Episode 18. US Warriors And US Diplomats In Iraq & Afghanistan: Part I - NDU Panel With Gen Odierno, Gen Austin, Amb. Crocker & Amb. Liberi

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:09] Welcome to a conversation in the series The General and the Ambassador on how our top military leaders work with our top diplomats to advance our interests across the globe. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with support from the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy and I'm the host. Today's conversation will be a bit different. You'll be hearing a live panel I moderated on November 28th, 2018 at National Defense University, NDU, located in Washington, D.C. We partnered with NDU to bring together two generals and two ambassadors to talk to us about civilian military relations in the field, focusing on Afghanistan and Iraq. Their conversation covers the missions, strategic planning or lack thereof governance, economic development, public messaging and managing the chain of command. The panel was part of NDU's President's lecture series, and it took place in front of a live audience. The students in the audience include military from the US and other countries, as well as civilians and diplomats from the State Department and other government agencies. The panel was kicked off by the Academy of Diplomacy's President Ambassador Ron Neumann and included General Ray Odierno, General Lloyd Austin, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Ambassador Dawn Liberi. General Odierno served as the 38th chief of staff of the Army. Previously, he was commander general of the United States Joint Forces Command, as well as commanding General US Forces, Iraq and Multinational Force Iraq.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:48] General Austin was commander of US Central Command until March 2016. He also was the combined forces commander overseeing the military campaign to defeat ISIL. General Austin also served as the 33rd vice chief of staff of the Army commanding general, US Forces, Iraq and Multi-National Force Iraq and commander of Joint Task Force 180 in support of Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Ambassador Crocker has the distinction of not only having been ambassador to six countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon, but is probably the US diplomat who has been the most under direct fire, starting with surviving the bombing of our embassy in Beirut in 1983. Ambassador Liberi served as a US ambassador to Burundi until 2016. She not only had a long career in Africa, but also managed massive US assistance programs in key theatres. She was the director of the over $5 billion USAID program in Iraq and the senior development advisor to the commander of CentCom. She also directed the interagency provincial affairs team in Kabul and was a senior civilian for combined Joint Task Force 82 in Bagram. All biographical details are available on our website. The generalandtheambassador.org. We will now turn to the panel.

Amb. Neumann: [00:03:17] Well good morning, everyone. I'm Ron Newman, now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. You all look far more intimidating than when I sat out there in your with you many years ago. I guess I should say thank you for coming, but I'm not sure you had a choice. But. But we hope you will find the program of interest. The American Academy of Diplomacy, despite its name, doesn't teach you anything. It's called an academy because members elect other members. It is a very small organization that was started by people like George Kennan and Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger. It has two missions in life. One is telling the State Department politely or not so politely, what we think it should do better to improve its efficiency. And the other is talking to Americans at large about why diplomacy is important. One of the things we began doing about a year ago were some new podcasts, and one of them, which was the brainchild of Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, who you will hear from in a minute, was to start a program called the General and the Ambassador. The idea was that Americans at least think they know what the military does. They have absolutely no clue what the civilian State Department does. So we would hook them by talking about generals first. And we actually have had some admirals that's had a little bit you know, it's a generic title. That's how this program began. But some of you might find actually some of those programs interesting. Some of our guests are on there. General Austin has a wonderful program with Ambassador Jim Jeffrey. I told him earlier today, I think could be subtitled "How We Fought Washington and the Islamic State Together." But those programs are all designed to talk to a sort of very general audience. And so we thought that it would be interesting to do a kind of a spin off of that where we could talk at a different level to people who are going to deal with these issues in the real world, in their own careers. And now I will let you introduce Ambassador McCarthy.

Speaker3: [00:05:21] Thank you, Ambassador Neumann, as a State Department student here at NDU and as an avid listener of the podcast, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to introduce Ambassador McCarthy to you. She kept a long and distinguished State Department career in which she served in various senior level positions as the United States ambassador to Lithuania from 2013 to 2016. I hope I'm not stealing her thunder in revealing that there are more episodes on the way. For those of you like myself who burn through them quickly, it is a ten month program here and the commute for most of us is long. So we appreciate that. Good with that. Ambassador Deborah McCarthy. Well, good morning.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:00] So I did want to start by saying a couple of words about public service. We have with us today four outstanding leaders. The fourth will be joining us soon. Who've guided our nation in difficult times. I calculated that between the four, they have a total of 152 years of public service. I would like to salute. Then for this, but also all of those of you in the audience who too have chosen public service for it is a very high calling. Let's jump right in on this issue of civil relations. Military and diplomatic cultures are quite different. As diplomats, we engage in the long run, learn languages, get contacts and do long term negotiations out of the public eye. Our military seeks to accomplish specific missions and then move on. How does one manage this difference and how should we be training people to cross this divide? General Odierno, I will start with you.

