| From
General Sanchez's desk: A Convenient Truth
Editor's note: Leon D'Souza is a graduate of the
Utah State University journalism and communication department.
He now serves in the U.S. Army.
By Leon D'Souza
October 15, 2007 | Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez
is frothing at the mouth about the incompetence of the
Bush administration. The war in Iraq is a 'desperate
struggle,' he says, 'a nightmare with no end in sight.'
And more gloom and doom is sure to follow.
It's a quagmire of epic proportions, you see. The
Bush plan is "catastrophically flawed"; "unrealistically
optimistic," the former theater commander insists. As
for the much-ballyhooed "surge" into Baghdad? Pure humbug,
Sanchez says.
"Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military
strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do
with this flawed approach is stave off defeat."
Uh-huh, sure. And we're only discovering this now?
Thousands of lives later? Weren't things, in fact, beginning
to look bleak in 2003, minutes after our tanks rolled
into Firdos Square?
Ah, but back then the general was marching to a different
drumbeat; one that he hoped would earn him a fourth
star, and eventually a cushy berth in the Washington
bureaucracy.
Here's what he told the American Forces Press Service
in July that year, while cheerfully intoning his way
down a list of accomplishments assembled to illustrate
the assured prosperity of post-Baathist Iraq: "Upon
our arrival in Baghdad in late April, we found that
most institutions and governing structures had disappeared
along with the regime and the Iraqi army. It is truly
amazing how far we have traveled together with the Iraqi
people in just over 100 days since the start of the
conflict."
Then this: "...Am I optimistic about the future of
Iraq? You're absolutely right. I've said before that
even without all the progress, even if we were living
in darkness, just the mere fact that the Iraqi people
are free of the terror imposed by the Saddam Hussein
regime is enough for all of us to be hopeful for the
future."
Now, all of a sudden, the general is seeing terrifying
visions of dystopia? If he truly believed the administration
didn't have a workable strategy in Iraq, why did he
wait so long to speak his mind? More to the point, is
it not the constitutional duty of members of the general
staff to advise the president on prudent courses of
action?
Clearly, General Sanchez didn't seem to think so at
the time. Instead, he preferred to view the future through
rose-tinted glasses. Understandable, of course, since
you don't get an extra star for being an enfant terrible.
It was only after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal,
and the succession of events culminating in his retirement
from the service, that the general found his courage
- and possibly enough motivation to fill a book.
I, for one, am sick of such brazen opportunism in
the ranks of the military's power elite.
Please, General Sanchez, spare us the tour de force.
The American people shouldn't have to spend on the conveniently-timed
memoirs of a barefaced hypocrite.
For additional references to relevant news reports,
visit http://leondsouza.blogspot.com/.
RB
RB
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