I deleted the Q&A with Powell that I didn't think was as interesting, and focused on the questions on Iraq and terrorism. You can follow the link and read the whole interview if you want.
As one active-duty general gives his report on Iraq today, let's read what a retired top-ranking U.S. general has to say about the success of the 'surge.' And let's keep in mind that behind closed doors, Powell says he "did his duty" by privately expressing his objections to President Bush about the plan to invade Iraq -- yet in public he towed the Administration's line without expressing any doubts. If we couldn't depend on Colin Powell to give it to us straight back then, what makes us think we can rely on Gen. Petraeus now to say what he really thinks, unedited, and without due fealty to his commander in chief? Is Petraeus a better or more honorable man than Powell? Maybe so. Or, more likely, is it the nature of the job to button one's lip when one knows the commander in chief thinks differently?
Indeed Petraeus was promoted with the very task of executing the 'surge' strategy. A majority of the American public doesn't think Petraeus is about to say anything to undermine the wisdom and credibility of that strategy. In other words, they don't trust Petraeus not to sugar-coat it. (Thank God, there is still a majority with the sense God gave them!...)
GQ ICON: COLIN POWELL
He was pushed aside in the run-up to war, but as he tells Walter Isaacson, he, too, bears some of the blame
Interview by Walter Isaacson
Q: Your hero General George Marshall, when he was secretary of state, oversaw the creation of amazing new institutions and doctrines—NATO, the Marshall Plan—to deal with the global threat posed by Soviet Communism. Now that we're faced with new global threats, what type of creative responses would he and his wise men be devising?
To some extent, he faced a more dangerous threat, and it was an easier one to work with. There was one identifiable enemy that was on the other side of an identifiable terrain feature. It was state versus state. They were able to put in place state-based structures.
Q: Isn't the new global threat we face even more dangerous?
What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?
I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there—ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists.
Q: So you think we are getting too hunkered down and scared?
Yes! We are taking too much counsel of our fears.
This doesn't mean there isn't a terrorist threat. There is a threat. And we should send in military forces when we have a target to deal with. We should also secure our airports, if that makes us safer. But let's welcome every foreign student we can get our hands on. Let's make sure that foreigners come to the Mayo Clinic here, and not the Mayo facility in Dubai or somewhere else. Let's make sure people come to Disney World and not throw them up against the wall in Orlando simply because they have a Muslim name. Let's also remember that this country was created by immigrants and thrives as a result of immigration, and we need a sound immigration policy.
Let's show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do. That's why I want to see Guantánamo closed. It's so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we're worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember.
You can drive up the road from here and come to a spot where there is a megachurch over here, a little Episcopal church over there, a Catholic church around the corner that's almost cathedral-size, and between them is a huge Hindu temple. There are no police needed to guard any of this. There are not many places in the world where you would see that. Yes, there are a few dangerous nuts in Brooklyn and New Jersey who want to blow up Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix. These are dangerous criminals, and we must deal with them. But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn't do it to ourselves, and we shouldn't use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.
Q: One of your legacies to history will be what's known as the Powell Doctrine. How do you define it?
Essentially it says: Avoid war—and if that's not possible, and it's necessary to use arms to solve a political problem, then do it in a decisive way. You remove as much doubt as you can about the outcome. In addition, you need to have a clearly defined mission, and you must have some understanding of how it's going to end.
When the first Gulf War came along, I told President Bush [the elder] that when we had 250,000 troops in the region, we could defend Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion. But if he wanted to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, then General Schwarzkopf will need an additional 250,000 troops. Everybody gasped. And I told the president exactly how we would use them all, and he agreed.
We also had a clear mission, which was to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait. And that's how we built a coalition with almost every other country in the world. We thought through where it was going to end. We said we wanted to leave Iraq with enough of an army so that it is not threatened by Iran. And we want to accomplish the mission we were given, which is getting the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. We were not interested in taking down the government. It was never our mission to go to Baghdad. For twelve years, I had to listen to criticism about that part of the plan. I don't hear it criticized too much now.
Q: The current Iraq war seems to have violated almost all of these precepts. We talked about this before the war.
