Robert Parry: 'Surge' Architect Rejects 'War Czar' Job

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'Surge' Architect Rejects 'War Czar' Job
by Robert Parry | Apr 12 2007


The widespread doubts within U.S. military and intelligence circles that George W. Bush’s Iraq War “surge” can succeed were underscored when one of the plan’s architects, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, was one of three generals to rebuff a White House offer of a new job dubbed “war czar.”

In December, Keane and neoconservative scholar Frederick Kagan promoted the idea of a U.S. military escalation in Iraq as an alternative to the growing consensus in favor of a phased withdrawal of Amercan combat forces.

At the time, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group was advocating a troop drawdown combined with a stronger commitment to training Iraqi forces and renewed talks with Iraq’s neighbors. But Bush bristled at the implied criticism of his work as “war president,” declaring: “This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.”

Bush countered the momentum behind the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations by latching onto the Keane-Kagan “surge” idea. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the two commanders then overseeing the Iraq War, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, resisted the “surge,” Bush ousted Abizaid and Casey and overruled the Pentagon brass.

In January, Bush unveiled the “surge,” which not only would send about 20,000 more U.S. combat troops into Iraq but called for stationing some of them in Iraqi police outposts throughout Baghdad. War critics accused the President of throwing away more American lives out of stubbornness and ego.

With the “surge” now about halfway in place, the U.S. military reports that the number of American soldiers who have died in and around Baghdad over the past seven weeks has nearly doubled. And that was before the renewed opposition from radical Shiites and the latest upswing in street-to-street fighting in Sunni neighborhoods.

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