A top military leader who hasn’t shied away from criticizing the administration’s strategy against the Islamic State is retiring on Friday after almost 40 years in uniform.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the chief of staff of the Army, will address the press one last time at the Pentagon on Wednesday afternoon, where he’ll likely face questions about sequestration’s effect on readiness as well as national security threats from ISIS and Russia.
Odierno, who spent two years as the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq before leading the Army, has never minced words when describing the security situation around the world. He said last month that it’s “frustrating” to watch Iraq fall back into terrorist control and that “it would have been good for us to stay” when asked if pulling troops out of Iraq in 2011 paved the way for ISIS to rise to power.
“If we had stayed a little more engaged, I think maybe it might have been prevented,” he said in a Fox News interview. “I’ve always believed the United States played the role of honest broker between all the groups, and when we pulled ourselves out, we lost that role.”
Odierno recommended leaving behind a residual force of about 30,000 troops in Iraq, but the administration did not follow his suggestion, Fox reported. The U.S. pulled out all of its troops in 2011 after being unable to reach a deal to keep forces in the country longer.
Jonathan Freeman, the White House liaison to the Defense Department at the beginning of the Obama administration, said he largely expects Odierno’s message on Wednesday to reporters to be the same.
“I think he may say some things more forcefully than he may have felt was appropriate prior to,” said Freeman, who is also an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The general has also made grim predictions for the Army if troops are forced to continue operating under current budget restraints. He told Congress in January that he is “truly concerned” sequestration will lead to a hollow Army and force the service to reduce to a point where it can no longer defend the nation.
“Essentially, for ground forces, sequestration even puts into question our ability to conduct even one prolonged, multiphase, combined arms campaign against a determined enemy,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Odierno will also likely be remembered for his forceful defense of the Distributed Common Ground System-Army program on Capitol Hill in May 2013.
“I object to this,” Odierno told Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, “I’m tired of somebody telling me I don’t care about our soldiers and we don’t respond [to requests].”
“You have a very powerful personality,” Hunter said, “but that doesn’t refute the facts that you have gaps in the capability in the system that the Army’s using right now.”
Odierno countered: “We have more capability today in our intelligence than we’ve ever had.”
Once Odierno retires, Gen. Mark Milley, current head of Army Forces Command, will take over as the new Army chief of staff.
Freeman said he hopes Milley takes a serious look at personnel management and what the needs of the service are, something that Odierno struggled to evaluate.
“I don’t think that General Odierno was great at this, at questioning why we do the things we do, at getting into processes, at getting into systems,” Freeman said. “I don’t necessarily have the answers, but I know nobody has asked the question. I hope General Milley will actually start asking these questions.”
