Very interesting symposium on mid east and anti semitism

[mord]

General, colonels and Carloline Glick discuss it.BTW anyone who know about SpecialOps will know Lt.Colonel Bill Cowen ,however all the participents are excellent                  http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=52305D69-EAC3-40E4-BF75-758625BFFF4C  




 
 
Symposium: The Place of the Surge in the War on Terror  
By FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 19, 2008

The following symposium took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Santa Barbara, which was held at the Four Seasons Resort May 30-June 1. -- The Editors.


Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu: We've got a really distinguished panel here.  If you dig in your bag, you can find bios on everybody.  So I don't think it's useful to spend the time going over that.

Just be known that, with the exception of Caroline, we've got people who have collectively got more than a century-and-a-half of experience in war in one form or another.  I've asked everybody to keep their remarks kind of short, so that we can have time for interaction.  If anything that we say in the next few minutes piques your interest, then please feel free to participate in the Q&A period.  I'd like to kind of get through everybody first, and then open it up for discussion afterwards.

I also want to remind you that at 4:00 this afternoon, I'll be talking about my recent embed in Iraq.  I got back about two weeks ago, and I spent a month over there with the U.S. military police.  And I've got some slides that I don't think will bore you too bad, and we can have further discussion there about what is going on right at the moment.

I think it's important for everybody to keep in mind when we're talking about Iraq -- this is something I like to emphasize, and I know the other panel members do, too -- Iraq is not the be-all and the end-all.  I think it's important to realize that in the greater scheme of things, Iraq is a theater or a battleground in the greater global war against radical Islam and against state players who are inimitable to our interests, such as North Korea and Venezuela.

When we will win in Iraq, which we will, it doesn't mean that we're all going to come home and begin to spend peace dividends.  What it simply means is that we will have established a bastion of freedom in an area that's never known it before – and this is critically important.

What every member of this panel would tell you is that, yes, we could have done it better.  Yes, mistakes have been made.  And yes, we are learning from our experience, which I think is key to this.  Mean, if you want to use a sports analogy, which Americans like to do -- at the end of any game, what do you do? You get together and you say, well gee, we shouldn't have passed on that fourth down; we should have run -- you know, this sort of thing.  This is normal and usual.  We've never had a war -- Victor Davis Hanson wrote a column about this the other day -- we've never had a war in which we haven't made terrific mistakes.

The fact of the matter is in this one, compared to previous wars, including World War II, which is always held out as kind of a crucible of what -- an example of what an ideal war should be, there were terrible incidents that took place -- mismanagement, mis-leadership, poor intelligence, excessive casualties; all of these kinds of things.

It's important to remember also to keep this in perspective -- while every military death is a tragedy -- and nobody up here would argue that -- that overall, if we're going to be a superpower in this country, that we have to be willing to accept casualties in order to advance our national interest.  This is -- it's hard, but it's realistic.

Also, the fact of the matter is that in the military -- and you've got three of us up here who have extensive military experience -- four of us -- we all know that in the military, you suffer casualties in training.  During the Clinton Administration, for example, we lost about a soldier a day in some sort of training accident or incident.  So if you look at the casualties overall, they really are -- while we have this drumbeat of how high the casualties are, frankly, considering what the game has been, and how we have in fact liberated two totalitarian-run countries -- the casualty rate is remarkably low.

And for those of you who are students of history, you need only go back to, you know, Northern Europe, Battle of Iwo Jima, Battle of Okinawa, and you can see what high casualty rates really look like.  Even my experience -- or our experience in Vietnam -- at the height of it, we were putting maybe -- suffering 500 a week, compared to what we've done in Iraq is pretty remarkable.

And one reason it is so remarkable is the quality of the soldiers.  You know, it's easy to say technology -- and sure, the toys are more fun; you know, they're great.  But it's really the person behind the machine that's carrying this out -- the men and women who are doing the job.

