Retired US Army Colonel Macgregor on Bush's new policy: "a blunder of Hitlerian proportions".

[sabra]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA31Ak01.html

<snip>

One veteran military expert on Iraq, retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, said Bush's new policy is a "war against all" in Iraq and called it "a blunder of Hitlerian proportions".

Macgregor likened the policy of fighting all three Iraqi anti-occupation forces at once to Adolf Hitler's insistence on continuing a two-front war against the Soviet Union and the Allied powers during World War II, which is widely regarded as having ensured the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Macgregor is no stranger to military planning in Iraq. He led combat troops in destroying a brigade of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard troops in the most significant tank battle of Desert Storm in February 1991 and prepared a proposal for a limited-duration attack on Baghdad at the request of a personal representative of then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld in autumn 2001.

"It is ideology pushing violence to extremes," Macgregor said of the latest turn in Bush's Iraq policy. "They are trying to reverse the damage they have already done to themselves by having built up a Shi'ite state and army. But it is too late, and it is bound to be counterproductive."

[Kagemusha]

1. This is the first time I can recall military criticism of the strategy itself

as opposed to the failed tactics thereof...

[C_U_L8R]

4. there is a strategy????

who knew!!!

I mean Bush has always said "i gotta plan"
but I always assumed he was bluffing.

Good to know that there is indeed some kind of strategy
even though it sucks.

:-)

[Kagemusha]

5. Well it's what results as a semblance of strategy.

On the most fundamental level it's how many sides we've consciously chosen to beat on at once.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

12. the open, public criticism of the President by all these generals

retired as they may be, is unprecedented.
That should tell you how bad Bush is.

[gratuitous]

2. It's a miracle!

Another pensioned officer who suddenly finds the ability to speak out for the welfare of the troops. Must be some kind of surgical procedure they get as soon as they get those retirement forms processed, because not a one of them while on active duty will stand up for the troops because of some misguided nonsense about following orders when they know in their hearts the orders and the commander in chief are as wrong as can be.

[Kagemusha]

3. Misguided nonsense better known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

Because they're not supposed to bitch out the Commander in Chief while in uniform. When out of uniform, he's simply your President, not your Commander.

[gratuitous]

6. I thought the officer corps were the best and the brightest

And not one of them in the upper echelons has the stones to speak out for what they know is right because they're more loyal to their pensions than they are to the troops. The UCMJ be damned; if you're working for a criminal enterprise, you're culpable for their criminality, and every last one of these high-ranking officers who just goes along, supplying their little cog in the machine, should be held liable, just like the German High Commanders were.

Because when it comes down to it, every man who dies today died in part due to the officers' criminal negligence. Yes, it means a career is over, but maybe we should pay military pensions in the lies, blood and bones they're built on. If it's no longer an honorable profession, maybe it's time to get out.

[Kagemusha]

9. Let me spell it out then.

It is ILLEGAL for the upper echelons to speak up in the manner you suggest. The US has protected its officers from foreign accountability in all matters legal since Nuremberg. Foreign countries simply are not permitted to put US flag officers on trial for following orders and obeying the President of the United States. They are, at present, not culpable for anything the US does whatsoever, provided that they play by the rules, such as they are.

We are not talking about careers being over. We are talking about facing hard time in a federal penitentiary for crimes against the state. That is not some little walk in the park. Resigning would be far easier on everyone.

Having said that, you seem to be one of those people who calls for unlimited pain and suffering for people other than yourself to oppose that which you find dishonorable. At least accept that it's not bloody likely to happen. Less disappointment that way. If Congress thinks the enterprise is criminal, it should damn well say so. Expecting the military officers commissioned by Congress - let me repeat that. Expecting the military officers commissioned by CONGRESS, to disobey the laws Congress has passed to not openly disrespect the President and Congress itself, is expecting the completely unreasonable.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

13. I've got a former good friend, career bureaucrat

They have become very careful about what they say in the last few years.

I hate discussing anything political with them, because they simply parrot the BushCo accepted line. This person was a liberal for almost all their life.

I'm reasonably sure that most people like them and the career military guys are afraid their pensions will be yanked if they get out of line. Once they have retired, that threat apparently is not viable.

[KittyWampus]

7. Does anyone know of any Soviet militar blunders to compare Bush's Iraq to?

Cause every day the Bush idiots seem more and more like they are taking a page from the Soviet Union on how NOT to govern successfully.

[Kagemusha]

10. uh... Afghanistan?

That comes to mind for some reason.

[Canuckistanian]

11. Afghanistan.

Strangely enough, the Afghanistan war was a failure for the Soviets and a future failure for America in the creation of Osama bin Laden.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Everything we do when it comes to foreign policy is counterproductive.

Except for helping Japan rebuild. Those atomic bombs certainly did help put an end to the big war, but we also help rebuild the country, and it seemed to work, but they have a monoculture.

We just don't have that kind of time, money or energy anymore to fix a civil war that we started.