E-mail a friend(Ret.) Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton
airdate August 22, 2007
Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton was commander of all U.S. Army infantry training at Fort Benning, GA when he was told to report to Bagdad to train a new Iraqi army—8 days after "mission accomplished' was declared. His job was eventually expanded to include all of Iraq's security forces, including the police. He maintained this post till '04 and retired in '06, after a 33-year military career. Eaton was one of the first to call for Defense Secretary Rumfeld's resignation and now appears in TV spots for votevets.org.
(Ret.) Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton
Tavis Smiley: Tonight, we were scheduled to talk with the commander of all U.S. forces in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon. Earlier today, as you probably heard by now, 14 American soldiers under General Mixon's command were killed in a helicopter crash near his headquarters in Tikrit. General Mixon understandably will join us at a later time on this program.
Of course, the other big story out of Iraq were comments from Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki lashing out at critics here in the U.S. who have questioned his ability to govern. Those critics include the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. More on that in a moment.
Joining us tonight, though, to discuss these developments and more is retired Army Major General Paul Eaton. During his time in Iraq, General Eaton was in charge of training Iraqi security forces, including the Iraqi military. He joins us tonight from Seattle. General Eaton, nice to have you back on the program, sir, and thanks for your time.
Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton: Tavis, great to be with you again, thank you.
Tavis: Let me start with what it does to a soldier when he hears that another deadly day in Iraq is over now. Fourteen U.S. soldiers killed in this helicopter crash.
Eaton: Tavis, perhaps from the perspective of a father of soldiers, my sons were soldiers and my heart goes out to every mom and dad and family member of the men we've lost. And my respects to General Mixon for what he is going through, and I wish them all very well.
Tavis: You can't talk about this - for better or worse, fortunately or unfortunately - you can't talk about these kinds of days without linking this to the politics of what we are in. There's just no way to get around that. So, I hear your expression of concern; I want to get that out of the way first. Let me ask you, though, in your own mind, what this does to underscore whatever it is that you feel about what we are doing or not doing, as it were, in Iraq politically?
Eaton: Tavis, we've kind of discussed this in the past. We have a failure on the part of the government to get after a diplomatic surge, a political surge, to help the American soldier in this endeavor. We went into this war without a clear-cut strategy, and we have yet to bring to bear the full power of the United States, diplomatically or economically, to help the men and women on the ground serving our country in uniform in this grinding attritional warfare that we're in.
Tavis: I hear your point that we have not come with it, as it were, diplomatically or economically. I don't know if you think we've come with it militarily, but I suspect if the Bush administration were on this program tonight, they'd say that's precisely what this troop surge is all about.
Eaton: Well, the troop surge would have been great if it had been accompanied by a diplomatic surge at the same time. The troop surge, in the eyes of men senior to me and older than I am, consistently came across as too little, too late. This administration has failed to grow the Army to meet the foreign policy demands that we are asking of it.
They're talking about a growth of 65,000 to the year 2012. Tavis, that's not going to help today. The reason the surge was 30,000 - that's all we could afford. April, we've got to start drawing this down simply because the president of the United States has failed to establish a strategic reserve for this nation, and we have a small military surge, and those men and women are doing a great job on the streets of Baghdad. Wherever the American soldier is, life will get better. We can't be everywhere with 160,000 soldiers in a big country of 27 million people.
Tavis: I might not be the smartest guy on television - and for that matter, off television - but is there anybody in Washington or beyond the Beltway who believes that this report that we're expecting from General Petraeus, with all due respect to him, is not going to say in one shape, form, or fashion, that the troop surge is working. Don't we expect that report to say that?
Eaton: We expect the report to say it because in the words of some pretty competent political observers, where those soldiers are, the surge is working. What happens is they create areas of security, but where they are not the forces that we are combating, the evil that we have going on out there will slip out into areas where the American soldier is not able to put his direct influence.
So they will come back and say the surge has made Baghdad safer, and that's probably true. But the surge will not be successful unless we get an Iraqi government that is competent and is able to establish itself as a legitimate government and appear to be legitimate to the soldiers of Iraq, to the Iraqi armed forces who right now are looking to allegiance elsewhere.