And one thing I'll talk about this afternoon is how extraordinarily proud and impressed I have been in my month over there with these guys.  And I think everyone here would echo that.

(applause)

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu: We're looking at today what we call Beyond the Surge.  And many of you may wonder exactly what the surge is.  So we're going to talk about that a little bit.

And we're going to -- I'm going to ask General Vallely to lead off, and he'll talk to us about the surge -- how it came about, what the parts of it are, where it's going to lead to, where we are now.  Caroline Glick will follow, and she'll talk about the Israeli angle.  Michael Ledeen will talk about the Iranian angle, and Lt. Col. Bill Cowan, my friend sitting next to me here, is going to step back and take a macro overview of where this might lead, both internationally and impacting our own election process, which, you know, as we've just listened to, is complex and is very nuanced, so -- particularly vis-à-vis this war. So without further introduction, I'd like to ask General Vallely to take over.

Major Gen. Paul Vallely: Thank you, Gordon.  Thank you, David Horowitz and the Freedom Center, for inviting us to this wonderful weekend.  It's always great to see some friends that we've met in the past at different Restoration Weekends, and surely to meet new people this particular weekend.

The surge -- if I can explain it, just to review for you what that was all about -- just a little over a year ago, when General Petraeus was given the direction to conduct a surge.  And what that surge really meant was plussing up the number of combat brigades that we had in Iraq, and plus up what we call those force levels.

The second part of the surge -- thank goodness for General Petraeus -- we switched to a different strategy, utilizing different tactics in Iraq, transforming more to a -- what we call a counter-insurgency type of warfare.

The third part of that surge was to give time to strengthen -- and be strengthened -- the Iraqi government, as well as the Iraqi security forces.  So that's what the surge was about.

If we look now, a year-plus hence, we see in fact that General Petraeus did put into effect this counterterrorism strategy and tactics throughout Iraq, but primarily in the western provinces and in Baghdad and some of the other major cities that are in the northern part and mid-part of Iraq.  It did in fact give time for the security forces to become better, become more efficient, become better trained, become better armed, with combat support services added on to strengthen the Iraqi forces.

It appears that the Iraqi government has strengthened, though I have some questions in my own mind how strong they really are, even at this point in time -- though Maliki seems to have stepped up to the plate, based on the actions that were taken during the last really serious operations which occurred in Basra and throughout mostly Central Iraq against the militia groups.

So that continues to be something that has to be measured.  But assuredly, the surge is over.  So when we talk about the post-surge or after-surge, we're talking about what happens today and tomorrow.

I think in terms from a military perspective with the surge in my mind being over, because I don't think it will happen that we'll surge up and put any more combat troops or service support troops in Iraq, not only because the situation is better, but secondly, with the political situation that we have here this year, and even into next year.

So I think from the standpoint of that surge being over, what happens? Well, what will happen, in my mind, is that we'll see a draw-down in forces at some point in time.  And General Petraeus now, who has received a new job, as you may know -- he's now the Commanding General of Central Command.  And General Odierno, who was his deputy over there, becomes the commander of the forces in Iraq.  Both superb generals, generals who have had their hands tied in many ways, but through it all have really made a very difficult, bad situation a little more -- better than it was.

The drawdown in forces -- when it will start will be the call from the Administration on through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on down to Central Command, then down to the Commanding General, which will be General Odierno.  The question then, after the surge, is -- and my counterparts here will talk a little bit about that -- if you took a spotlight and put it on Iraq, that's not what the post-surge is going to be about necessarily.

The situation in Iran continues to be very, very, very difficult.  The center of international terrorism is in fact in Tehran, along with the weapons that they are developing.

The serious threats then in the region become apparent.  I've been working on the Lebanon situation for about three weeks.  Lebanon, ladies and gentlemen, is basically gone.  The Iranians, Hezbollah, the Syrians have got their way.  And basically, we've kissed Lebanon off at this point in time.  Caroline can reflect on that a little bit, because she and I have been in a little bit of communication about what was going to be done by the West, by Israel, or by the United States or other countries, to save Lebanon from the control of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.  We also have to look at what is happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, and the continued support of those entities to bring down Israel.

