IF YOU WANTED TO, you could easily make the case that America is retreating in Iraq. Under relentless attack in the press, with a nasty campaign fight on its hands, the Bush administration has moved from its natural defensive crouch to a position that at times looks fetal. The president’s stout rhetoric in his speech at the Army War College was belied by a lack of initiatives for going on offense. It is difficult to distinguish “stay the course” from “more of the same.”
Yet buried in last week’s news was one item that might be indicative of new thinking on Iraq: the pending appointment of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., now vice chief of staff of the army, to a new position as senior military commander in Iraq. While questions remain about the chain of command, placing a four-star general with Washington experience in charge of military operations in Iraq is an overdue move. In essence, Casey could become the first commander of the Army of the Euphrates.
If so, that would be a crucial step toward institutionalizing a strategic partnership with Iraq that will extend well beyond the formal end of occupation on June 30. In particular it may signal recognition in Washington that creating a secure environment for the experiment in Iraqi democracy is a long-term task. There can be no exit strategy.
Casey’s appointment is also a sign that the scope of the American military commitment in Iraq surpasses what an expeditionary, temporary headquarters–a “combined joint task force” or “CJTF”–is capable of doing. Indeed, the story of CJTF-7 in Iraq over the last year is a case study in the limitations of this concept. The headquarters has been chronically undermanned; it is not structured to handle the myriad problems of occupation and reconstruction and is bureaucratically overwhelmed when in contact with the permanent government of the Pentagon. These are headquarters designed for rapid deployment, not for wars of attrition with accountants in Washington.
In contrast to the current senior commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Casey is well suited for this sort of command. As head of CJTF-7, Sanchez has really functioned as a glorified corps commander–what Army doctrine would call a commander at the “operational” level of war. What is needed, and what Casey can bring to the job, is engagement at the strategic level.
Casey has credibility with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld–something few senior soldiers can claim. As vice chief of staff, Casey has experience working with new Army chief Gen. Peter Schoomaker, a career special operations officer brought out of retirement to meet Rumsfeld’s demand for change in the Army. Casey also directed the Joint Staff under current JCS chairman Gen. Richard Myers.
At the same time, Casey has a deep appreciation of the Army as an institution–he has credibility with an officer corps and a service suffering the unhappy consequences of Rumsfeld’s misjudgments about postwar Iraq. He was assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division in Bosnia, with a firsthand appreciation of the challenges of “nation-building” missions. In sum, Casey is well suited by experience and temperament to address the requirements for a long-term U.S. military presence.
What is less clear is the chain of command that will govern this new arrangement. Will Casey simply report to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, or will he be able, like the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, to report straight to Washington? Pentagon insiders give Abizaid high marks for granting his subordinates in Iraq the discretion essential for seizing the initiative in wartime, and for concentrating his efforts on Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and other CENTCOM operations. The new structure should enshrine this division of labor: The war in Iraq is more than important enough to allow for such a “sub-unified” command.
Of course, even if the military command structure works out, it’s far from clear how U.S. forces will work with their civilian partners in Iraq–the transitional Iraqi government, the elected government in 2005, or, for that matter, with John Negroponte, due to become the first U.S. ambassador to the new Iraq. Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, for a variety of reasons, have had increasingly rotten relations with the U.S. military; this needs to be fixed. Alas, a good part of this problem originates in Washington and results from the unresolved fight over basic Iraq policy that has plagued the administration since before the war and can only be fixed by the White House.
No organizational wiring diagram and no single general, no matter how talented, will solve all our problems in Iraq. No one should expect Gen. Casey to lead us to victory singlehanded–that’s the job of the commander in chief. But if we’re not going to cut and run, a necessary step is putting someone very much like him in command.
Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
