The year was 2015.
Lloyd Austin was the four-star Army general in charge of the U.S. Central Command with responsibility for Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
For more than a year, ISIS rampaged across Syria and Iraq, and the Pentagon plan that Austin was implementing to reverse its advance was sputtering on all fronts.
Now, the combatant commander, called by some “the invisible general” for his reticence for speaking in public, was in the hot seat, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee and getting grilled by Chairman John McCain. He was becoming more lathered up as Austin struggled to defend a strategy to counter ISIS that reeked of failure.
“Ladies and gentlemen, with respect to the ongoing operations in Iraq and Syria, despite some slow movement at the tactical level, we continue to make progress across the battlespace,” Austin said in his opening statement.
McCain was stunned with disbelief.
“I must say I’ve been a member of the committee for nearly 30 years, and I’ve never heard testimony like this. Never,” McCain fumed at the infamous Sept. 16 hearing.
“Basically, general, what you’re telling us is that everything’s fine as we see hundreds of thousands of refugees leave and flood Europe, as we’re seeing now 250,000 Syrians slaughtered, as you see more and more Iranian control of the Shia militia,” McCain continued. “I have never seen a hearing that is as divorced from the reality of every outside expert.”
At that point, it had been a year since President Barack Obama had set a goal to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS — a year under Austin’s command that had been filled with embarrassing setbacks.
It had been a year in which ISIS solidified control over a vast swath of land that extended from western Syria to eastern Iraq, including the critical Iraqi cities of Mosul, Fallujah, and Ramadi.
A plan to train and equip 3,000 Syrian rebels to fight ISIS turned into a public relations nightmare.
The $500 million program produced a mere 52 fighters, some of whom were killed or captured by al Qaeda as soon as they returned to Syria.
It happened at the same time Austin’s intelligence shop was under internal investigation after whistleblowers said senior CENTCOM officials were coloring intelligence reports to downplay the threat from ISIS.
The Pentagon’s inspector general eventually ruled that no intelligence was falsified but found a “troubling and widespread perception among many intelligence analysts … [that] leaders were attempting to distort those intelligence products.”
The findings prompted speculation that flawed intelligence, especially early on when ISIS was not a household name, may have been what misled Obama into casually dismissing the group as the “JV team,” in a New Yorker profile.
In February 2015, seven months before Austin’s disastrous Senate appearance, newly confirmed Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who had done just two days on the job, flew to Kuwait for a come-to-Jesus meeting with U.S. military commanders, diplomats, and intelligence officials, including Austin.
After listening to everyone, Carter came to a sinking realization.
“I gradually concluded that the United States and its coalition partners lacked a comprehensive, achievable plan for success,” Carter wrote of the meeting in his 2019 memoir.
At one point, Austin pulled Carter aside to give him a private briefing on his plan to retake Mosul, a plan Carter dismissed as fanciful.
“I admired Austin’s desire to take the fight to the enemy, but the plan he presented to me was entirely unrealistic, relying on Iraqi army formations that barely existed on paper, let alone in reality,” he wrote. “To make matters worse, a CENTCOM official had already told Pentagon reporters in Washington that we planned to launch operations to retake Mosul by March or April, adding an imaginary timetable to the imaginary forces that would carry it out.”
By Carter’s telling, it wasn’t until the final weeks of 2015 that he and Gen. Joseph Dunford, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave Obama a detailed military plan that “offered a clear path to retaking Mosul and Raqqa.”
The account differs sharply with the description of Austin’s tenure as CENTCOM commander, offered by President-elect Joe Biden in an op-ed in the Atlantic, giving his reasons for picking Austin as his choice for defense secretary.
“When the Islamic State emerged as a terrorist threat in Iraq and Syria, endangering the security of America’s people and allies, President Obama and I turned to Austin,” Biden wrote. “He designed and executed the campaign that ultimately beat back ISIS.”
Biden also lauded Austin for his handling of the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Obama ordered the move against Austin and other advisers’ advice, and it is generally blamed for the rise of ISIS.
“General Austin got the job done,” Biden said. “He played a crucial role in bringing 150,000 American troops home from the theater of war. Pulling that off took more than just the skill and strategy of a seasoned soldier. It required Austin to practice diplomacy, building relationships with our Iraqi counterparts and with our partners in the region.”
That struck some observers as curious.
“It used to be that America celebrated generals for winning battles and wars, not withdrawing from them in orderly fashion,” wrote Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who said he was not so much criticizing Austin as questioning Biden’s rationale. “Austin undoubtedly faced substantial logistical hurdles in executing America’s exit from Iraq in 2011, but this is not exactly the type of accomplishment that wins one accolades in the history books.”
Austin recommended to Obama in February of 2011 that the U.S. leave 20,000 troops in Iraq to guard against the return of an insurgency, a number Obama trimmed to 10,000.
Austin may indeed possess the vaunted diplomatic skills touted by Biden. Still, neither he nor any other U.S. diplomats could get Iraq’s then-Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to agree to allow U.S. troops to stay past the withdrawal deadline agreed to by former President George W. Bush in 2008.
“I don’t know how hard President Obama tried (I suspect not very hard at all), and the Iraqi leaders, for their part, made no effort to get an extension approved by their parliament,” wrote former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his 2020 memoir.
“Lacking any new agreement, the last 500 American troops crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait on December 18, 2011,” Gates wrote. “We thought our military involvement in Iraq was over. We were wrong.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
