H. Thomas Hayden was formerly the President and CEO of First Communications Company (FCC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a joint venture between Raytheon and a Saudi Company involved in Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) Systems for the Ministry of Defense and Aviation, Saudi Arabian National Guard and Ministry of Interior. Before retiring from the US Marine Corps, assignments included Commanding Officer (CO), Headquarters and Service Bn, 1st Force Service Support Group, which deployed to the Gulf War, CO Brigade Service Support Group – 9, which deployed to Somalia and CO MAU Service Support Group – 33, which deployed to The Philippines and Korea. He was Branch Head, Headquarters Marine Corps, Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC), and Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for SO/LIC with assignments to Central America. He has participated in combat operations or contingency operations in the Republic of Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War, Somalia, and Columbia. Tom has a MBA, MA in International Relations, and a PhD candidate in Business Management. He is the author of two books and is currently writing a third: SHADOW WAR: Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict; WARFIGHTING: Maneuver Warfare in the US Marine Corps. He has published over 40 articles and has been awarded the Navy League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan award for literary achievement.
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Headline: "Wolfowitz admits underestimating insurgents’ strength and resilience."
USA TODAY, May 19, 2004, p. 16A
The Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraqi war, said Tuesday, he had failed to anticipate “the resilience of Saddam Hussein’s supporters.” He then added that he did no know how long the US would have to keep 135,000 troops in Iraq.
I am angry and I am disgusted. I’m shocked and awed.
How many people, including this writer, have been saying for almost a year, that Iraq was an insurgency problem and not an occupation problem?
I wrote a number of columns on this very subject last year (see my archives)
My articles were sent to a number of US Congressmen and Congresswomen. No idea if anything got to the White House.
I have sent copies of one of my books: SHADOW WAR: Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, which is filled with examples of successful insurgency, counterinsurgency, and peacekeeping, to the Secretary of Defense and the Head of Force Transformation, VAdm Art Cebrowski, USN (Ret), and members of Congress.
(At least I received thank-you notes from Secretary Rumsfeld, and some members of Congress, but nothing from Cerbrowski.)
General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret), a great American, has made a career out of saying that the DoD had miscalculated from the start of the war, and what it would take to win the peace.
General Shenseki, former Army Chief of Staff, told the Administration that it would take 300-500,000 troops to "win the war" in Iraq. He was told his services were no longer needed.
Tony Cordesman, a noted TV commentator and columnist, has repeatedly warned that the Administration would fail in Iraq if it did not come up with a better "end game."
All of us, to name just a few, have said that it would take more than a few hundred thousand troops and a concentrated Counterinsurgency Campaign Plan to stabilize the country.
Flaws in post-war planning have ranged from totally mindless -- as when the Iraq army and police forces was disbanded, which created a massive criminal surge all over Iraq, and created over 400,000 unemployed ex-military trained men hating Americans -- to the colossal failure of the US Intelligence agencies in understanding the Iraqi/Arab male culture.
It was and is not about Muslim fanaticism. It was and is about honor, family pride and helplessness.
Iraq is not creating a haven for Muslim extremists like Al Qaeda, but it surely is attracting them to the cause.
The cause is freedom, respect and dignity.
It’s the economy, stupid. It’s about jobs.
It’s about respect and a representative form of government.
This is what the American INSURGENCY was all about in 1775.
The US powers that were, and still are, haven’t got a clue about the root causes of the insurgency, and not one person that I have talked to in the Pentagon even has an inkling as to what a Counterinsurgency Campaign Plan would look like.
Six weeks before the US is to hand over nominal "power" to an interim Iraqi government, that is yet to be identified, and there is still no detailed plan to stabilize and pacify the country.
It seems that the US strategy for getting out of Iraq is now in the hands of the United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is in Iraq trying to identify candidates for an interim government.
At least there has recently been two smart moves by the Administration: naming John Negroponte as Ambassador to Iraq, and getting Ahmad Chalabi, the Iranian agent who provided false and misleading intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), off the US payroll.
Someone wrote recently that there is a smell of fear in the air emanating from those who are calling for a reassessment in Iraq, to those who are screaming for an immediate withdrawal. Everyone is afraid to do anything.
The price tag the US has paid goes well beyond the almost 800 US troops killed in Iraq. The US’ image and perception of trustworthiness has plummeted all over the world. Polls from Europe to the Far East show anti-American sentiments at all-time highs.
It took centuries for the United Kingdom to build a truly democratic form of government. The French took from 1792 to 1815, and the United States took from 1775 to 1791.
Who in their right mind thinks that we can create democracy in a country like Iraq that has no historical experience or institutional framework to build on, in less than 10 years.
We have not even begun to "stabilize" Iraq, and we have saddled its people with a disastrous occupation. It is not as if we have not done this before -- remember post-World War II in Japan and Germany.
The job is half done.
We got rid of a tyrannical dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and his neighbors, and continually threatened the region where the US has vital national security interest.
Now give us a long-range plan to stabilize Iraq and all America will support it.
