Exclusive Interview: Gen. Franks Squarely Behind Iraq Troop Surge
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, March 12, 2007
General Tommy Franks, the former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command who led U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, tells NewsMax that he is squarely behind the controversial "surge" of troops.
"The reason that I say this is a good idea is because that's what the leaders on the ground are saying," says Franks, speaking from Hobart, Okla., the future home of the General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute and Museum.
As head of the U.S. Central Command, Franks oversaw American military operations in a 25-country region, including the Middle East. He took the position in July 2000 and served until his retirement on July 7, 2003.
Franks, 61, was the U.S. general who led the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan following 9/11, and he led the 2003 invasion of Iraq that overthrew Saddam Hussein. He was also Commander-in-Chief of the American occupation forces.
In a free-ranging exclusive interview, Franks set the record straight on the surge and a host of thorny subjects, and revealed the following about President Bush and his administration:
President Bush was never in a rush to invade Iraq.
Bush was always a good leader – calm, studious and deliberative – and was never steam-rolled by his top advisors, but was always his own man.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is getting a bum rap.
No administration would have allowed Iraq to continue with business-as-usual after 9/11.
There was plenty of planning and preparation for post-invasion operations in Iraq.
There is a definable limit to what the U.S. will tolerate as to Iran and Syria's interference in Iraq.
The Walter Reed hospital debacle resulted from "failed leadership."
From a converted barn located on the family ranch near the Wichita Mountains in Kiowa County, Okla. – the staging area for the Leadership Institute he wants to build – Franks spoke his mind on these and other critical issues of the day.
NewsMax: I was talking to a young 1st Sergeant fresh back from Iraq not long ago and I asked him his opinion on this surge of additional troops going into Iraq and I got an unexpected reaction. He said, "Sir, hell, let's send 100,000 troops and let's get this job done!"
Gen. Franks: I think you will find beyond the 99th percentile of the youngsters serving there would tell you the same thing. My son-in-law [an Army captain] is in Baghdad as we speak. He has been there about five or six months, and without putting words in his mouth, I think he would probably tell you something similar.
People ask me all of the time, do you think we ought to send more people, and I say of course I do, because the leaders that we have selected to run this operation in Iraq have said they would like to have an additional 20,000 troops.
The reason I say this is a good idea is because that's what the leaders on the ground are saying. If the leaders on the ground were to say we don't need additional troops, then I would say great, we don't need additional troops, because I have confidence in the men and women who are serving on the ground over there and leading our troops. I have confidence today, and I have had it all the way through this process.
NewsMax: A misconception about George Bush as Commander-in-Chief may be how anxious he was to go to war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I think many American have the impression that the President was "hot to trot" from the day he was elected.
Gen. Franks: I find that very interesting because we have all read that same sort of view of Bush wanting desperately to get into Iraq, and I, as a person who lived through that, just didn't find it.
The first time the President talked to me about Iraq, if my memory serves, was six or seven days after Hamid Karzai had become the Transitional President of Afghanistan, in December of 2001. So I have always been amazed at those who would suggest that right from the very beginning all he wanted to do was get after Iraq.
I believe he was very doubtful in the run-up to Iraq. We worked on the plan for about 14 months before we ever became satisfied that we had the right approach for Iraq. Our mainstream media did not get it right, and I believe this is a case-in-point.
NewsMax: How about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld standing down from his post?
Gen. Franks: We need to be very careful as Americans not to confuse patriotism with political expediency. What I mean is it makes sense to me that Don Rumsfeld left the post as Secretary of Defense.
When he did, I didn't question that decision at all, but I do question those who say he was a terrible Secretary of Defense, because I did not find that to be the case. I told a lot of people Don Rumsfeld is a contrarian.
When he was the Secretary of Defense, he was very tough on himself and on everyone around him. I have also described him as a crotchety guy, and he is just tough to deal with. I have also told a great many people that Don Rumsfeld is a friend of mine. I still talk to him, and on occasion when [wife] Cathy and I are in Washington, we will go out to eat with him and [wife] Joyce.
The guy is an American patriot. He was an American patriot. He is just a touchy guy to get along with.
NewsMax: As a Vietnam veteran, you said the last thing you were going to tolerate while leading the Afghanistan or Iraq campaigns would be micromanagement like Gen. William Westmoreland did in Vietnam.
Gen. Franks: In my view, I was successful in avoiding that. I found that it was distinctly possible with a tough issue to take a stand with this administration – specifically with Don Rumsfeld when he was the Secretary – and debate an issue, lay the facts out, discuss an issue.
