Episode 19. US Warriors & Diplomats In Iraq & Afghanistan: Part II- NDU Panel With Gen Odierno, Gen Austin, Amb. Crocker & Amb. Liberi

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:01] Welcome to part two of the General Ambassador's panel discussion at National Defense University on civilian military relations in the field. Participating in the panel were Generals Odierno and Austin and Ambassadors Crocker and Liberi. At the end of the panel in this episode, we had the opportunity to take questions from members of the audience as a courtesy to maintain their anonymity. I will summarize each question and you will hear the panelists responses. I ask a question on managing the chain of command. The panelists first continue discussing how they handled the media. Ambassador Crocker is the first to speak.

Amb. Crocker: [00:00:41] You've got multiple audiences in a very real sense, the most critical audience where our men and women who were putting their lives on the line to support our interests and you simply cannot say things or do things that are going to be injurious to their morale. You can't. There's another element to this as well. I've always kind of worked pretty well with the International Correspondent Corps. Some of my closest and longest friends are international correspondents. Those relationships for me go all the way back to the early 80s in Lebanon. You know, someone like Alissa Rubin, The New York Times was out there when I was there. About as good as it gets. She, incidentally, is not an enemy of the American people. You know, one at least one Pulitzer for her reporting. We're kind of in the same business. They do theirs publicly. We do ours mercifully outside the glare of publicity. But we're trying to get the story right. What's going on? What does this mean? So I was able to develop and maintain relations with a lot of the key correspondents. I had confidence in them.

Amb. Crocker: [00:01:44] They in me. We could talk off the record. I could give them context. I could even say things like, hey, we do have multiple messages. We got to get out that didn't affect their reporting. Their job is to be objective and get the story right, but it did help their understanding of the things we did and most especially the things we said. I really hope going forward that we will continue to work with our senior military leadership and civilian leadership. The international media ain't going away. They're taking many of the same chances we are. Get to the point where you can confide in them and they can confide in you. You've got to be careful. Stan McChrystal. Yeah, the you know, the Rolling Stone interview. Rolling Stone tried when Dave and I were out there, they sent somebody in. They wanted do interviews with us. We said, no, you've got to be objective on this. Rolling Stone won't be your friend. They are not guns and ammo. So look for relationships of confidence, but be clear eyed about it. With some outlets, you just can't go there.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:02:48] General Odierno provides his views on the issue.

Gen. Odierno: [00:02:51] I started doing dinners with the press off the record dinners where I'd invite six or 7 or 8. It was to build trust between each other. Never once did a reporter lose my trust. If I asked them not to say something, they wouldn't. These were long term professional international correspondents who I knew, you know, somebody like I would have never allowed them access here. What I found out was I learned a lot from them because they were giving me tidbits of information about what was going on in some that I had no idea. And I was then able to ask questions about, well, I heard maybe this is going on. And it was amazing. It would always come back for the most part, to be true because they have contacts in places we don't. And so I found it to be a real two way exchange of information. I was fortunate because since I was in Iraq, basically from 2006 to 2010, you know, I got to watch Ambassador Crocker as the when I was the corps commander there. Then as I took over my first year with Ambassador Crocker, and that helped me to see the appropriate relationship you have between the military and an ambassador. He taught me and helped me learn about operating at that level. So I felt like I was really incredibly fortunate to have someone who I could look to to set an example and help me because it's the first time I'd ever done anything like this.

Gen. Odierno: [00:04:14] And I felt it to be very, very helpful. And this gets back to the importance of building that relationship and building trust between each other that allows you to share everything, to be comfortable doing that and realizing you're working together to achieve a common objective. They're not the enemy. They are. They are working as hard as you are to accomplish whatever that objective is, and you've got to go into it thinking about it that way. You might not agree every time on certain ways to do things, but you're able to work through that as time goes on. And the other thing you have to realize, as the military commander on the battlefield is that you have other agencies out there, too, like United Nations. That was something we had to work through. You know, they work for the State Department. You know, they were out there doing things and yet other NGOs. So you got to think through how do you build those relationships and the relationship you have with the embassy and working through that with them is very, very helpful. And then the last thing I'll leave you with in this topic is you have to remember that as a military commander, most of the time you overwhelm the people in the State Department because, you know, when I was there, we had one. And 75,000 men and women on the ground armed to the teeth with an incredibly large budget that allows.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:37] Overwhelm but not intimidate.

Gen. Odierno: [00:05:39] But that allowed us to do what was necessary. And if you think about then what the State Department has in terms of assets is nothing like that. We have people everywhere. They have one person, we have thousands. You've got to understand that and make sure that what we're doing is helping them to accomplish their job. And if you lose sight of that, it can become a real big problem.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:02] Ambassador Liberi provides her views.

