Meeting retired General Tommy Franks can be an emotional experience.
His craggy, battle-hardened face has an irrepressible habit of
breaking into a warm, disarming smile. (An enraptured David
Letterman was moved to compliment Franks on his "beautiful eyes.")
As he traveled the country earlier this month promoting his new
memoir, American Soldier, the commanding general of the two
post-September 11 wars mixed a deeply felt patriotism with
humanizing self- effacement. At the National Press Club last week,
he effortlessly threaded a discursion about how he would have liked
to subtitle his book "Ain't This A Great Country?" into an
endearing admission that he once gave a speech on an aircraft
carrier so long-winded that the ship's captain confessed he felt
his hair growing. It's a winning combination. At a North Carolina
book signing, one of the thousands of attendees waiting in line to
shake Franks's hand compared seeing him to "meeting General
Eisenhower."That's certainly a comparison the Republican National Committee
wants to encourage. While Franks has yet to formally endorse his
commander-in-chief, he is scheduled to address the GOP convention
in New York in primetime on September 2, just hours before George
W. Bush accepts his party's renomination. The general will be a
potent weapon in Bush's campaign to restore his tarnished image as
a successful war president. After all, most Americans were
introduced to Franks when the press-reticent general commented on
the swift battlefield victories he reaped in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As a result, Franks conjures up images of celebrations of Afghan
children in the streets of Kabul and the fall of the statue of
Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square.
Since Franks's July 2003 retirement from the Army, however,
Americans have been treated to a disturbing new set of images from
Iraq: the charred bodies of contractors lynched in Falluja, the
black-masked militiamen of the Mahdi Army in Najaf, the unmuzzled
dogs terrifying Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Whatever initial
goodwill the Iraqis harbored for American forces is gone. In May,
the final poll conducted for the now-defunct Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) found that over 80 percent of Iraqis distrust the
continued U.S. presence in the country. And, in the last year,
nearly 800 American troops have died and nearly 5,700 have been
wounded there.
The situation in Afghanistan is little better. Even if the country
is able to hold its twice-postponed national elections this year,
it will still be in the hands of its various corrupt warlords. The
Taliban, driven from Kabul and Kandahar but never destroyed, is
steadily growing in strength. Its successful attacks on foreign aid
workers have slowed reconstruction to a snail's pace. Al Qaeda's
leaders--also driven from the country but never destroyed--are
believed to be in the lawless tribal areas on the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border, carrying out or inspiring attacks
around the world that have left hundreds murdered.
Franks is a symbol of these failures as much as he is a symbol of
the initial military successes that preceded them. Although
responsibility for the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan surely flows
more from Franks's superiors than from Franks himself, the
general's decisions at the helm of Central Command (centcom)
abetted and exacerbated many of their errors. In planning for both
Afghanistan and Iraq, Franks focused on the major combat that began
each conflict to the detriment of the counterinsurgency and
stability operations that would prove crucial to prevailing. As a
self-styled maverick, he disdained fellow generals who questioned
his strategy and glommed onto administration officials whose ideas
about warfare were seriously flawed, creating a feedback loop that
reinforced their mistakes. America will be living with the
consequences for years to come.
When Franks sat down after September 11 to devise a plan for
invading Afghanistan, he understood, according to American Soldier,
that "America was through with half measures and pinpricks," like
firing "million-dollar [Tomahawk missiles] into empty tents."
Instead, he writes, "we were going to war--boots-on-the-ground
war." But, mindful of the quagmire endured by a 620, 000-strong
Soviet army in the 1980s, Franks told his planning staff, "The
question is whose boots, and how many pairs." Like Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, Franks believed the Taliban could be routed and Al
Qaeda destroyed with a minimal number of American troops. So he and
his staff drew up a plan--a "unique page in military history"--to
combine air power and a handful of unconventional forces (both
Special Forces and CIA paramilitary teams) with the roughly 20,000
anti-Taliban warriors of the Afghan Northern Alliance. He divided
his plan into four phases. The first three were preparation,
initial combat operations, and finally "decisive" combat
operations. Phase IV would stabilize the country, requiring
"counterinsurgency and civil affairs military forces" deployed over
"a three-to-five-year period."
The plan, launched on October 7, 2001, initially seemed to vindicate
Franks's strategy. The Northern Alliance captured Mazar-e-Sharif
from the Taliban on November 9 and pushed south, seizing the
capital, Kabul, a week later, and the Taliban stronghold of
Kandahar on December 6. Barely 300 Special Operations Forces and
100 CIA operatives comprised the U.S. ground component.
But, by early December, hundreds of jihadists, including Osama bin
Laden, were girding for a final battle at a one-square-mile redoubt
near the Pakistan border known as Tora Bora--providing perhaps the
best, and last, opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda. It never happened.
Franks relied on Afghan militiamen, not Americans, for the assault.