This is what Rumsfeld used to call "iteration" before arriving at a course of action. In no case did Rumsfeld ever throw me out of his office. In no case did Rumsfeld ever tell me, General Franks, it is my way or the highway.
NewsMax: You were getting needled by Rumsfeld about the apparent lack of progress in Afghanistan and you called your wife and told her to open up a bottle of red wine – you were coming home. At home you called Rumsfeld and said in effect, if you don't have confidence in me, get somebody else. I thought that was very candid portrayal that you set forth in your book "American Soldier." Was that a crisis in leadership or in your relationship with Secretary Rumsfeld?
Gen. Franks: It probably was a crisis of leadership for me. One of the strongest suits that we bring to any activity is confidence – the confidence we have in ourselves as leaders and the confidence we believe our bosses in this country have in our ability to lead.
So we were at a juncture in Afghanistan, which you described adequately, and it was time to say there are no hard feelings here. If you, Mr. Secretary, do not have confidence in what we are doing, then I have only one of two courses of action before me.
One is to cave in and do something I don't believe in, and the other is to say, have a nice day and we can have a change of command here at your leisure. Because that is the honorable thing to do, and so that is what I did.
I think it was surprising to the Secretary because, as I said, he is a tough guy and I doubt it ever occurred to him that I was operating in the way I just described, and he very quickly said, "no, no, I do have confidence and so let's move ahead."
We did, and it turned out fine. But had I not put the proposition on the table the way I did, then I don't think that I would have been a man of principle.
NewsMax: Let's talk about President Bush's leadership traits. You have consistently complimented the Commander-in-Chief, calling him a "true leader."
Gen. Franks: I commented that way while I worked for George W. Bush and I still comment in that fashion. I think it takes a variety of things ... when we think about whether our presidents have been great leaders or good leaders or not very good leaders.
I think that there are a couple of interesting ingredients - one is just what you see every day. We see constant dialogue on our television sets, and in the newspapers we read every day about the views as to whether this president is a good president or bad president. But I think historians have a much more in-depth approach.
As we go through history and people look at the present administration, the factor that will always play into it is the context within which this president had to lead the country. You and I both know, if you think about the events of 9/11 and this attack on America, that is a heck of a context within which a president serves his country, and in my view George W. Bush has done the job with honesty and integrity.
As I have told a great many people, I am neither Democrat nor Republican. In fact, I am a registered Independent. I have been so and foresee that I will stay that way. But I do respect the work that this president has done during a very, very difficult period of American history.
NewsMax: I had the privilege of interviewing Richard Perle a couple of weeks ago and we got on the same leadership failure discussion. He said that some of Bush's advisors failed the president. He got bum advice and acted on it. Is that the case, in your opinion?
Gen. Franks: I don't think so. Knowing George W. Bush as I know him, and I would say that I know him pretty well, I never saw the President steam-rolled. There is a lot of media speculation that the advisers all got together and pushed one agenda or another and I simply did not see that to be the case.
I found the mind of George W. Bush to be very curious, and intellectually demanding. He did not want his people to line up to say, "oh yes, we should take this course of action," but rather to have people argue for various courses of action.
I found him to be not only studious but very thoughtful as I watched him carefully factor in everything that he was told and make decisions.
NewsMax: The President appeared as careful in his deliberations when it came to the stance on stem cell research. He labored on that for a long time.
Gen. Franks: It's true.
NewsMax: I hope the recent disclosure of failures at Walter Reed Hospital hasn't discouraged you. Was this a creature of failed leadership?
Gen. Franks: Of course. As I look around and see these kids coming back in many cases very seriously injured, requiring hospitalization and a great deal of medical work, the thought that any given one of them or their families are not treated the way I would want my daughter and my son-in-law who is in the military treated – I find that hurtful.
NewsMax: Is it a misconception that there was no proper planning for post-victory in Iraq?
Gen. Franks: Right.
NewsMax: You have commented that during your time as a young junior officer in Vietnam, you were frustrated by the enemy getting sanctuary in Cambodia and you declared, "If I live long enough to get anywhere in this Army, I won't let the enemy operate from a refuge like that." Is that the type of refuge that you wouldn't tolerate in Iraq?
Gen. Franks: The type of refuge I wouldn't tolerate actually concerns a couple of different levels. First the strategic:
If you were the President of the United States before 9/11, it is possible for you to simply live with what was going on in Iraq ... The fact of the matter is that Iraq was a sanctuary we were unable to penetrate, despite the fact that we sanctioned Iraq. You will recall that our young men and women were enforcing those sanctions for almost 10 years, and they were getting shot at every morning and every night, but none of them had been shot down, so it was possible to ignore that sanctuary during this period of time.
