What the Generals Say

[bemildred]

PAUL D. EATON A retired Army major general, Eaton was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.

On the Iraq Study Group report:
“The report leads with an emphasis on diplomatic efforts. We’ve overrelied on military ground forces to the exclusion of economic incentives and we’ve certainly neglected things on the diplomatic front. You didn’t see any real military guys or tacticians or guys schooled in the operational arts involved in this report, because that’s not really what we needed. I hope we do get more involved with our embassies, let’s get our ambassadors to Tehran, to Syria, let’s engage these guys. They have interests, they have a vote, they’re already involved. For this administration to not sit down with these guys is irresponsible.”

Eaton’s recommendations:
“We need to increase the size of our ground forces in Iraq to increase our flexibility in the region. If we’re going to persist with the notion that Iraq is a country composed of Kurds and Arabs, Shia and Sunni, we’ve got to greatly increase the sense of urgency with respect to building Iraqi security forces. It’s criminal to have these reports coming out about inadequate training and equipping of Iraqi forces. It’s absolutely inappropriate that we have Iraqi security forces rattling around in the backs of Japanese pickup trucks—you’d never guess that this was a main effort of ours, looking at the situation on the ground. We need regional, diplomatic engagement and coercion in the form of carrot and stick. We need to start calling in our markers on Egypt. We need to engage and support Jordan—they’ve bent over backward to help us. We’ve got to leverage the Turks. They’re a member of NATO, but they’re not playing fairly up in the north . Bring in the economic power of the U.S., and if we’ve got to apply the trillion-dollar economy we’ve got to help bring about the outcome we need in the Mideast, then let it be so—let’s apply it directly to Iraq. We need to approach security forces in Iraq in a Manhattan to get these guys viable.”

Newsweek