- Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon insider,
concludes her observations on the run-up to the Iraq war in this last of
a three-part series.
-
- As the winter of 2002 approached, I was increasingly
amazed at the success of the propaganda campaign being waged by President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, and neoconservative mouthpieces at the Washington
Times and Wall Street Journal. I speculated about the necessity but unlikelihood
of a Phil-Dick-style minority report on the grandiose Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney
vision of some future Middle East where peace, love, and democracy are
brought about by pre-emptive war and military occupation.
-
- In December, I requested an acceleration of my retirement
after just over 20 years on duty and exactly the required three years of
time-in-grade as a lieutenant colonel. I felt fortunate not to have being
fired or court-martialed due to my politically incorrect ways in the previous
two years as a real conservative in a neoconservative Office of Secretary
of Defense. But in fact, my outspokenness was probably never noticed because
civilian professionals and military officers were largely invisible. We
were easily replaceable and dispensable, not part of the team brought in
from the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy,
and the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs.
-
- There were exceptions. When military officers conspicuously
crossed the neoconservative party line, the results were predictable-get
back in line or get out. One friend, an Army colonel who exemplified the
qualities carved in stone at West Point, refused to maneuver into a small
neoconservative box, and he was moved into another position, where truth-telling
would be viewed as an asset instead of a handicap. Among the civilians,
I observed the stereotypical perspective that this too would pass, with
policy analysts apparently willing to wait out the neocon phase.
-
- In early winter, an incident occurred that was seared
into my memory. A coworker and I were suddenly directed to go down to the
Mall entrance to pick up some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required
one escort for every three visitors, and there were six or seven of them
waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander and I hustled down. Before we could
apologize for the delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his colleagues
in close formation, leaving us to double-time behind the group as they
sped to Undersecretary Feith's office on the fourth floor. Two thoughts
crossed our minds: are we following close enough to get credit for escorting
them, and do they really know where they are going? We did get credit,
and they did know. Once in Feith's waiting room, the leader continued at
speed to Feith's closed door. An alert secretary saw this coming and had
leapt from her desk to block the door. "Mr. Feith has a visitor. It
will only be a few more minutes." The leader craned his neck to look
around the secretary's head as he demanded, "Who is in there with
him?"
-
- This minor crisis of curiosity past, I noticed the security
sign-in roster. Our habit, up until a few weeks before this incident, was
not to sign in senior visitors like ambassadors. But about once a year,
the security inspectors send out a warning letter that they were coming
to inspect records. As a result, sign-in rosters were laid out, visible
and used. I knew this because in the previous two weeks I watched this
explanation being awkwardly presented to several North African ambassadors
as they signed in for the first time and wondered why and why now. Given
all this and seeing the sign-in roster, I asked the secretary, "Do
you want these guys to sign in?" She raised her hands, both palms
toward me, and waved frantically as she shook her head. "No, no, no,
it is not necessary, not at all." Her body language told me I had
committed a faux pas for even asking the question. My fellow escort and
I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where
they were going (most foreign visitors to the five-sided asylum don't)
and how the generals didn't have to sign in. I felt a bit dirtied by the
whole thing and couldn't stop comparing that experience to the grace and
gentility of the Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian ambassadors with whom
I worked.
-
- In my study of the neoconservatives, it was easy to find
out whom in Washington they liked and whom they didn't. They liked most
of the Heritage Foundation and all of the American Enterprise Institute.
They liked writers Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. To find out whom
they didn't like, no research was required. All I had to do was walk the
corridors and attend staff meetings. There were several shared prerequisites
to get on the Neoconservative List of Major Despicable People, and in spite
of the rhetoric hurled against these enemies of the state, most really
weren't Rodents of Unusual Size. Most, in fact, were retired from a branch
of the military with a star or two or four on their shoulders. All could
and did rationally argue the many illogical points in the neoconservative
strategy of offensive democracy-guys like Brent Scowcroft, Barry McCaffrey,
Anthony Zinni, and Colin Powell.
