U.S. winning battles, losing war?

WASHINGTON -- Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say that the United States is facing the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its stated goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq.

Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading, and being voiced publicly for the first time.

Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the American failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday.

"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is still involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war because we don't understand the war we're in."

The emergence of sharp differences over U.S. strategy has set off a debate, a year after the United States ostensibly won a war in Iraq, about how to preserve that victory. The core question is how to end a festering insurrection that has stymied some reconstruction efforts, made many Iraqis feel less safe and created uncertainty about who actually will run the country after the scheduled turnover of political sovereignty on June 30.

Both inside and outside the armed forces, experts generally are arguing that the U.S. military should remain there but should change its approach. Some argue for more troops, others for less, but they generally agree on revising the United States' stated goals to make them less ambitious. They are worried by evidence that the United States is losing ground with the Iraqi public.

Some officers say the place to begin overhauling U.S. policy is by ousting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom they see as responsible for a series of strategic and tactical blunders over the last year. Several of those interviewed said a profound anger is building within the Army at Rumsfeld and those around him.

A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not."

Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice."

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