While they promised to seal off Al Qaeda's retreat, the corruption
and relative lack of skill among the Afghans allowed bin Laden and
his men to flee across the Pakistan border, and U.S. bombing was
unable to stop them. Bin Laden (who had used the U.S. retreat from
Somalia in 1993 and years of insufficient U.S. retaliation to his
'90s attacks as the basis for his critique of America as a paper
tiger) claimed victory: "The U.S. forces dared not break into our
positions, despite the unprecedented massive bombing. ... Is there
any clearer evidence of their cowardice, fear, and lies regarding
their legends about their alleged power?"
Hamid Karzai's new government saw the U.S. passivity in Tora Bora as
a disaster. By the next month, Afghan officials were openly
imploring Washington to use the Army directly against the Taliban
and Al Qaeda. "If the Americans don't want to repeat the mistakes
made at Tora Bora, they will have to send in more ground troops to
complement their aerial strategy," Karzai's national security chief
told The Telegraph. Engineer Ali, a top Afghan intelligence
official, was no more sanguine: "With the current strategy of
bombing from the air, the Al Qaeda fighters merely disperse in any
direction they choose--often with the cooperation of locals." By
mid-2002, numerous military and intelligence after-action reports
concurred. "We fucked up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and
letting the Afghans do all the work," a senior U.S.
counterterrorism official told The Washington Post. "We didn't put
U.S. forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk."
Franks, however, was unfazed. As he flew to a Northern Alliance
meeting on December 22, he reflected, "I knew that there was still
hard fighting ahead in Afghanistan. But the main resistance had
been shattered. The remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda were
hiding in the snowy mountains of the southeast, subjected to
relentless bombing." And, because of his optimism, Franks saw no
need for the robust counterinsurgency envisioned in Phase IV. Only
8,500 American troops were deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, and
Franks limited their activity to hunting Al Qaeda on the country's
southeastern border rather than establishing security and fighting
militants around the country. The Pentagon, evidently with Franks's
consent, blocked the expansion of international peacekeeping forces
from their Kabul base of operations. And no American forces were
used for stability operations.
As a result, over the last two and a half years, the fundamentalists
have grown in strength, mounting increasing attacks on American
forces, assassinating foreign aid workers, and terrorizing the
Afghan population. Last September, a Taliban spokesman explained
their strategy to David Rohde of The New York Times: Bog the United
States down in a guerrilla campaign for "ten or twenty years" that
it showed no ability to adapt to. Warlords now control the country,
not Karzai. Yet, to Franks, reviewing the Afghan campaign in 2002,
"We had accomplished our mission."
Franks had so much faith in his Afghanistan strategy that he
repeated it in Iraq. Again, the campaign was divided into four
phases, with "stability operations" serving as Phase IV. And, once
again, Franks showed comparatively little concern for the final
phase. When he initially told Rumsfeld in February 2002 that Phase
IV might require "as many as two hundred fifty thousand" troops,
the defense secretary barely acknowledged the estimate. Franks got
the message. So, when he briefed the National Security Council
(NSC) on the invasion plan that August, and Rumsfeld said, "We will
want to get Iraqis in charge of Iraq as soon as possible," Franks
concurred: "At some point, we can begin drawing down our force.
We'll want to retain a core strength of at least fifty thousand
men"--as compared with the 150,000-man invasion force. While Franks
pored over the minutiae of how to invade--positioning units,
securing overflight agreements from neighboring countries,
preparing "the whole alphabet soup of available Precision Guided
Munitions"--he essentially shrugged his shoulders at what to do
once Baghdad fell: "On one hand, larger Coalition military forces
and martial law might be required to stay in country for years, in
order to preserve security," he writes of his Phase IV
deliberations. "On the other, the Iraqis might ... welcome the
liberation and organize themselves swiftly to control Iraq without
Coalition help."
Franks's invasion planning paid off in a three-week capture of
Baghdad. But just as swift was the breakdown in law and order.
Franks was unperturbed. When a British general reported to Franks
that looting in Basra "was really revenge"- -i.e., an expression
of political fury likely to escalate--Franks replied, "Looks like
we're winning the war, but violence like that is going to keep us
here awhile." Similarly, when then-Major General David Petraeus of
the 101st Airborne reported that Iraq was crawling with hidden
ammunition while the 400, 000-man Iraqi army "just walked home,"
Franks thought to himself, "I knew that would be a problem for Jay
Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance."
But, despite his February 2002 troop estimate for Phase IV, he never
asked for more boots on the ground to secure the country. Instead,
he argued for more "wingtips on the ground"--"hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of civilians from America and the international
community"--and, to facilitate their arrival, Franks writes, he
advised Bush to declare the end of "major combat operations,"
thereby drawing a bright line behind Phase III (and prompting the
infamous mission accomplished banner flown during Bush's May 1,
2003, speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln). And, while Franks had
expected an infusion of international troops for Phase IV that
never materialized, neither their absence nor the continued
deterioration of security led him to adapt his strategy. "There was
a commonly held belief that civic action would not be possible in
Iraq without security," Franks writes. "I would continue to argue
that there could be no security without civic action."
