Army Career Behind
Him, General Speaks Out
on Iraq
By THOM SHANKER,
NYTimes on the Web, May 15, 2007
ROCHESTER, May 10 — John
Batiste has traveled a long way in the last four years, from commanding the
First Infantry Division in Iraq to quitting the Army after three decades in
uniform and, now, from his new life overseeing a steel factory here, to openly
challenging President Bush on his management of the war.
“Mr. President, you did not listen,” General Batiste says in new television
advertisements being broadcast in Republican Congressional districts as part of
a $500,000 campaign financed by VoteVets.org. “You continue to pursue a
failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left
the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed
our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to
protect our fighting men and women.”
Those are powerful, inflammatory words from General Batiste, a retired major
general who spent 31 years in the Army, a profession sworn to unflinching
loyalty to civilian control of the military. Many senior officers say
privately that talk like this makes them uncomfortable; when you pin that first
star on your shoulder, they say, your first name becomes “General” for the rest
of your life.
But General Batiste says he has received no phone calls, letters or messages
from current or former officers challenging his public stance, although he
occasionally gets an anonymous e-mail message with the heading “Traitor.”
Having quit the Army in anger at what he calls mismanagement of the Iraq war, he
says he chose a second career far from Washington and the Pentagon so that he
could speak freely on military issues.
“I am outraged, as are the majority of Americans,” General Batiste said over
sandwiches in a blue-collar diner here. “I am a lifelong Republican.
But it is past time for change.”
A White House spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore, said in response to the advertising,
“We respectfully disagree.” Ms. Lawrimore said President Bush conferred
routinely with senior officers, citing a three-hour meeting on Thursday with the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and a conversation earlier in the week with Gen. David H.
Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq.
“The decisions the president has made have been based on information he receives
from commanders and generals on the ground,” she added.
A conversation with General Batiste offers one more window into the debate on
Iraq. While some former commanders, like General Batiste, have been
speaking out against the war, others, such as Gen. Jack Keane, the retired Army
vice chief of staff, have offered advice to the White House on Iraq.
General Batiste said he chose to go public with his critique of the war effort
only after 30 years of honoring the Army’s rules of silence. He said it
was that time commanding 22,000 troops in combat, in 2004 and 2005, that
convinced him that American fighting in Iraq was short of vision as well as
troops.
“There was never enough. There was never a reserve,” he said. “Again
and again, we had to move troops by as many as 200 miles out of our area of
operations to support another sector. We would pull troops out of contact
with the enemy and move them into contact with the enemy somewhere else.
The minute we’d leave, the insurgents would pick up on that, and kill everybody
who had been friendly.”
General Batiste was among a handful of retired generals first calling last year
for the resignation of Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary. He says he
realizes lending his name to television advertisements aimed at the president
and Republican members of Congress in an election cycle is different.
Officials of VoteVets.org, an Internet-based veterans advocacy organization, say
the television spots will run in the home districts of more than a dozen members
of Congress, among them Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who, as
former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is considered one of Capitol
Hill’s experts on the military.
“Like other citizens, retired generals have the constitutional right to engage
in robust debate on one of the most important issues of our time,” said John
Ullyot, the senator’s spokesman. “Senator Warner appreciates hearing from
people on all sides of the debate, and Virginians have a clear understanding of
his views on Iraq.”
VoteVets.org says it has tried to calibrate its message carefully, although
there is a limit to the nuance that can fit into 30-second television spots.
(Two other retired generals, Paul D. Eaton and Wesley K. Clark, speak in the
campaign’s other advertisements.)
As described by General Batiste, the message is not antiwar; it argues that
continuing the war in Iraq as a civil, sectarian conflict that cannot be won by
outside forces is crippling the Army and the Marine Corps. It does not
deny the danger of violent Islamic extremism, he says, but contends that the war
in Iraq prevents the armed services from preparing to battle other global
security threats.
And it says that if terrorism, and especially terrorists armed with
unconventional weapons, truly threaten America’s very survival, then the rest of
the country — not just the military — should be called to sacrifice.
On Thursday, General Batiste drove from the steel factory he now runs to a
veterans’ center where he is president of a nonprofit association of local
business leaders who support veterans in the region. He parked behind a
shop selling American flags (sales are up 42 percent over last year, with
profits going to aid veterans).
“In the Army, you communicate up the chain of command, and I communicated
vehemently with my senior commanders while I was in Iraq,” he said. Of his
departure from the Army, he said: “It was the toughest decision of my
life. I paced my quarters for days. I didn’t sleep for nights.
But I was not willing to compromise my principles for one more minute.”
[CBS announced this week that it was terminating its contract with General
Batiste as a consultant because of the advertisements.]
His retirement from the Army in November 2005 meant turning his back on a third
star and command of day-to-day combat missions in Iraq, the No. 2 military
position in Baghdad. Having cast aside his military career, General
Batiste cast his eyes away from the defense industry to join Klein Steel
Service, which cuts and processes steel for commercial, civilian enterprises —
and does no military work.
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