Promotions All Around

CENTCOM goes to Petraeus, and Odierno gets bumped up:

Army Gen. David Petraeus, the four-star general who led troops in Iraq for the past year, will be nominated by President George W. Bush to be the next commander of U.S. Central Command, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

Gates also announced that Bush will nominate Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno to replace Petraeus in Baghdad.

Central Command oversees the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

If confirmed by the Senate, Petraeus would replace Navy Adm. William Fallon, who abruptly stepped down in March after a magazine reported that he was at odds with Mr. Bush over Iran policy. Fallon said the report, while not true, had become a distraction.

Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, currently commander of the Army's 3rd Corps based in the U.S., finished in February a 15-month tour as the top deputy to Petraeus in Baghdad.

I'm speculating, but Petraeus has already won confirmation because of how he testified earlier this month before skeptical Democrats. We already know that the surge has failed, Iraq is back onto the fast track for another round of civil war, the Mahdi Army is waiting to see what happens and the Bush Administration has been embarrased in previous attempts to fill certain positions.

But ask yourself this--is Odierno the right man for the job? Is CENTCOM going to start focusing more on Afghanistan than it has been able to?

By the way, what the hell happened to "The War Czar?" Shouldn't the name of General Lute have come up during the shuffle of personalities? Did that question take you aback? You know, General Douglas Lute? Remember him?

“I think it’s important to the people of Iraq,” said Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s coordinator for Iraq issues. “It signals a commitment of both their government and the United States to an enduring relationship based on mutual interests.

“The basic message here should be clear: Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own,” General Lute said. “That’s very good news, but it won’t have to stand alone.”

Sound dated? That's because it's from November, 2007. Since then, Lute hasn't been in the New York Times at all, according to their news archive of officials.

So much for "promotions," right?

Psychological Warfare – or – how aWol got Lute-Fisked

I should probably keep this to myself and enjoy the yucks in private – but I just can’t – you all need to know what a thumb in the eye Doug Lute is to George Bush.

But think about these points, in no specific order.

Lute is an active duty flag-rank. This intimidates the fuck out of the aWol one. He punked out, every officer and active duty NCO in a leadership position knows it, and aWol himself knows it too. A real live put-up-or-shut-up general intimidates the fuck out of him. I laugh my ass off at Lute briefing aWol on a daily basis – and dude – you do too, if you so much as sat through Platoon and Full Metal Jacket in one setting. Oh, to be a fly on that wall…

Thing is, I know a lot of O-3 to O-6’s – and trust me…a lot of them would attempt to arrest the fucker on charges of being…AWOL. He is not popular amongst those doing the fighting and the dying.

Robert Gates doesn’t just know this, he is banking on it.

Gates is not aWol’s man – he is his father’s man. He was reluctantly accepted in the wake of the dissing of the ISG – of which Gates was a part. aWol does not want to deal with Gates. Gates is a living breathing reminder of his abject failures.

Douglas Lute had his turn before the Senate on Thursday, and he didn’t seem to have any aversion at all to truth-telling and sobering assessments. He told senators during his hearing before the Armed Services Committee that he believed there was no purely military or America-only solution possible.

Not words that the punk president would care to hear.

And he is going to hear them every single day for the rest of his term.

A “War Czar” has been chosen

The White House today announced the appointment of Lt. General Douglas Lute to the position of Director of Operations for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lt. General Lute was a featured speaker at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare breakfast earlier in the week. Some of the things he said make way too much sense for a Bush appointment.

You be the judge. (From the AUSA Website)

AUSA Hosts Several key Committee Staffers

AUSA hosted several key congressional staff members at the Institute of Land Warfare breakfast this week. Addressing the group was LTG Douglas Lute, the director for operations, J-3, for the Joint Staff.

LTG Lute described the U.S. military and the global war on terror by saying, “We have a hammer but the problem is not a series of nails.” He also said that al Qaeda fights by using loosely connected cells around the world and educating its followers on the internet to achieve its goal of reestablishing the Caliphate—a geographic area under Muslim rule and governed by Islamic law.
The enemy has found a safe haven on the internet, which, according to Lute, they use “better than we do.” Instructions can be found on the internet o n how to build bomb vests and how to cross Syria into Iraq. All these things can be found “on the internet today. It is the greatest safe haven they use against us.”

Some of the lessons learned, Lute explained are that joint warfighting is one of the keys to winning. Fighting with allies and local people and understanding their culture and language are powerful weapons. In addition, firepower and maneuver are not as important as timing and precision. “We have the world’s best Army,” Lute explained, “but we don’t have ‘find and fix.’” The enemy, he said, has excellent intelligence gathering while the United States relies on intelligence almost solely from prisoners.

The war on terror, Lute warned, could last fifteen to sixteen years. Nor would it be a decisive victory. “We’re not going to see the win in the newspapers, there will be no V-J (Japan) Day.” Instead, he explain ed, the ideology we fight can be suppressed but not eradicated. Also, the military alone cannot deliver victory and, in the end, countries around the world will not offer us gratitude, but respect.

I am not of the opinion that adding another level to the metric will change anything or salvage the unsalvageable, but I am at least not mortified by their choice, which is frankly far and away better than I expected. He sure is saying the right things.

For the record, I will never be a fan of Bob Gates, but I think I see his fingerprints on this choice, and if so, he’s making it hard to maintain the level of loathing for him that I have had for at least 20 freakin’ years.

Also, it does not escape my notice that this transpired while Dick "use the Military to open a soda" Cheney was out of the country.

[Cross-posted from the blog you should be reading, Watching Those We Chose]