People's General

Retired U.S. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni’s appearance on Meet the Press last weekend is worth another look. The 35-year veteran was the Commander-in-Chief of CENTCOM, meaning he ran America’s military in the entire Middle East from 1997-2000. Before U.S. tanks rolled on Baghdad, Zinni predicted the U.S. invasion of Iraq would be a “Bay of Goats.” He is worth listening to now.

Zinni is promoting a new book, "The Battle for Peace". Here are a few selected quotes from the transcript at the Meet the Press web site.

On the battle for Iraqi “hearts and minds:”

If, like General Casey said a week or so ago, 99.9 percent of the people are opposed to the violence and the perpetrators of these violence. Well, all those people have to do is call up on the phone and tell you where the insurgents are, tell you in the two to four provinces that everybody said this is concentrated in where the issues are, where the problems are, where the people that are doing this are, and you wouldn’t need much more than you have right now. And the security forces and the Iraqis would be able to handle it. We’re not fighting the Waffen SS here. You know, we’re fighting a bunch of ragtag people with AK-47s and IEDs and RPGs. They can be policed up if the people turn against them. We haven’t won the hearts and minds yet.

On the job of the U.S. media (think Jill Carroll):

I think the American media’s being made a scapegoat for what’s going on out there. At last count, I think something like 80 journalists have been killed in Iraq. It’s hard to get outside the green zone and not risk your life, or risk kidnapping, at a minimum, to get the story. And it’s hard to blame the media for no good stories when the security situation is such that they can’t even go out and get the good stories without risking their lives. And you have to remember that it’s hard to dwell on the good things when the bad things are so overwhelmingly traumatic and catastrophic, you know? So I think that’s an unfair blame that’s put on the media.

Lastly, here’s Zinni on Bush regime lies that took us to war:

Well, I—first of all, I saw it in the way the intelligence was being portrayed. I knew the intelligence; I saw it right up to the day of the war. I was asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing a month before the war if I thought the threat was imminent. I didn’t. Many of the people I know that were involved in the intelligence side of this, or, or in the military felt the same way. I saw the—what this town is known for: spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses, or, or shading the, the context. We, we know the mushroom clouds and, and the other things that were all described that the media’s covered well. I saw on the ground, though, a sort of walking away from 10 years worth of planning.

You know, ever since the end of the first Gulf War, there have been—there’s been planning by serious officers and planners and others, and policies put in place. Ten years worth of planning, you know, were thrown away; troop levels dismissed out of hand; General Shinseki basically insulted for speaking the truth and giving a, an honest opinion; the lack of cohesive approach to how we deal with the aftermath; the political, economic, social reconstruction of a nation, which is no small task; a belief in these exiles that anyone in the region, anyone that had any knowledge would tell you were not credible on the ground; and on and on and on. Decisions to disband the army that were not in the initial plans. I mean there’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the secretary of state say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’re the ones that perform the tactics on the ground. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves this, it will be them.

We shouldn’t ask troops to put themselves in this situation. Let’s get the f*ck out of Iraq now. Bush lied, Rumsfeld trashed the good war plans and ruined the Army -- and they want to do it all again in Iran! Let’s declare victory and leave already.