Wow. Retired Air Force General Tony McPeak is Barack Obama’s campaign Co-Chairman.
He recently did an interview the Oregonian and had some interesting things to say about Iraq.
I wonder what the lefties will say about this one:
Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak, retired former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, said Wednesday the Iraq war is “going remarkably well.” But the military’s rapid progress toward Baghdad has done little to ease his deep reservations about U.S. policy in the region.
McPeak, who headed the Air Force during the first Iraq war and now lives in Lake Oswego, said the United States will pay a political price for the Bush administration’s “maladroit” diplomatic efforts in the region. Turkey’s refusal to become a staging ground for the U.S. military hampered war plans, and he predicted a long and turbulent U.S. occupation of Iraq and perhaps other countries in the region.
“We’ve been in Europe now since 1945. We’ve been in Japan since 1945, been in Korea since 1950,” said McPeak, one of the United States’ most outspoken retired generals. “We haven’t had a Middle East occupation force, so this is a start of that. This is the way great powers operate; it’s the way Rome operated.”
(…)
Is there an alternative to urban warfare in Baghdad?
We could put Baghdad under siege and sit on the outside.
Would you really think so three years down the road, with stories from Baghdad of people dead and emaciated kids?
Yes. The impact on world opinion is an argument against that approach. It’s an argument for finishing this thing quickly. But, nevertheless, it’s a decision we can make. And we’ve already made decisions that said, ‘World opinion’s not very important to us.’
Is Iraq the last country we confront in the Middle East?
Who wants to volunteer to get cross-ways with us? We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.
I’ll tell you one thing we should not hope for (is) a democratic Iraq. When I hear the president talking about democracy, the last thing we should want is an election in Iraq. We’re not very popular. So I don’t think we’ll see any open elections in Iraq for a long time.
Hopefully over time they can be brought along like Japan and Germany — Japan and Germany were relatively easy, I think, and South Korea.
And, of course, Japan, Germany, and South Korea were all homes to long-term U.S. military commitments.
What, if anything, does this say about what Obama might actually do if he becomes President ?
The interview can be found here if The Oregonian’s link doesn’t work
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
As an Air Force officer in the Pacific 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to brief General McPeak on more than one occasion.
Recently, I wrote about those experiences — and about my interaction with the general — in a post, Retired General Succumbs to ‘Obamamania’, which should go a long way toward helping folks understand why, mistakenly, the general supports Obama.