When 9/11 occurred, now what is the likelihood that any administration in power in this country - no matter which side of the aisle - could have ignored Iraq? You couldn't have ignored the sanctuary in the aftermath of 9/11. My opinion is that it is not likely that given what we saw on 9/11 that any administration would permit Iraq to continue in a business-as-usual sort of way.
So at the level of the strategic, that may be a match for having Cambodia off limits during the Vietnam War. It may be a match for having had North Vietnam essentially off limits to ground power during the time of Vietnam - and so there might be a little bit of an analogy there.
Now, as we look at Syria and Iran, we are confronted with yet another decision: how much tolerance do we have for activities in Syria and Iran that are not helpful to our work in Iraq? On the other hand, they are not literally staging tens of thousands of troops in those countries that directly threaten the work we are doing in Iraq.
I think that Syria and Iran require close watching and continuous analysis, so that we do not get ourselves in a position such as what we found in Vietnam. A long answer to your question, but I do believe that both Iran and Syria require watching.
NewsMax: Your predecessor in CENTCOM, Marine Gen. Tony Zinni, advised you that you were going to be the cop in the world's most dangerous neighborhood, and if the U.S. was going to be involved in a war, it would be there. He also advised that the Middle East would never become stable until there is an equitable peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Do you agree with the latter?
Gen. Franks: You bet, and we agreed on that and I suspect that we still agree on that because the view of the United States of America in the Middle East is based in large measure on what the people in the Middle East see going on with the Palestinians and with Israel, and so they make hay of that 24 hours a day.
NewsMax: In 2004, you said: "A year from now, Iraq will be a different country. Our steady progress in Afghanistan is one factor that gives me confidence that Iraq will be able to rebuild their country with equal speed and ease." That hasn't happened...
Gen. Franks: Right.
NewsMax: Would this dilemma in Iraq and Afghanistan be something that your Leadership Institute would tackle?
Gen. Franks: I think absolutely.
I believed in the summer of 2003 that we would be in a three-to-five-year process before we would see things stabilized and settled in Iraq.
I don't know how accurate that will turn out to be. We're at four years now and we're sure it's not where we want it to be. So I'm not sure that my prediction was right. It certainly didn't happen in a year.
NewsMax: The $64,000 question then is does Iraq represent a failure in leadership?
Gen. Franks: My sense is that there was not a failure in leadership. These are very complex issues, and I suppose that in order to find a failure in leadership one should be able to look back and say that at any given point in time we had a selection of options and had we taken another course, then very clearly that other option would have presented a better set of circumstances than we have now.
I in that sort of framework, it is possible to conclude we had bad decision-making and so maybe there was a failure in leadership. However, I don't see that even in hindsight. One can say if we simply had not gone into Iraq in March of 2003, it is very clear that America would be better off today. Actually, I don't believe that.
NewsMax: You once said there may not have been weapons of mass destruction, but you suggested a metaphor that what Saddam had was like a disassembled pistol lying on the desk.
Gen. Franks: Exactly to the point. Did we find weapons of mass destruction? No we did not. Did we find the terrorist Abu Abbas [mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking], who shoved [Leon] Klinghoffer overboard, living in the open in Iraq when we moved in there? ... Yes, we did.
So who is to say that left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein wouldn't have created a problem that could have been much more substantial to our country than the events of 9/11? I just don't believe that the leaders of the United States were in a position post 9/11 to say that business as usual would be just fine.
Let me give you an example of that. What did we see happen in 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon? We saw the interests of the United States of America attacked by terrorists with a bombing of our Marines. What did we see in 1993? We saw an attempt on the World Trade Center by terrorists, and we saw the United States of America back away unilaterally from something we had committed to do in Mogadishu, Somalia. Then in 1996 we saw Khobar Towers - the attack of American interests by terrorists in Saudi Arabia.
In 1998, we saw two attacks on American embassies in East Africa, and in 2000 we saw the USS Cole attacked in Aden Harbor, Yemen.
So here is the question: Is there any relationship between the events over the course of about two decades that I just mentioned and the events of 9/11/01? I do believe there is a connection. I don't mean a physical connection between any of the specific events, but an indication served up to terrorists over the course of almost two decades that says it is okay to attack the interests of the United States of America without fear of serious retribution.
So as we look at American history going back a couple of decades, I believe we can be comfortable with the notion that if we hide our heads in the sand, the problem is not going to go away.
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