As a result, there was neither. In the months before Franks left
centcom in July 2003, the Baghdad murder rate jumped 35 percent. In
May, what remained of the Baghdad police department received 260
reports of major property crimes; in June, it received 410.
Instability spread around the country, preventing the CPA from
rebuilding Iraq. (By the time the CPA disbanded in June, most of
the $18.6 billion Congress appropriated for reconstruction remained
unspent.) The deterioration of security and the lack of
reconstruction had a debilitating effect on Iraqi hearts and minds,
bringing many into the ranks of the various insurgent groups. As a
fighter in Basra told The Scotsman last week, "We gave them the
opportunity to develop Iraq. But, in fact, nothing has changed.
Now, there is no electricity, no water, and even fewer jobs than
before. ... We are fed up with the occupation." Yet Franks, whose
early inability to provide security for Iraqis started the vicious
circle rolling, has evinced no regret. When Ted Koppel noted to him
that Phase IV of the Iraq war hasn't gone well, Franks replied, "I
guess it's eye of the beholder."
Franks wasn't alone in his illusions about what constituted victory
and what would be necessary to secure it. Writing about his
insistence that Iraqi security would surely follow
reconstruction--and that no change of strategy was necessary
despite the growing discord in the spring of 2003--he notes, "I
knew George W. Bush and Don Rumsfeld agreed with me." Indeed, at
practically every crucial juncture in Iraq and Afghanistan, Franks
ratified the assumptions of his civilian superiors. At a November
2001 NSC meeting, for example, Bush dismissed using American troops
for peacekeeping in Afghanistan: "We don't do police work. We need
a core coalition of the willing and then pass on these tasks to
others."
Indeed, senior administration officials have taken to invoking
Franks's name to defend their strategic mistakes. At an Aspen
Institute forum last month, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
was asked to respond to criticism from many in the military--most
famously from former Army Chief of Staff General Eric
Shinseki--that the United States did not send enough troops to
Iraq. "President Bush's senior military advisers for the war were
not the chief of staff of the Army," Wolfowitz replied. "They were
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General [Richard] Myers,
and General Franks, the combatant commander in Iraq. And General
Franks's requirement was exactly what he got. And his estimate of
what we needed postwar was about a quarter of what General Shinseki
talked about in public."
In his book, Franks doesn't directly address Shinseki's February
2003 remark to Congress that "several hundred thousand soldiers"
would be necessary to secure peace in Iraq. Indeed, he is utterly
dismissive of the generals who head the services, calling them
"Title X motherfuckers," in reference to the section of U.S. Code
that governs their appointment. Nor does he answer any of the other
military analyses that predicted much of the current Iraq morass,
such as a widely read Army War College study ominously warning that
"long-term gratitude is unlikely and suspicion of U.S. motives will
increase as the occupation continues." (The study emphasized that
Phase IV planning would be more important than Phase III
preparations.) Franks, American Soldier makes clear, considers
himself an iconoclast, and so ignoring the advice of his military
colleagues was almost a point of pride. "I had been a maverick all
my life. ... I was frequently on the outside of the Army's
conservative mainstream, " he writes.
In Rumsfeld, Franks found a kindred spirit, someone eager to
frustrate the military consensus. Indeed, while Franks lauds Bush
in American Soldier, he reserves his most effusive praise for the
defense secretary. "Rumsfeld was no mere 'like-thinking affiliate,'
as several service secretaries have been described," he writes,
"but rather a leader who wanted to use his own ideas to bring about
change." Franks emerged from his first meeting with Rumsfeld
dazzled by the defense secretary's ideas about military
modernization--"[H]e was in an orbit all his own"--making Franks
perhaps the only general in the Army to gush over a secretary
widely considered the service's visceral enemy. But Franks sees
himself as much more like Rumsfeld than like his fellow Army
generals. So, when it came to planning for the Iraq war, he was
enthusiastic at the mandate he received: "This was a revolutionary
concept way outside the box of conventional doctrine." And, when it
became clear to Franks that Rumsfeld would disturb the military's
"conservative mainstream" with his plans for restructuring Pentagon
operations more generally, he said to himself, "Good for him."
But not good for the servicemen and women. In a recent interview
with the military newspaper Stars %amp% Stripes, a reporter
mentioned just a few of their burdens: open-ended deployments, tour
extensions, and the like. "That's a sad thing," Franks replied,
"but wouldn't it be really sad if we were getting our people hurt
and killed and not accomplishing something?" Thanks in part to the
strategies he used in Afghanistan and Iraq, Franks's question grows
less hypothetical by the day.
By Spencer Ackerman
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