Gen. Odierno: [00:07:04] Sure. Well, thank you. First, I want to let you know I applied to go to NDU, but I was turned down. I don't know. They didn't like my essay, I guess. So they sent me to the Army War College. So I always was envious of everybody who came to NDU. The way you describe that actually is perfect. I can't tell you how many times I had to adjust understanding about the long term solution versus short term solution. And in the military, we're given a mission. We want to executed as quickly as possible. We want to do it as fast and as efficient as possible and finish the issue and go on to the next one. What you have to understand is when we do that, we leave behind what's left to our State Department partners who have to stay in that country and continue to work with those people for many, many years. So it's incumbent on us to understand the short and long term implications of our actions. And so one of the things we always have to think through is when we accomplish a short term mission, what are the second and third order effects of long term viability within that specific region or country? So it's important for us to understand that and it's important for us to have that discussion with our partners, our State Department partners, our diplomats that are working there so we can find common objectives and we can find common ground that enables us to do our mission quickly, but also helps to establish the baseline for long term solutions. And I think that's in my mind, some of the most important things we can do.

Amb. Liberi: [00:08:41] Thanks very much. Let me also say it's a real pleasure to be here. Being an ICAF graduate, I'm actually used to the Blue Room auditorium. I'm not sure if it's still blue in the Eisenhower Hall, but this is a great opportunity. One thing that I would just add to what General Odierno has said, you know, I think many of you have heard that we've been in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular for a number of years. And the question always is, well, what was the strategy going in? And what you hear now is that we've had, you know, ten one year wars or 17 one year wars. And so I would say that we really do have to marry the short and the long term together. We have to go in with the strategic objective because as history has shown, we are there for a long time, even though we may think we're going to be there for a short time. And so you have to have the strategic coupled with the operational and the tactical. And I think this is where the joint planning really comes into play. And it's something that cannot be overemphasized, particularly as we look at whatever future engagements we might be involved in.

Gen. Austin: [00:09:41] I certainly agree with everything that both of our speakers have said thus far, but I would just say that I'm not sure that there is a difference in time horizons. It just really depends on what level you're operating at to the point that was just made As a combatant commander, my sole focus was to create the conditions that provided long term stability in the region. In a crisis we may go in, the military may go in to General Odierno's point and be focused on accomplishing a specific mission in return, things to a state that's manageable. My focus long term was was long term stability, and that frequently involved creating some type of indigenous capability so that the people of that country could take care of themselves. And the ambassador obviously played a clearer role in making sure that the military understood all the things that were going on in the country and making sure that he or she provided us the right context in order to be successful. But in terms of what my interest was as a combatant commander, it was stability in the region, stability in that particular country and stability in the region throughout.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:48] I mean, the missions included in Afghanistan and Iraq, they've included strengthening governance structures, supporting elections, establishing better health, living conditions. Who sets those priorities? Who negotiates for those projects and who implements them?

Amb. Liberi: [00:11:04] Here, again, I think, is where we have the the interagency process. And we have to be very clear about the importance of that, you know, as a lead in terms of policy. State Department really does need to engage with the host government to say what are the governance priorities for that government to continue and to establish its own credibility, Transparent. Rnc. Et cetera. As you start the negotiating process and look at what that means in terms of governance at all different levels, the national, the regional, the local, it's very important that those priorities be very set out. And very clearly, I think having been both with State Department as well as with USAID for many years, I would say that here in terms of the interagency process, USAID has a very key role in helping to implement a number of the programs that are focused on governance and development. And where we rely on our military colleagues is to help again reinforce that. And I think as General Austin was saying, the goal here is overall stabilization, stability over a long time. Obviously, that then has to transfer to the host government and to the host entity and to the local communities. And so when you have specific events like elections, I know that USAID would rely heavily on the military to help us with the implementation of elections in certain places. That was very, very key. But it was really at the level of policy and working through the the operational elements that State Department and USAID both work with the host government as well as provide a lot of the assistance to that level.

