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UNT military history professors available to comment on report on benchmarks for Iraq
Today (Thursday, July 11), during a White House news conference, President Bush released a report on U.S.-set benchmarks for Iraq, which he said shows “satisfactory progress” in eight areas of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress. “Unsatisfactory” progress was made in eight other areas, with two areas having mixed results. The president touted successes in Iraq’s Anbar and Diyala provinces, but also said that Iraqis have not done enough to prepare for local elections or pass a law to share in oil revenues. Facing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to move toward a pullout of U.S. forces in Iraq, Bush said he will make further decisions after a report in September from Gen. David Petreaus, the top American commander in Iraq. Dr. Geoffrey Wawro, director of the University of North Texas Military History Center and the Major General Olinto Mark Barsanti Professor of Military History, said Bush describing the war in Iraq as “complex and extremely challenging” during the news conference was a euphemism for “an extremely intractable situation in Iraq that will require a long-term occupation by American troops to resolve the situation.” “Our troops are staving off a nation’s civil war, and voters and taxpayers no longer want to keep paying for an occupation that has become a one-man show,” he says. “Bush is the commander-in-chief, but Congress reacts to ordinary citizens and controls the purse strings. And Congress has lost patience with Bush and the war.” Wawro may be reached on his cell phone at (214) 514-7224. Dr. Adrian Lewis, chairman of the UNT Department of History and a military historian, says the report on the benchmarks proves that a comprehensive strategy for winning the war in Iraq is missing. Lewis is the author of The American Culture of War: The History of the U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom, which he wrote in response to the U.S. military’s failure to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the current war in Iraq. The book was published in early January by Routledge. “In regard to strategy, in Vietnam it is argued that we won every major battle, that at the tactical and operational levels of war we were victorious. However, we never developed a comprehensive strategy to win the war. It seems to me we are doing the same thing in Iraq,” Lewis says. “We put soldiers and marines into a specific province, such as Diyala. They win the tactical battles. They restore order, but the insurgent forces have not been destroyed, and their ability to resupply, to reequip, to reorganize and fight another day has not been destroyed. They have simply been pushed out of one area and into another.” Lewis says U.S. troops in Iraq “need to control more than the battlefield.” “We need to control the entire environment in which the battles take place, and until we can do that, we will not succeed,” he says. Lewis may be reached in his UNT office at (940) 565-2288.
UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108
Contact: Nancy Kolsti (940) 565-3509
Email: nkolsti@unt.edu
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