Retired USMC Gen.
Anthony Zinni spoke at a luncheon today in Raleigh for the
John Locke Foundation, and discussed the
problems in the Iraq War and where the United States should go from
here. He wasn't as critical of the Bush Administration as I thought
he would be, but still laid plenty of responsibility at their
feet.
He said the U.S. has been unable to cope with "non-state actors"
who are not constrained by the obligations that nation-states must
adhere to. Such free-wheelers include Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda,
international drug cartels, and warlord groups.
"They don't have a capital or an organized military force,"
Zinni said. "These non-state actors have been our biggest
problems," and the trouble caused by instability in the countries
where they operate have "washed up on our shores."
The difficulty in Iraq has been heightened by the flawed
structure established by the U.S. to reconstruct the country, Zinni
said. The U.S. is poorly organized, inhibiting the ability to
implement our ideas. As before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, Zinni said government agencies don't communicate with each
other and instead of "building them for the 21st Century," we ended
up with an even more bloated bureaucracy. For example, he said the
Department of Homeland Security operates much the same way that the
rest of government does, with earmarks, cronyism, and rewarding
incompetency. Zinni did not speak much to specifics about what
President Bush should do in Iraq, but more to the fact that
whatever he decides to do, he needs the competent structure and
plan in place to carry it out. Having the Department of Defense run
the economic reconstruction, and shutting down factories just
because they were state-owned under Saddam Hussein's regime, were
examples of poorly thought out decisions, Zinni said.
He also said the nature of the enemy in Iraq cannot be
identified as a single, monolithic force. "I defy anybody here to
tell me who the enemy is," Zinni said, adding that each opposition
group requires a different approach. To carry out a successful Iraq
reconstruction, he estimated it would require from 5 to 7 more
years and in the short term, more troops.
In fact, part of the original miscalculation was the
insufficient number of troops used to try and stabilize Iraq, Zinni
said. He said shortly after the end of the Cold War the military
became enamored with technology, reducing the overall military
personnel. "A few of us objected to this," he said. He said a study
group he was a part of recommended up to 400,000 troops for Iraq,
because the problem wasn't taking out Saddam, but in stabilizing
the region. "These situations are manpower intensive," he said.
As for the structure that President Bush had to work with in
government, Zinni gave him somewhat of a pass.
"I can't blame this administration for what it inherited. It
inherited a bloated bureaucracy," he said, noting that the practice
of earmarking, K Street lobbyists' influence, and pork barrel
politics were "centuries in the making."
But the president's key mistake, according to Zinni, was in
failing to tell the American people honestly why an invasion of
Iraq was necessary. He said the information he saw showed that
Saddam Hussein had no active program in 2002 and 2003 for weapons
of mass destruction. Saddam had the ability to reconstitute such a
program, but U.N. sanctions were successfully containing him. Zinni
called the justification "an exaggeration that was going to burn
(the Bush administration) in the end." Besides the insufficient
troops and prosecuting the war on the cheap, Zinni said the
administration "doomed themselves by the rationale for the war,"
likening it to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which granted
President Lyndon Johnson permission to escalate involvement in
Vietnam.
topics:
Earmarks, Law, Military, Iraq