Gen. Odierno: [00:12:39] If I could comment, I don't disagree with anything I said. There are time horizons to this, though. And one of the things we struggle with, and I'll use Iraq as an example, was when we first went into Iraq, the instability that existed required the military to do some things initially that may be first of all, we're not trained to do, but we had to do whether it be forming a local government very quickly. So you have some semblance of somebody in charge or doing a small project to create some stability until the right people get on the ground or until we create the environment that is necessary for them to come in and then turn it over and let the experts start to work this and work and coordinate. So understanding that is important and understanding when to turn it over is also important. One of the things, as I look back on Iraq, speaking specifically of projects and money that was spent, is in my opinion, we attempted to do it too early because we had not yet created the conditions of stability and we did not yet have the levels of governance that were necessary. And so billions of dollars got wasted, in my opinion, and it wasn't because we had the right intentions. That's not the issue. The intentions were right, but we were in a hurry. We wanted to get out. We wanted to get out as quickly as possible. And that caused us to make some mistakes. So that's why this discussion and with our partners and having a plan and working through that and understanding the dynamics of the environment that you're in are so important when it comes to these issues. Because if we do it wrong, we then waste time, we waste money, and we then delay the outcome. And as I look back, I think that's one of the things that we probably could have done a lot better.

Amb. Liberi: [00:14:29] I totally agree with General Odierno, and I'm sure that Ambassador Crocker will have a lot more to say about Iraq. I think this is where it's very key to understand our assumptions going in. And I think in that sense, in many ways, our assumptions were wrong going in, particularly into Iraq. We thought that we could get in, get out, and that there was enough coherence in the Iraqi government to hold things together and that they could take it over and run with it. And that proved to be an incorrect assumption. We thought we were starting at zero and would help them build up. It turned out we were starting at about -150 and had to build up to zero in many instances. And so I think we have to be very clear and careful about what our assumptions are going in, because I think you're right, a lot of things were done very quickly at the beginning to try to build stability, but then the corpus of the government systems weren't in place. And so that process became very, very difficult to manage.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:28] Now that we have Ambassador Crocker with us, I wanted to do a twist on the question, which is in the joint planning between state and Department of Defense, such as the joint planning you did with with General Petraeus. What were the biggest problems you ran into between the agencies?

Amb. Crocker: [00:15:43] Glad to be here. Sorry to be late. No problem. It'll be the usual panel rules. You will ask whatever you want and I will say whatever I want.

Amb. Crocker: [00:15:54] So rather than leap forward to those happy days of 2007, I will get us mired down back in 2003. What you've both said, of course, just reawakens those living nightmares from that period I was in at the beginning, as well as back in 2007. In terms of assumptions, I wish we had gotten to the point where we were making wrong assumptions. Basically, as a government, we weren't making any assumptions. There was no phase four plan. Absolutely was not. One body of thought in the administration felt that once the tyrant's boot was lifted from the neck of the Iraqi people, they would naturally tend toward truth, justice and light. We wouldn't need to do a thing that was a group that were in support of, among others, Ahmed Chalabi, if that name resonates. He died several years ago, about every six months. I keep checking to be sure he's still dead. The other camp. If one calls the first, say, neoconservative. The other camp would be neo realist. The neo realist didn't want a Phase four plan either because they wanted to get rid of the dictator and get out. Not our job to rebuild the country. Let somebody else do it. Let the Iraqis do it. Let it not be rebuilt. Not our problem. So that was the perfect storm.

Amb. Crocker: [00:17:20] Those two views collided, both basically dead wrong. The Iraqi people did not tend naturally toward truth like justice and democracy. And it was our problem. I was present there when that happened. The view that, in fact, we couldn't just have a bunch of town hall meetings which sell. Khalilzad and I thought was our policy. We were going to be an occupier. That's when Jerry Bremer came in to replace Jay Garner and Orha, which was kind of dead on arrival. Then we had that awful challenge of trying to create something from nothing. And I do remember Ray having the privilege of going up to visit you at your headquarters. You had stood up a city council in Kirkuk with the redoubtable Emma Skye, bringing back happy memories of British colonialism. It became the problem from hell. Not enough forces to prevent looting. You didn't have that mission anyway. No secret, really, about the notion that somehow a government would hold together the Baath Party was all there was. Everything was Baath Party. So when the Baath Party goes, everything is gone. That wasn't too hard to predict. But again, with the prevailing philosophies of the day, the two I've described, it didn't matter until, of course, it did matter.