Amb. Liberi: [00:06:05] I think that chain of command does work best in the field, and it does start at the top with the ambassador, with the commanding general, and then it goes down the line. And one of the things that we did in Afghanistan when we were doing the civilian uplift, and that was the program that I was in charge of from 2011, we actually established levels of senior civilian equivalents. So at the corps commander level, at the brigade level, at the battalion level, there were senior civilians who had chief of mission authority. So they had the authority from the ambassador to coordinate all of the civilians in their battlespace. And this was very, very key to having a chain of command that had some discipline in it. And that worked and that helped to reinforce what each other was doing. And I think that's key. I have to say that one of the challenges that we face, and I'd love to hear what Ambassador Crocker has to say, is that particularly on the civilian side, we always had and you've heard the expression, the 8000 mile screwdriver that would come in from the NSC or from Washington tweaking or telling us what needed to be done, particularly sometimes after we had actually established our plan and what we were going to be doing. And I think that was where at times things fell apart because we couldn't always control what was happening in Washington. But it had a profound impact on what we were able to do in the field. And I think that's one of the key things that we have to constantly have a back and forth between the field and Washington.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:30] General Austin comments.

Gen.  Austin: [00:07:32] You know, going back to a comment that Ambassador Crocker made earlier, the reason that there was no phase four planning for Iraqi freedom, one was because the two departments really didn't get along. Dod kind of looked at this as I got this. And and to Ambassador, what Ambassador Crocker said earlier, we just need to knock off the head guy and this thing will it'll take care of itself. Well, it didn't. The fortunate outcome of these unfortunate wars has been that our diplomats and our warriors have been driven together out of need, and we've been caused to learn a lot more about each other. We've developed trust because we've accepted risk and placed ourselves in danger, and we've been caused to have to depend and trust on each other. But if you listen to what we're saying, it's almost as if it's always been this way. It hadn't always been this way. And one of the things that we want to emphasize today, you know, there are some best practices that we've learned out of necessity here, and we hope that we never depart from these best practices in terms of senior military or military at all levels, getting along and working well with State Department officials.

Amb. Crocker: [00:08:41] I spent a very long time in the Foreign Service and a lot of that time in some really crunchy places where a lot of awful things happened. The very worst period in my career was not in Beirut, it wasn't in Baghdad and it wasn't in Kabul. It was here. And it was the run up to the Iraq war. There was an absolute poisonous relationship between the Secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the secretary of defense, Don Rumsfeld. Poisonous. And we all suffered all down the line. A lot of lives got lost. Ultimately, I think, because of that rancor when Bob Gates took over at the Pentagon, that all changed. But you are so right to point out it wasn't always harmony. It was the dead opposite. And that did huge damage to our national interests. And again, people paid for it with their lives. So it is not a fun bureaucratic game that you play Inside the Beltway. People get killed because of these kinds of fights on the chain of command. I really had it easier than you and Dave had it. I really had one person I needed to go to. This was because of the president's own direct engagement. President Bush, his weekly vtcs that we we experienced. I just had to keep my lines straight with the secretary of state. And that was Condi Rice, who was wonderful to work for. All she wanted was not to be surprised in an NSC meeting. So once a week, maybe twice a week, we'd check signals with each other day to day. I worked with Doug Lute, deputy national security adviser, then a lieutenant general, that kind of did the White House end of it.

Amb. Crocker: [00:10:16] Then I would do the state end of it for you and for Dave. If commanders out there, it was more complex. I mean, you had to deal with commanders, Central Command and boy, you know, what kinds of people? Commanders. And the chairman. I didn't have those two. It was a slightly more complex thing. Last point on this. There still isn't a civ mil playbook. I tried to push that toward the end of my tour, but it was also the end of the administration. They saw the need. They were out of gas. It just happens. It hasn't occurred since. So it falls back on personal relationships. And I was incredibly lucky, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, to work with the finest Americans I've ever known in uniform. That would include the two of you. It would be led by the two of you. I would go to hell and back with you guys. We did go to hell and back. I trust my life with you. I still remember Ray. My first foray into town March 2007 was with you, to, Dora. Just at the beginning of the surge. You were just getting your troops into place, looking at the state of Dora at that particular time. I kind of went back to the office, closed the door and put my head on the desk and said, Why me, God? But if you got the right people with you and the two of you were the right people, that makes all the difference.

