from
“treasonous liberals”.