Winning the Peace: The Real Big Lie

Much is being made today about the exchange in last night's debate concerning Bush's insistence that he executed the war war exactly the way the generals advising him said to. Here's the relevant part of the transcript:

BUSH: I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?"

I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?"

And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our generals. [. . .]

KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component.

Gen. Shinseki had the wisdom to say, "You're going to need several hundred thousand troops to win the peace." The military's job is to win the war. A president's job is to win the peace.

I feel that this is an appropriate time to reprint a few paragraphs from my last Iron Blog Battle:

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There was an utter lack of post-war planning--and a complete ignorance of thoughtful recommendations--before combat began. General Eric Shinseki was fired for daring to suggest that we'd need "several thousand" troops to keep the peace in post-war Iraq. Army Secretary Thomas White got the boot for the same reason. We should probably have had more troops for the beginning--and even now--but the administration's insistence that it knew what it was doing with so few troops has made it hard for commanders to ask for what they need.

Most disturbing is Anthony Zinni's story:

Four years ago, those who devised an Iraq war game called "Desert Crossing" concluded that a large force would be needed to subdue the country. "We were concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the towns and villages," says retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and the surrounding region when he supervised "Desert Crossing." "We knew the initial problem would be security."

The 1999 exercise recommended a force of 400,000 troops to invade and stabilize Iraq. But at the insistence of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ground forces in the March invasion were held to less than half that: about 130,000 U.S. combat troops and some 30,000 British troops.

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The Washington Post which notes in s story tomorrow that, "In that 2002 White House meeting, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, whom Bush mentioned, said there were enough troops, but Shinseki told the president there were not. Other senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that they were concerned about troop levels."

That's right: For at least three years before the war, the people who know these things all said that securing the peace would require far more troops than Bush was politically willing to commit. And all the talk everyone--including Kerry--does about about Shinseki misses the point. It wasn't just him, it was commander after commander after commander, all of them willfully ignored by those who were convinced that we'd waltz into Iraq and be greeted with flowers.

That is a huge mistake.  It has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars and the respect of the world.

That's the real Big Lie from last night. Period.