Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
WASHINGTON - Have we permitted ourselves to become bogged down in
Iraq,
in what at best is a sideshow in the Global War on Terrorism, while
diverting precious manpower and resources away from the real objective?
More than a few analysts believe that is precisely what has happened
-- most recently Dr. Jeffrey Record, author and visiting professor
at the Air War College. Record's scathing criticism of the Bush administration's
strategy and tactics is presented in a paper for the Strategic
Studies Institute titled "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism."
Record declares that the war on terrorism "lacks strategic clarity,
embraces unrealistic objectives and may not be sustainable over the
long haul." He calls for scaling back the scope of the war on terrorism
to reflect both concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of
American military power.
Record says that what we have done in Iraq, by lumping al
Qaida and Saddam
Hussein's Iraq into a single terrorist
threat, has resulted in "an unnecessary preventive war of choice against
a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for
Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing
the American homeland against further assault by . . . al-Qaeda."
The professor adds, correctly, that "the war against Iraq was not
integral to the GWOT (global war on terrorism), but rather a detour
from it."
Most of the Bush administration's declared objectives in the global
war on terrorism, Record writes, "are unrealistic and condemn the
United States to a hopeless quest for absolutely security. As such,
the . . . goals are also politically, fiscally and militarily unsustainable."
The question of whether President Bush arrived in office determined
to overthrow Saddam Hussein from the get-go, as postulated by former
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, is moot. The real questions at the
heart of it: Is the United States a safer place for having gone after
Saddam and Iraq? Was the diversion of valuable resources from the
pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida operatives in Afghanistan
and Pakistan worth the game?
The answers are 1) No, and 2) Hardly.
In Iraq we are struggling to find a military solution to a political
problem in a land riven by ethnic, tribal and religious fault lines.
Our stated goals are to rebuild a shattered nation, at a cost approaching
$100 billion a year, and while we are at it graft Jeffersonian democracy
on a people who have never known such freedom and don't find it particularly
desirable.
Record says what the Bush administration must do, and swiftly, is
substitute credible deterrence for preventive war as a way of dealing
with rogue states seeking weapons of mass destruction; refocus and
refine the war on terrorism to take direct aim on al Qaida and its
allies; prepare to settle for stability instead of democracy in Iraq,
and for international rather than U.S. responsibility for Iraq's future.
In short, the United States must find some credible way to stabilize
the situation in Iraq, hand off responsibility to the international
community, which was spurned at the outset by Bush administration
officials such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and get out
of there.
If we have to eat some crow, so be it. Feed the first bite, feathers
and all, to Rumsfeld and then get on with taking care of the business
at hand with al Qaida. Bumbling around Iraq, losing two or three American
soldiers per day, is not making America a safer place. Capturing Osama
bin Laden and smashing his organization would.
How a president, and his administration, reacted so well in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11
and the horror of a mass-casualty terrorist attack on American soil
and American citizens and then wandered so far off course is a puzzle.
How all the fine talk about fighting the terrorists and defending
America somehow was translated into the creation of a bureaucratic
monstrosity, the Department
of Homeland Security, and a needless war against an Iraqi dictator
who was already boxed in and defanged should be examined now.
If President Bush wants another four years in office he needs to admit
the mistakes of the last two years, begin to repair those errors and
start to take the kind of action that will make this country safer
and more secure, not less.
