DOD Whistleblower Hero Writes for Military Week:
The Tipping Point
by former Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski
Last year, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld bandied about the idea of a tipping point. Thirteen months ago, we hadn't yet reached that invisible line where we could say the war in Iraq was won or lost.
Bush tried to clarify things last year when he stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in front of a White House banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished." This Bush clarification, like so many, quickly became spurious and muddied. The violence in Iraq escalated, Iraqi perspectives on the real goals of the U.S. occupation hardened, and Americans died in increasing numbers, in increasingly hideous and nerve-wracking ways.
Unlike the neoconservative wonks still on the Washington payroll, 135,000 of our soldiers are actually in Iraq, actually fighting, actually killing, actually being killed, and actually living with the daily reality of the neoconservative pipe-dream.
Unlike Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith, our 135,000 soldiers must actually bear the hourly burdens of surviving an unpopular and ill-defined military occupation halfway around the world, no exit strategy in sight.
Unlike George "The [Petro] Buck Stops Here" Bush, our 135,000 soldiers pay a personal price for poor military leadership at the highest levels. Flag officers in the Pentagon were apparently incapable of convincing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz that better logistics, better training, better gear, better planning, and more soldiers would be required, or else the administration's so-called "plan" for a Greater Middle East overflowing with oil and democracy and love for America would have to be sacked.
Coalitional Provisional Authority Paul Bremer today weighs his options—not in terms of neoconservative fantasy, but in terms of minimizing his losses. How many more cities can I hand back to Saddam-era generals before the other shoe falls? What deals can I accept with the Cleric Sistani, and how will Ahmad Chalabi react when he realizes he will not be the American-backed Prime Minister of the new Iraq?
Things have changed.
Neoconservatives were once unified by the sheer fantastical nature of their "strategy" for creating a Middle East in democratic obsequiousness to Washington. Today they are peeling off like a bad paint on an old Chevy.
Perle was let go early this year from the Defense Policy Board, possibly to prevent another financial scandal. It is likely the Pentagon warned the President about this pending crisis. Funny how the months of investigations into numerous human rights abuses and war crimes in Abu Ghraib Prison by American service members (and their cameras) did not warrant a Presidential brief.
There are strong hints that Doug Feith, the ardent friend of Israel occupying the office of Defense Under Secretary for Policy is on his way out the door in a few months. Sadly, this rumor has abounded inside the Pentagon since his arrival in 2001, but there is hope today. A description of him by former Central Command commander Tommy Franks as "the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" was probably somewhat unhelpful at his last performance review.
Marc Zell, Feith's past and probably future law partner and Amero-Iraqi contract recipient, has recently spoken out against Ahmad Chalabi, with a tone and emotion immediately recognized by those battling for custody of the family dog in a nasty divorce.
Even ancillary figures in the administration, but notably those with the best connections, are getting out while the getting is good. Margaret Tutwiler, after working hard to get an administration job back in Washington from her prestigious political posting as Ambassador to Morocco, got her wish. But after only months as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, she has quietly accepted a position at the New York Stock Exchange.
The current ship of state may not be leaking presidential information, but it is leaking bodies left and right.
The 135,000 men and women in uniform in Iraq don't count in this political equation. The number of bloodied bodies and flag-draped corpses of good Americans in wars have never been the real indication of a tipping point, in Iraq or anywhere else.
This is as it should be. If a battle is worth fighting, or a war worth winning, Americans have always known what they have to do, and they've done it boldly, decisively, with courage and ferocity. We would do it in Iraq, if it was truly an American war, an American value, or an American interest.
Irrelevant as well are the thousands of dead Iraqis, and the millions more who have risen up in nationalistic anger at this interminable and bewildering occupation.
But the bloodless evacuation of the appointed ideologues from Washington to some safe and profitable haven is a sign you can trust.
We have indeed reached the tipping point.
Correction to my 26 Apr 04 column: My use of figures of fragging in Vietnam, while complimenting my article, was flawed. The reference to which I linked contains highly debatable statistics. A better sense of the real nature of this issue is provided in this speech entitled "Military Competence" by former Secretary of the Navy James Webb. My apologies to readers on this point of accuracy.
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