-
- I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy Undersecretary
Bill Luti called General Zinni a traitor. At another time, I discussed
with a political appointee the service being rendered by Colin Powell in
the early winter and was told the best service he could offer would be
to quit. I heard in another staff meeting a derogatory story about a little
Tommy Fargo who was acting up. Little Tommy was, of course, Commander,
Pacific Forces, Admiral Fargo. This was shared with the rest of us as a
Bill Luti lesson in civilian control of the military. It was certainly
not civil or controlled, but the message was crystal.
-
- When President Bush gave his State of the Union address,
there was a small furor over the reference to the yellowcake in Niger that
Saddam was supposedly seeking. After this speech, everyone was discussing
this as either new intelligence saved up for just such a speech or, more
cynically, just one more flamboyant fabrication that those watching the
propaganda campaign had come to expect. I had not heard about yellowcake
from Niger or seen it mentioned on the Office of Special Plans talking
points. When I went over to my old shop, sub-Saharan Africa, to congratulate
them for making it into the president's speech, they said the information
hadn't come from them or through them. They were as surprised and embarrassed
as everyone else that such a blatant falsehood would make it into a presidential
speech.
-
- When General Zinni was removed as Bush's Middle East
envoy and Elliot Abrams joined the National Security Council (NSC) to lead
the Mideast division, whoops and high-fives had erupted from the neocon
cubicles. By midwinter, echoes of those celebrations seemed to mutate into
a kind of anxious anticipation, shared by most of the Pentagon. The military
was anxiously waiting under the bed for the other shoe to drop amidst concerns
over troop availability, readiness for an ill-defined mission, and lack
of day-after clarity. The neocons were anxiously struggling to get that
damn shoe off, gleefully anticipating the martinis to be drunk and the
fun to be had. The other shoe fell with a thump on Feb. 5 as Colin Powell
delivered his United Nations presentation.
-
- It was a sad day for me and many others with whom I worked
when we watched Powell's public capitulation. The era when Powell had been
considered a political general, back when he was Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, had in many ways been erased for those of us who greatly admired
his coup of the Pentagon neocons when he persuaded the president to pursue
UN support for his invasion of Iraq. Now it was as if Powell had again
rolled military interests-and national interests as well.
-
- Around that same time, our deputy director forwarded
a State Department cable that had gone out to our embassy in Turkey. The
cable contained answers to 51 questions that had been asked of our ambassador
by the Turkish government. The questions addressed things like after-war
security arrangements, refugees, border control, stability in the Kurdish
north, and occupation plans. But every third answer was either "To
be determined" or "We're working on that" or "This
scenario is unlikely." At one point, an answer included the "fact"
that the United States military would physically secure the geographic
border of Iraq. Curious, I checked the length of the physical border of
Iraq. Then I checked out the length of our own border with Mexico. Given
our exceptional success in securing our own desert borders, I found this
statement interesting.
-
- Soon after, I was out-processed for retirement and couldn't
have been more relieved to be away from daily exposure to practices I had
come to believe were unconstitutional. War is generally crafted and pursued
for political reasons, but the reasons given to Congress and the American
people for this one were so inaccurate and misleading as to be false. Certainly,
the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on
the real reasons for occupation of Iraq-more bases from which to flex U.S.
muscle with Syria and Iran, better positioning for the inevitable fall
of the regional sheikdoms, maintaining OPEC on a dollar track, and fulfilling
a half-baked imperial vision. These more accurate reasons could have been
argued on their merits, and the American people might indeed have supported
the war. But we never got a chance to debate it.
-
- My personal experience leaning precariously toward the
neoconservative maw showed me that their philosophy remains remarkably
untouched by respect for real liberty, justice, and American values. My
years of military service taught me that values and ideas matter, but these
most important aspects of our great nation cannot be defended adequately
by those in uniform. This time, salvaging our honor will require a conscious,
thoughtful, and stubborn commitment from each and every one of us, and
though I no longer wear the uniform, I have not given up the fight.
- January 19, 2004 issue
- Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
- http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article1.html
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