The retiring head of U.S. Southern Command, who served three tours in Iraq during his career, said Friday that U.S. forces must accompany the Iraqis they are advising into the fight to be effective and urged Americans to follow through on their mission in the Middle East to pay tribute to those troops who lost their lives.
Marine Gen. John Kelly didn’t go so far as to say that the U.S. shouldn’t have pulled all of its troops out of Iraq, but said there were “other ways to have done it” that could have enabled recently trained Iraqi forces to have more success.
“When I left Iraq, the training wheels were coming off, but if you’re a parent teaching a kid how to ride a two-wheel bike, you’re running behind him the whole time, ready to grab the seat if they start to go over,” he told reporters at the Pentagon. “That’s one way to look at what we could have done.”
Asked if that meant U.S. forces needed to accompany Iraqis forward to support the forces that fell apart after the U.S. withdrawal, Kelly said “yes, there’s only one way for an adviser to advise in my opinion.”
Kelly will end his 45-year military career this month and addressed the Pentagon press corps for the last time on Friday. Vice Adm. Scott Tidd will take over next week as the new leader of SOUTHCOM, which emphasizes building partnerships and drug interdiction in Central and South America.
The leader of Southern Command also is in charge of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Kelly said one of his biggest frustrations is that the troops he commands who follow orders and take care of prisoners are often tied up in political fights over whether the prison should remain open.
Recent reports have suggested that senior defense officials have sought to slow the process of transferring detainees and emptying the military prison, but Kelly said that is “complete nonsense.”
“It’s an insult frankly to a serving military officer or a civil servant in this building to be accused of, whether we agree or disagree with any of the policies, that we would in any way impede the progress,” Kelly said.
A Rolling Stone article last month alleged that some transfers were delayed because the military was unwilling to release medical records of detainees to the countries being asked to take them. But Kelly said countries never request full medical records and are always satisfied with the summary that is released quickly.
Reporters also asked Kelly to weigh in on last year’s historic decision to open all combat positions to women, despite a request from the Marines to keep some specialties closed after a study found that women were more likely to perform worse and get injured in combat situations.
Kelly said only a small number of women will be able to meet the high standards for certain combat specialties, and that even a smaller number will be able to advance, especially since the rate of injury is said to be higher among women, according to some studies.
Because of that, he said he expected future leaders to face pressure to lower standards to make the number and position of women in combat match the expectation by advocates of the effort.
“If we don’t change standards, it will be very, very difficult to have any real numbers come into the infantry, or the Rangers or the SEALs,” Kelly said. “It will be the pressure for not probably the generals that are here now, but for the generals that are to come, to lower standards because that’s the only way it’ll work in the way that I hear some people, particularly the gender-driven people here in Washington, the way they want it to work.”
Kelly also spoke about becoming a Gold Star father when his son Robert was killed in Afghanistan serving in the Marines in 2010. Kelly said he thought writing letters to parents of fallen troops or sending home forces he commanded in body bags gave him some insight into what it was like to lose a child, but said the emotional impact of his son’s death “caught me by surprise.”
“The one thing [Gold Star families] would ask if that the cause for which their son or daughter fell be carried through to a successful end, whatever that means, as opposed to this is getting too costly or too much of a pain in the ass, so let’s just walk away from it,” he said.
Kelly said the country must do more to keep Afghanistan secure, but acknowledged that some of the recommendations might be “distasteful” and more costly and lengthy than the country is prepared to accept right now.
Asked if the rise of Taliban violence in Afghanistan was frustrating for him to see after his son died there, Kelly said it wasn’t his choice to make and noted that he tells other Gold Star parents the same thing when they ask if their child’s life was worth it.
“It doesn’t matter, that’s not our question to ask as parents. That young person thought it was worth it, and that’s the only opinion that counts,” he said.
