WASHINGTON -- In a broadside fired at the conduct of the war in Iraq, a senior Army strategist has accused the Bush administration of seeking to win "quickly and on the cheap" while ignoring the more critical strategic aim of creating a stable, democratic nation.

While the United States easily won the initial battles that toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago, the administration "either misunderstood or, worse, wished away" the difficulties of transforming that victory into the larger political goal, Army Lt. Col. Antulio J. Echevarria of the U.S. Army War College writes in a new paper.

President Bush and other senior officials have consistently cited this larger context for intervening in Iraq: establishing democracy there as a foothold to transform the Middle East and win the global war on terrorism.

Many officers still are rankled by the treatment of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who last spring was sharply criticized in public by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for suggesting the occupation would require significantly more troops than the initial war.

Yet the Pentagon's civilian leadership, centered in the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, focused "on achieving rapid military victories" with a force "equipped only to win battles, not wars," Echevarria, director of national security studies at the War College's Strategic Studies Institute, writes in the paper published in March.

The military force that invaded Iraq a year ago "proved insufficient to provide the stabilization necessary for political and economic reconstruction to begin," he writes. As a result, "the successful accomplishment of the administration's goal of building a democratic government in Iraq, for example, is still in question, with an insurgency growing rapidly."

The White House National Security Council and the Pentagon declined to comment.

The paper, posted on the Strategic Studies Institute's Web site, carries the standard warning that the views are Echevarria's own and "do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government."

While the paper specifically criticizes the Bush administration, Echevarria said in an interview that he wrote about the administration's approach in a broader context. "As a historian, I am looking at a longer trend than just the immediate situation," he said. Both the problem and potential solutions "go beyond the Bush administration."

Col. John R. Martin, deputy director of the Strategic Studies Institute, stressed that the study "covers multiple administrations." By definition, he added, strategic analysis focuses on problems -- not on successes.

But the critique reflects frustration among some active-duty and retired officers about how Rumsfeld and his top advisers seized control of planning for and execution of the invasion and occupation. Indeed, Echevarria said the reaction to his paper from within the Army "has been pretty positive."

Many officers still are rankled by the treatment of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who last spring was sharply criticized in public by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for suggesting the occupation would require significantly more troops than the initial war. At Rumsfeld's direction, the number was whittled back, with Rumsfeld and other senior officials arguing that "shock and awe" would collapse any opposition and the Iraqi people, as Vice President Dick Cheney said in a March 16, 2003 interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," would greet U.S. troops "as liberators."

Military officers, by tradition and temperament, are reluctant to criticize the civilian leadership, especially in wartime.

"I know of the frustration of dealing with the ideologues in the Pentagon," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a West Pointer who commanded an armored brigade in Desert Storm and led U.S. troops into Bosnia in 1996. "But these guys are very loyal and they are not going to grumble."

Nash and others argue that the U.S. campaign in Iraq has gotten off track by focusing on short-term military problems.

For example, U.S. Marines won tactical battles in Fallujah last week, systematically sweeping city blocks of insurgents. But the battles inevitably cost civilian lives and, judging by editorials in the Arab press, eroded American legitimacy. At one point the Web site of the popular Arab satellite television station, Al-Jazeera, featured what it said were photographs of children killed by American weapons.

Gen. John Abizaid, overall U.S. military commander in the region, seemed to recognize the costs of negative press when he complained Monday that Arab media were portraying the Marines' actions "as purposefully targeting civilians."

"They have not been truthful in their reporting," Abizaid said in a press briefing. "American forces are doing their very best to protect civilians."

Echevarria, a West Point graduate with M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Princeton University, served as operations officer of a cavalry squadron, among other assignments, and has written widely on strategy.

Historically, the American military has tended to "shy away" from the difficult process of turning military battlefield triumphs into strategic successes, he writes in his paper.

His words reflect the work of the late Army combat officer and strategist Harry Summers Jr., who bitterly observed to a North Vietnamese officer after the Vietnam War that "you never defeated us on the battlefield." That is so, the North Vietnamese replied, "but it is also irrelevant."

As they struggled to understand the lessons of Vietnam, Summers and others came to recognize that the concentration on individual battles neglected the building and defending of a progressive democratic government in South Vietnam.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, Echevarria writes, the American effort has mistakenly "placed more emphasis on destroying enemy forces than securing population centers and critical infrastructure and maintaining order."

During planning for Iraq, he writes, "senior military officials argued that, while a small coalition force moving rapidly and supported by adequate firepower might well defeat the Iraqi army, a larger force would still be necessary for the ensuing stability operations." Yet Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials "dismissed such arguments as old-think or perceived them as foot-dragging by a military perhaps grown too accustomed to resisting civilian authority."

Fixing this long-term problem, Echevarria suggests, requires rebalancing the roles of military professionals and civilians in strategic decision-making. Moreover, he writes, the United States must develop a better capacity for nation-building and stability alongside its warfighting skills.

Echevarria does not spell out what needs to be done in Iraq now.

Nash termed that "a hard question," adding, "it's real easy to sit here in Washington and give counsel."

"But once you understand that the political objectives are supreme, you understand that you have to broaden the political coalition internationally, regionally and locally" to support nation-building in Iraq, he said.

"That's hard to do, and even harder if you have to swallow your pride," Nash said.

© Copyright 2004 Newhouse News Service

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