Former General Sees 'Staying the Course' In Iraq as Untenable - WSJ

CAPITAL JOURNAL By JOHN HARWOOD

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Maybe it's time, in other words, to listen to retired Gen. William E. Odom. It is delusional, asserts the Army veteran, college professor and longtime Washington hand, to believe that "staying the course" can achieve President Bush's goal of reordering the Middle East by building a friendly democracy in Iraq. For the sake of American security and economic power alike, he argues, the U.S. should remove its forces from that shattered country as rapidly as possible.

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His is not the voice of an isolationist, or a peacenik, or Republican-hater. He is talking from the conservative Hudson Institute, where he was hired years ago by Mitch Daniels, later Mr. Bush's budget director... Rather, his unsettling view reflects a broader reassessment of America's predicament as Iraq looks ever-uglier. It can be seen as well in U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer's tacit admission of error in disbanding the Iraqi Army and Mr. Bush's new reliance on United Nations help.

Mr. Odom opposed the Iraq war before it happened. An expert in comparative politics who teaches at Georgetown and Yale, he warned that there was no reason to expect that Iraq could soon develop the ingredients for constitutional democracy: individual rights, property rights and a tax-collection system supporting a government to enforce them. The violence of recent months, he concludes, has exposed Mr. Bush's vision of doing so as a dream.

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Yet the stakes, in Mr. Odom's view, are much bigger. The longer U.S. troops hang tough, he reasons, the more isolated America will become. That in turn will place increasing strain on international economic and security institutions that have undergirded the emergence of "America's Inadvertent Empire," as Mr. Odom's latest book calls it. "I don't know that the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO can survive this," he says.

His proposed solution sounds initially like Mr. Kerry's: a call for the U.N. and European allies to take charge of political and security arrangements. What's different -- even Bushlike -- is that Gen. Odom would accompany that request with a unilateral declaration that U.S. forces would leave even if no one else agrees to come in.

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Write to John Harwood at john.harwood@wsj.com

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108310695176695357,00.html

Why is it that our generals understand more about politics than those claiming to be such?

Arnold de Borchgrave, UPI editor at large and chief Mooney lackey, also has an article on this. Either the Rightwingers are abandoning Bush or Bush himself is about to do a 180 and pull out of Iraq.

let's just run.

The end of the hyperpower is coming soon.

and they are outta there.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2004/April/focusoniraq_April254.xml§ion=focusoniraq

Odom says the recent events in Iraq have exposed Bush's vision as a dream.

SNIP
We have failed. The issue is how high the price we are going to pay. Less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later, William E. Odom, who is also a former head of the National Security Agency, told Wall Street Journal.

SNIP
The result of Iraq’s elections, he predicted, will resemble theocracy more than liberal democracy. Anyone who is pro-American cannot gain legitimacy, he said.

It will be a highly illiberal democracy, inspired by Islamic culture, extremely hostile to the West and probably quite willing to fund terrorist organisations. The ability of militants to use Iraq for attacks elsewhere, he said, may also increase.

Retired military retain their rank for life! Odom is STILL a General. He is merely retired from active service.