Gen. Odierno: [00:11:40] This idea of relationships, Ambassador Crocker mentioned the Vtcs, and there's two times specifically that I remember that I was so happy to have him next to me as we were doing these two vtcs And one was I think it was October or November of 2008 when we were doing a VTC with President Bush. And it was about the what the official name was the agreement with the Iraqis to let us stay in the country. It's really trying to get the approval for this. So we would stay in Iraq through 2010. And Ryan and I were very specific. We went through it, we briefed it. We showed them where the pitfalls were. And if I remember the press just call you Mr. Sunshine, I think because, you know, Ryan will always kind of he would not be the most positive about. You tried to point out the potential pitfalls. So President Bush always called him Mr. Sunshine. But at the end of this, he's trying to decide whether he should approve this because it was not clear that our troops would be fully protected under the agreement. And he says, Ray, he goes, what do you think? I'll go along with whatever you say. And I'm saying, Oh, my God, So myself, you know. But what I known is Ryan had spent months working this and negotiating this, and we had worked it very carefully and we had understood the risk mitigators that we had. So I very confidently was able to say, Mr. President, I fully support this and I believe we should go forward. And then he approved it. The second time was the first day of the Obama presidency. President Obama had gotten elected, had done his inaugural, and the next day he wanted to do a VTC with Iraq.

Gen. Odierno: [00:13:15] And if you remember, his platform was, we're going to get out of Iraq as fast as possible. And so they had asked Ryan and I to brief him on Iraq and give us our thoughts. We weren't sure what to expect because new president, new administration, the first time I'd ever gone through anything like this. But because we had worked so closely together, we understood where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, what we thought we needed. And so we laid that out in some detail to the newly elected president. What came out of that? You'd have to ask him specifically why he decided to do this. But he said, okay, thank you very much. He just listened. Basically, he didn't ask a lot of questions. I want you to give me a report with your recommendations on the way forward. And then that's what we did. And that moved to the how we move forward in Iraq. But because of the relationship and because we had done joint planning and because we were linked, we felt confident in what we were giving the new president, that he could make a decision based on whatever his thoughts were. I'll never forget that, actually, because I had worried about that for a month. What was it going to be like with the new president who clearly had a different view of Iraq than the last president? But because of that relationship and the work we had done, I believe we were prepared to provide them what they need. And now what also helped is we had Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice, who fully supported what we were trying to do.

Amb. Crocker: [00:14:46] And Secretary Clinton, I would add.

Gen. Odierno: [00:14:47] And Secretary Clinton I'm sorry, Secretary.

Amb. Crocker: [00:14:48] Clinton, but I would just jump in on that. Yes. In spite of the many months of expensive therapy, I do remember that VTC And if you recall, Ray, we didn't have any guidance, so we were going to do what we had done with President Bush. I'd do the political stuff. You do the security stuff. And I was just starting the president at the beginning. President puts his hand up to stop us and he says, I want to tell you one thing before we begin. I do not want to screw this up. He then screwed it up.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:21] On that note, we're going to move to questions and answers.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:27] An audience member asks a question about recent Russian involvement in Afghanistan. Here is Ambassador Crocker's response.

Amb. Crocker: [00:15:35] The Russians certainly know everything there is to know about failure in Afghanistan. Russian memories may be short and American memories even shorter. Afghans have very long memories. To put it as politely as I can, Russian involvement in Afghanistan is inherently self-limiting. If there is agreement on any single issue among all Afghans, it would be they do not want to see the Russians back in any significant role. What does that mean for us? Well, the Russians are going to prod where they can, just as the Iranians, their allies in Syria, are doing. You know, they are not ten feet tall, probably coming in somewhere around five foot six, which is shorter even than I am. And they have real weaknesses. The Russian economy is in very bad shape. Syria is costing them a lot. So if they want to get more involved around the world, they will just spend themselves deep into systemic failure. And if we can encourage that process in any particular way, I would urge us to do so. I worry about a lot of things. I don't worry about the Russians in Afghanistan.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:41] To a question regarding civilian military relations when leaders are non-career officials. General Odierno adds a comment about the need for a playbook.

Gen. Odierno: [00:16:51] I want to go back to what Ryan said. This idea of a playbook is imperative. We've talked about this now for ten years, and we just can't seem to get there. And we absolutely need to do that. And I think we all need to have voices in taking that on and getting something like that developed.

Gen.  Austin: [00:17:07] So absent a playbook, I think sustainment will come about because of this. What's going on in this room? But we need to push this down to another level so that early on we begin to infuse into into officers both sides of the fence the goodness of this with any young crowd, if you raised a certain way, you don't know a difference. These are your family members. And somebody actually got to come and teach you something different later on. But I think the education, the schooling is pretty important and we need to push it down a level even further. And if you can get legislation that mandates some things like it did for us in the joint committee, in the military, all the better.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:48] To a question regarding the chain of command, General Odierno comments on the tools of national power in.