So now you have a situation, when you put that spotlight on the greater Middle East, for a requirement hopefully that somebody can establish some kind of strategy for the Middle East.  And ladies and gentlemen, we don't have one now.  We do not have an overall Middle East strategy, whether it comes -- whether it's economic oil, or from the military.

So I don't see much coming from this administration to change that.  What we're going to get into after the election, of course, is the big question.  But without strategy, without a plan, we can't deal with these threats throughout the world.

We look over in Afghanistan -- I had a report provided me from a gentleman just came back from Afghanistan three days ago.  He's going back over in another three days.  That situation does not look good at all.  We have an un-performance basically of NATO forces for the most part.  We may see NATO finally succumb to the situation where they're totally ineffective out there as far as a force structure to combat this war against radical Islam.  We even have German special forces being told they can't shoot the Taliban.

We have a situation where we have basically again, like in Iraq, have hamstrung the generals and the admirals, because we abide by borders, and the enemy doesn't.  So you have a tremendous spotlight now on Pakistan again, where you have a pipeline going from Pakistan into London, Birmingham and throughout Europe, from the training camps that are growing and becoming much more effective in their use of advanced weapons systems, many supplied again by the Iranians.

So if you understand this network that's going on in the Middle East, beyond the surge then, brings on other major challenges and threats to our national security.  So whoever becomes our new President really must take on again the number-one, the number-one responsibility of our government, and that's to protect you -- our children, our families.  And do not elect anybody into office that doesn't put our security first.

So that's why it's so important this year that we elect the right person.

(applause)

Major Gen. Paul Vallely: I'll pass this on.  But how many of you saw the John Adams series on HBO? All right.  Today I'm bringing back our new motto, post-surge -- don't tread on me.  All right?

(applause)

Major Gen. Paul Vallely: And that's what the United States -- that's what we have to focus on.  Do not tread on us anymore, because we are going to protect ourselves.  And that's what we need to be focused on.

So I'll pass it on to [my best colleague].

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu: I think, you know, Paul brings out one of the points that I believe really needs to be emphasized.  And this is where we're not learning, where we haven't developed a historic learning curve over the last 40 years.

In post-World War II, every war we've been in subsequent to that, we've allowed the existence of privileged sanctuaries that border the battlefield.  We did this in Southeast Asia, where we were -- our actions in Laos and Cambodia and North Vietnam were severely limited.  We did it in the Korean war, when we arbitrarily drew a boundary at the Yalu River.

I had hoped against all hope in 2003 that when we moved into Baghdad, when we moved up the Tigris-Euphrates Valley to overthrow Saddam, that we would have learned this lesson and not allowed Syria, not allowed Iran, not allowed these other countries to continue to run the rat lines to send the foreign fighters down, not allow them to put in the weaponry; to rearm the militias or the al-Qaeda in Iraq.  But we haven't done that; we're not learning a thing.

And unless and until we have someone in power -- and unfortunately, I think it's not only the White House where we've got to have a testosterone-filled Congress, which I don't see at all -- what's going to happen is that we're going to allow our soldiers to be exposed to needless threats because of this.

When I was over there, we were getting indirect fire from rockets that were coming right up from Iran.  They've found some of these things that didn't fire and they had made in Iran in 2008 on them.  So it's not stuff that was there before, regardless of what you might hear.  But unless and until we get smart enough to realize that it's a regional war, and that as Paul said, we can't -- we have to treat international boundaries as a line on the ground in which another enemy is on the other side, not as some sort of inviolate international border which we can't cross, then we're in trouble.

So I think that we saw this happening, in many cases, in the Lebanese-Israel war last year, where the boundary with Syria was wide open, and all this material and manpower was pouring across the borders.  But I'm going to turn it over to Caroline now and let her address some of these. 

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