Dale Franks: [1]
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former US military commander in Iraq, has given the Democratic response to the President’s weekly radio address. Apparently, the general doesn’t much like [2] the president.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who led coalition forces through the first critical year of Iraq’s insurgency, said Saturday in a nationally broadcast radio address that President Bush had failed to “devise a strategy for victory” and that the time had come to withdraw U.S. troops.
In the Democratic rebuttal to Bush’s weekly radio address, Sanchez offered conditional support to a House war funding bill that requires combat troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2008…
As the coalition commander, Sanchez said in Saturday’s broadcast, he personally witnessed “the administration’s failure to devise a strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States. That failure continues today.”
The thing is, as the coalition commander in Iraq, Gen. Sanchez was the primary officer for providing military advice to the president about Iraq, and assisting in formulating a winning strategy there.
So, where was the “strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States” created by General Sanchez, that he proposed to the president? What objections did Gen. Sanchez raise to the Bush Administration policy? Where is the record of Gen. Sanchez’s efforts to create such a strategy?
Correct. Further:
Gen Sanchez wasn’t some innocent bystander to the policy process re Iraq. He wasn’t some middle-of-the-pack battalion commander, following the orders he was given. He was the senior military commander on the ground. It was his responsibility to propose a strategy to the president that contained his best military advice. It was his responsibility to plan the strategy, obtain approval for it, and then execute it.
Once again, correct. It is also worth noting, the General Sanchez was replaced. That the current leadership on the ground in Iraq, is far more successful than General Sanchez was, would seem a reasonable indication of just why Sanchez was replaced. Which, in turn, would also seem to get some rather solid indication of why Sanchez chooses to play this line, now.
Update: (Bit)
Via Memeorandum, I note Victor Davis Hanson [3]coming to basically the same conclusion:
In all these cases, there is dismal pattern: a mediocre functionary keeps quiet about the mess around him, muddles through, senses that things aren’t going right, finds himself on the losing end of political infighting, is forced out or quits, seethes that his genius wasn’t recognized, takes no responsibility for his own failures, worries he might be scape-goated, and at last senses that either a New York publisher or the anti-war Left, or both, will be willing to offer him cash or notoriety — but only if he serves their needs by trashing his former colleagues in a manner he never would while on the job.