Gen. Odierno: [00:17:55] The complexity of the world that we live in today, and how fast information moves and how fast people can be influenced. We can no longer solve problems with pure military solutions, and I call it the three legged stool where you have three tools economic development, diplomatic effort and military action. Those are the three tools that the president has. And I've talked about this publicly several times. Where we have failed is we have never properly coordinated those appropriately to develop a strategy that allows us to use all three of those in conjunction with each other. And depending on where you are in the world, one will have more importance than the other. I think each ambassador tries to do that within their country. I know our combatant commanders try to do that within their combatant command, try to take those three things, even though you don't control two of them as a combatant commander, you certainly understand them and understand how they might bring a level of stability and you might think differently. But I try to emphasize to everyone, you know, generals in the United States are depicted that we love to go to war. You know, we push for it. Know if you ever watch any TV show, you know, we're always going to be anything further from the truth. Once you've been to war, you understand that should be the absolute last resort and that the idea of this combination of economic, diplomatic and military capability is so important. I always look at our military as deterrence, and you hope you never have to use it, but if you have to, we'll use it in a fierce way we possibly can.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:31] A member of the audience asks a question about managing the tools of national power, given the disparities of funding and numbers so that our listeners understand the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development or USAID are dwarfed by the Department of Defense in terms of budget and staff. Ambassadors Crocker and Liberi respond.

Amb. Crocker: [00:19:55] The problem is chronic. We don't have enough people not in state and certainly not in USAID. I am told that there are fewer USAID officers worldwide now than there were in Vietnam at the height of the Cords program. And in a generally failed strategy, cords work pretty darn well because we had the people to make it work. I remember, Ray, as you brought the levels of violence down toward the end of my tenure there, late 2000. Eight vast amounts of funding you had and the direction you had to spend it quick and make a difference. You were a huge advocate for more USAID officers to get out at the brigade and even at the battalion level. You valued that highly. We didn't have them and we still don't have them. Guess what? We're going to do this stuff again somewhere, sometime someplace. And I can't tell you where that will be or how it will go exactly. But as Ray said very correctly, it's not going to be a purely military contingency. Those are done. It's going to be a big, messy political, military developmental mess. This is the time to start to staff up for that, to get the budgets that in particular would allow USAID do what it was created to do, which is development in the service of political stability and openness. Because right now, USAID, with few exceptions, are contract managers, and the contracts are getting farmed out to private sector companies. That's not the way to do this. So in a moment of relatively few major commitments overseas, this would be the time to do that. Let's get ready for the next round. Where do you start? You've got to start with higher budgets, presidential priorities and a decision that we are going to build up civilian capacities and we're going to keep them built up, because without that, the rest of this gets somewhere between really hard and outright impossible.

Amb. Liberi: [00:21:52] If I could just add to that, I mean, having lived this problem over the last 25 years, because I started out my career with USAID and then went over to State, it was one of the biggest chronic issues that we had as USAID mission director in Iraq. And Ryan, I was there in between you. My budget was $5.2 billion for the military. That's a rounding error for aid. That's more than half the budget that we were spending in the rest of the world. The issue of scale is huge and it's key. So I agree with what Ryan was saying is that we have to start building the constituent. See, now, actually, I'll add to your anecdote. There are actually more members of the US military band than there are USAID Foreign Service officers. We have about a thousand people in the Foreign Service of USAID and we have a lot of contractors and we have a lot of local nationals who help carry out our work. But it is certainly not enough. So we need to make sure that we have core competencies, people that have had experience in this. We need to build on the best practices.

Amb. Liberi: [00:22:58] One of the reasons why there's no civ-mil playbook is that, again, the same way that we've had 17 one year wars, we've had 17 one years of lessons learned and we have to pull all of them together and have a constituent bodies of what lessons learned have been, what is the doctrine going forward, what is the best practice playbook that we can basically give to you all and to the next generation that follows you? I hope that we're not going to go through a process where we have to learn these lessons all over again, because then we all will have failed. And so I think that one of the things we're all saying is that you have to model from the top. But I think you also have to inculcate from the middle and on down so that everyone who's coming through as a military officer, as a foreign Service officer knows these lessons from the get go. They are built in and they are modeled from the get go because otherwise we're just not going to be able to carry this out in the future.

Gen. Odierno: [00:23:52] I just want to say one thing. When I became chief of staff of the Army, I got a list of ten things never to do. Number five was Don't ever cut the bands.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:03] On that note, I think we have the beginnings of a task force here on civ-mil relations for the Playbook. I want to thank National Defense University and everyone who put this forum together. Thank you for participating.

[00:24:16] Thank you to our panelists.