Their allegiance is to forces that are different from the national government - sectarian, if you will. The militias that we've got out there. We have failed to deliver an Iraqi government with this military surge that has been so expensive to the United States.
Tavis: It's a perfect segue to talk about the politics of late around the Iraqi government and how much time it will have to show some progress. I'll come to that in just 30 seconds. Before I do, let me ask you, given that we all expect this report ultimately to say the surge is working, your answer notwithstanding, what does Congress do, what do the American people do, when we say we listen to the military, when we say we trust our commanders, they put a report out that says the troop surge is working. Aren't the hands of a democratic Congress tied? Won't the president gloat about that? What, realistically, do you do when the guy in charge says the surge is working?
Eaton: Tavis, the Democratic Party has got to get into a greater unity, and this precipitous withdrawal is simply irresponsible, it is nonsense. Militarily, it is nonsense. You can't do that. What you can do is demand from this president to grow the Army. Demand from this president to establish the strategic reserve for the United States of America so that we don't get these shin kicks from the Russians.
If you've watched lately, we've seen a little bit of growth on the part of the Russians - a second-tier power, but they're starting to push us around a little bit. We have got to get the Democratic Party to craft a rational draw-down of forces in Iraq. And we're not saying draw down completely - we're talking about leaving forces to execute combat operations against al Qaeda.
And leaving forces to deal with the development of the Iraqi security forces. And leaving forces to help the diplomatic effort that has been so absent. I'm not a big fan of a lot of the pundits out there, and Donald Trump, take him for what you will, but his comment about Secretary Rice - she has failed to deliver a deal. It's been incoherent, and Foggy Bottom has failed the United States.
Tavis: Let me now put up on the screen here four quotes from four different individuals, and I'll tell you who they are in just a second here. General Eaton, I want to read them for you there in Seattle on the satellite feed. And I think if I run them in this order, they will tell a compelling story quickly here, in 30 seconds, about the debate - the politics around what's happening in Iraq relative to your earlier point about the government there.
Let me start with President Bush's comments earlier today. On one hand, we lose 14 soldiers in a helicopter crash. Here's what your president says about Iraq, and I quote: "Iraq is one of the several fronts in this war on terror, but it's a central front. It's a central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again, and it's a central front for the United States, and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating."
Let me give you a quick response here, General Eaton. What I hear the president saying, again, he's still tying what happened to us on 9/11 to Iraq.
Eaton: The president is working the only political agenda that he can to justify what we are doing now in Iraq. Iraq is a distracter from the overall global mission of the United States Army to fight and win the nation's wars. He had to draw down forces and equipment in Afghanistan in order to fund the Iraq war effort. We have managed to create greater numbers of opponents by what we are doing in Iraq right now.
Tavis: Let me run right quick - before my time runs out, let me run three quick quotes here specifically about the Iraqi government, since we've now shared with you what President Bush had to say about Iraq on this deadly day. First, Senator Carl Levin out of Michigan, important committee chair: "I hope the Iraqi assembly, when it reconvenes in two weeks, will vote the Maliki government out of office."
Then Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, says, and I quote: "I share Senator Levin's hope that the Iraqi parliament will replace Prime Minister Maliki with a less divisive and more unifying figure when it returns in a few weeks."
And then here's what Mr. Maliki, the prime minister in Iraq, has to say, and I quote: "No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraqi government; it was elected by its people." My time is short here, but the politics, General Eaton, about what will happen to this government aren't going away any time soon, it appears.
Eaton: The president's definitely of victory is a Jeffersonian-style democracy in Iraq. He tried to use historical examples in his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today, and whoever wrote that speech, by the way, needs to go back to school. The al-Maliki government is simply not delivering. The surge was designed to give it room to deliver on its promises, and it has failed.
Tavis: Major General Eaton, thank you for joining us tonight. I always appreciate your insight. We'll do it again soon - take care of yourself.
Eaton: Thank you, sir.
Tavis: Thank you, sir.
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