By Nancy A. Youssef and Renee Schoof, McClatchy
Newspapers
October 4, 2007
WASHINGTON — Four and a half years after the nation's
top military leaders saluted and fell in behind President Bush
's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq , their replacements are beginning
to question the mission and sound alarms about the toll the
war is taking on the Army and the Marine Corps.
The change at the Pentagon is striking but little-noticed,
in part because Defense Secretary Robert Gates , a longtime
veteran of the CIA, is quiet where his predecessor Donald H.
Rumsfeld was not.
"It's part of a sea change," said Loren Thompson
, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute , a national-security
research center in Washington . "The ideologues have been
replaced by managers who view Iraq not as a cause, but a problem
to be solved."
Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen , Deputy
Defense Secretary Gordon England , Undersecretary for Intelligence
Gen. James Clapper and other top officials also are concerned
that the war may be crippling the military's ability to respond
to other crises. They have allies in the congressional Democratic
leadership particularly House Armed Services Committee Chairman
Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri who've been speaking out about
that for months.
"I'm convinced we are in serious trouble readiness-wise," Skelton
said this week in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers . "Am
I worried? I'm worried to death."
Although Democrats in Congress have been powerless to halt
or even slow the war, six developments have combined to produce
growing resistance, even within some parts of Bush's own administration,
to the president's unrelenting emphasis on staying the course
in Iraq :
1. The Democratic takeover of the Senate and the House of
Representatives last January.
2. Bush's choice of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, one of the
main architects of the war. Gates was a member of the independent
bipartisan Iraq Study Group , which called for the United States
to reach out to Syria and Iran and "strongly urged" a
drawdown in Iraq .
3. A shift, completed this week, in the military's top uniformed
leadership from administration loyalists to officers who are
more concerned about the growing strains on the military.
4. Mounting evidence, in a variety of official reports in
recent weeks, that Iraqi forces won't be prepared to take over
from American troops in significant numbers until late next
year at the earliest, and that Iraqis have made little progress
toward political reconciliation.
"Barring that, no amount of troops and no amount of time
will make much of a difference," Joint Chiefs Chairman
Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
5. Mounting evidence, most recently in a United Nations report,
that the war against al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan
is faltering, in part because Iraq is tying down so many U.S.
troops.
More forces are needed in Afghanistan , and "we can't
send them because we're bogged down" in an "intractable
civil war" in Iraq , Sen. Russ Feingold , D-Wis., said
Wednesday.
6. Bush's low approval ratings and popular discontent with
the Iraq war, which have prompted some legislators to reconsider
their support for the president's policy as next year's elections
approach.
It remains to be seen, however, whether Gates and like-minded
allies can curtail the U.S. commitment to Iraq , avoid a military
confrontation with Iran and direct more resources to Afghanistan
and to rebuilding and reequipping the Army and the Marines.
Still, the change in outlook among many senior officials is
unmistakable.
The outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs, Marine Gen. Peter
Pace , a loyal advocate for administration policies, used the
word "freedom" eight times in his final remarks as
chairman. Mullen didn't use it once in his first speech Monday
as the new chairman.
After Mullen was sworn in, he sent a letter to the military
that spelled out a vision of the Middle East markedly different
from the one the administration has hailed. Mullen didn't talk
about how the two wars could spread democracy and freedom in
the region, as Pace did until the final minutes of his two-year
tenure as chairman.
Instead, while Mullen called the wars vital, he cautioned
that they might not make the Middle East safer. He also told
the troops that his job is to prepare the military for what
comes next.
"To the degree the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contribute
to or detract from a stable, secure Middle East , they bear
a direct effect on the security of the United States ," he
wrote. "The demands of current operations, however great,
should not dominate our training exercises, education, curricula
and readiness programs."
Such equivocation is a different tune for Defense Department
leaders: Rumsfeld and his civilian aides championed the war
in Iraq and brooked no dissent.
Skelton, the House Armed Services Committee chairman, said
that in the past he felt as if no one was listening when he
warned the administration about the strain on the military.
Now, he noted, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker
in January and the current chief, Gen. George Casey , testifying
last week, have expressed concerns about the Army's readiness.
"The parallels are alarming," Skelton said. "We
cannot risk breaking the Army again. My real worry is that
we have a choice between two losses or one loss. We're not
putting enough effort into Afghanistan , and I'm deeply concerned
about that."
Mullen's letter to the U.S. military earlier this week is
at http://www.defenselink.mil/pdf/letter-to-troops.pdf
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