The military presented its plans, and I was secretary of state, so it wasn't really my role, but I said it didn't seem to me that the plans called for enough force to impose our will or enough troops to deal with the problems that might come up. After one of the meetings, I felt strongly enough about it that I took the liberty to call General Tommy Franks [the regional commander] directly—something I shouldn't have done, but I did. I said, "Let's talk general-to-general." I said, "I have my doubts as to whether or not you have enough force to execute." And Tommy said, "Well, I think we do, Mr. Secretary." And then he immediately called Don Rumsfeld, which he should have. And Don correctly said, "It's good that Colin has been up-front, and now let's discuss it in front of the president." And we did. The president heard from his military commanders and his joint chiefs of staff and his secretary of defense that they felt they had enough troops.
Q: Were they right?
They were right for the first part, the capture of Baghdad. And I never really had any question about the force needed for that. My question had been, "Have you guys really thought through the aftermath?" That's what we hadn't done. That was the big mistake. Don had written a list of the worst things that could happen, but we didn't do the contingency planning on what we would do about it. So we watched those buildings get burned down, and nobody told the divisions, "Hey, go in there and declare martial law and whack a few people and it will stop."
Then the insurgency started, and we didn't acknowledge it. They said it wasn't an insurgency. They looked up the definition. They said it was a few dead-enders! And so we didn't respond in a way that might have stopped it. And then the civil war started at the beginning of last year. I call it a civil war, but some say no, it's not a civil war, it's a war against civilians. In fact, we have total civil disorder.
Q: Do you think the surge makes sense?
You can surge all of the American troops you want, but they can't stop this. Suppose I'm a battalion commander. My troops ask, "What do I do today, boss?" "Let's go fight the Shia militias!" "What do I do tomorrow?" "Let's go fight the Sunni insurgents!" "What do I do the day after tomorrow?" "Let's go chase Al Qaeda!" "What do we do the day after that?" "We're going to guard streets!" Our kids are fantastic. But this is not sustainable. Our surge can work only with an Iraqi political and military surge.
Q: Are you sorry you didn't question things more forcefully?
At the time, when I felt the president might not have focused on all the potential consequences, I said I needed to see him. I went to the White House and had a private session with him. I told him that we could knock over Saddam's regime but he needed to understand what we would be faced with once we had done that. It was my "When you break it, you own it" speech. I said that this invasion would tie up the better part of 40 percent of our army for an indefinite period of time. It will be hugely expensive. You will be dealing with this for a long time to come. I said, "Take it to the U.N. See if we can get something from the U.N. that might allow us to avoid this war." He said, "Let's share this with the others." And a few days later, we had a discussion with everyone, some by videoconference. They eventually agreed that we should take it to the U.N., some more willingly than others. Dick [Cheney] didn't think it would work, and Don [Rumsfeld] I was not sure about, because you couldn't always tell his opinion. Had I done my duty? I think so.
Q: Do you feel responsible for giving the U.N. flawed intelligence?
I didn't know it was flawed. Everybody was using it. The CIA was saying the same thing for two years. I gave perhaps the most accurate presentation of the intelligence as we knew it—without any of the "Mushroom clouds are going to show up tomorrow morning" and all the rest of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that a good part of it was wrong, and I am sorry that it was wrong.
Q: Was it twisted?
Not by me. What I used was the intelligence that was also available to everyone in the administration and to the Congress. Some of these senators are now presidential candidates who are saying they didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate they had asked for. It is fair, however, to say that some members of the administration took the intelligence to a higher plane than it deserved.
Q: So you think we should be a bit more on guard against arrogance when we pursue a democracy agenda?
[laughs] Very good, very good. We have a tendency to lecture and perhaps not think things through. We have to be careful what we wish for. Are we happy with the democracy that Hamas gave us? There are some places that are not ready for the kind of democracy we find so attractive for ourselves. They are not culturally ready for it, they are not historically ready for it, and they don't have the needed institutions.
Q: How can we restore America's image?
We should remember what that image was, back after World War II. It was the image of a generous country that sought not to impose its will on other countries or even to impose its values. But it showed the way, and it helped other countries, and it opened its doors to people—visitors and refugees and immigrants.
America could not survive without immigration. Even the undocumented immigrants are contributing to our economy. That's the country my parents came to. That's the image we have to portray to the rest of the world: kind, generous, a nation of nations, touched by every nation, and we touch every nation in return. That's what people still want to believe about us. They still want to come here. We've lost a bit of the image, but we haven't lost the reality yet. And we can fix the image by reflecting a welcoming attitude—and by not taking counsel of our fears and scaring ourselves to death that everybody coming in is going to blow up something. It ain't the case.
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