Gen. Odierno: [00:18:41] I have to tell a story about the Kirkuk City Council. So Bill Mayville was the brigade commander up there, and he had worked very hard. And the real biggest problem we had was between the Kurds, because you had two Kurdish parties and I was there in the morning and he had called me up because he thought he had everything worked out. And then an argument broke out between the two Kurdish parties. He said, Sir, can you go away for a couple of hours? So I went away for a couple of hours, came back, and all of a sudden nobody was in agreement. I never asked Bill what he did because I did not want to know what he did to get him to agree. But the funny thing is, so then we did this press conference and was live on CNN and it was live on Fox News announcing the new city elected by the leaders, not by the people of Kirkuk or the city council. And so I'm standing up there talking about how this is a first step forward and this is great and everything's going on. And all of a sudden, gunfire breaks out from the city hall of our guys shooting somebody and they're coming running through in the middle of the press conference saying words that I will not repeat here, saying, everybody get down. We got to clear this up. And I felt like the guy if you ever seen the movie Adam Hall saying everything is okay, don't worry about it as I'm getting run over, you know? And that was my first dabble in the politics in Iraq.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:53] This leads me to the issue of public messaging and media engagement as commanders and as ambassadors. How did you use this tool? And do we have the tools today in the era of rapid social media and information manipulation?

Gen. Odierno: [00:20:10] One of the lessons I learned was the importance of social media. When I was the Corps commander in 2006, seven and beginning of eight, I was getting so frustrated over what was being reported back in the United States. I just felt like it was not being accurately reported. And I do press conferences and I would say things and Dave would do press conferences and it just seem I was getting through. So what I did is my POW came in and said, You've got to start a Facebook page. And I promised myself I would never have a Facebook page, but I started it. And within about a month I had like 300,000 followers.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:43] Wow.

Gen. Odierno: [00:20:44] And I was able to put the information I wanted out. That was my first foray into this social media piece that I found to be really effective, or at least it gave me a voice. I had people ran it. I didn't do it myself. We were very conscious of what we put on there. You know, we thought we were being truthful and everything we put on there, I won't guarantee we were completely truthful, but I felt like we were that was the intent of it, to put out what really was going on. Then later on, when I was chief of staff of the Army, when Twitter became more, then I did the same thing. I had to communicate to millions of people, how do I do that? In one way to do it was through Twitter, but you got to do it in a controlled way. It can't be. People usually say, Well, I'm now going down the street and I'm going to go, you know, it was very specific messaging that we used. And so for me, I found it to be very important. And I think as a leader going forward, you really have to think through how you're going to do this and what you're comfortable doing. But I found it to be very valuable and especially in a forward deployed area. Now, you've got to make sure you're within the guidelines that you're given. There are guidelines you're given by Department of Defense and the combatant commanders, and you've got to find that. Follow that. But my mind, if you think you need to be heard, you have to understand how to use it and you've got to use it right.

Gen. Austin: [00:22:02] I think that what we all want to be is to be truthful and to be candid, as candid as possible. And so as you're working in theater and you're communicating to the world, you know, what plays well in America often doesn't play very well in the region or in the specific country. And so you have to have the experts in country to be a part of this. And it should be a joint effort. And to answer your question, Ambassador, I don't think that the current processes that we have move at the speed that's required to keep up with today's media environment. It's absolutely imperative to have the joint message cleared by the right people. But we got to operate at the speed of combat or at the speed of today's society. If not, we'll get outflanked continuously by the folks who have no bounds and in the media.

Gen. Odierno: [00:22:51] I just want to add to what General Austin said one time I gave a press conference in Iraq when I was that's when I was the MNF-I commander, Ambassador Crocker mentioned when I got done, I said a few things. She goes, Why did you say that? And I mentioned to her that I'm talking to several audiences here. I'm talking to the American people, I'm talking to Congress, I'm talking to the Iraqi people, and I'm talking to our soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines. If you thought I was getting up there and say things aren't going well, when they were they were going, okay, you know, am I going to demoralize my soldiers? And some of the things I say who are sailors, airmen, Marines who are out there fighting every day. And so you've got to remember that you're talking to several different audiences. So you've got to massage the message in a way that it kind of tries to, as General Austin was just saying, accommodate all of those involved. Now, I will say the other thing is, whenever I finished one of these, the next day, Prime Minister Maliki would critique my press conference and he would tell me, why did you say this? And then I would say back to him, Well, why did you say this when you did your press conference? And then we start laughing and we you know, because you have your own audiences you have to deal with and you have to understand that.

Amb. Liberi: [00:24:01] First of all, I think it's very important to do if you're the civilian and military entities to do joint conferences. I know when I was in Afghanistan, I was the senior civilian working with General Scaparrotti, head of regional Command East, And we made a point of doing our press conferences together because it was that important to show the military and the civilian hooked up at the hip and giving the same message. But I certainly agree with General Odierno that we're not set up really for the speed of what is needed now. And I would have to say that on particularly the USAID and the State Department side, having been with both of them, our ability to get Washington to clear off on the messages seems like it takes forever time. I mean, it is not at the speed of light or whatever, but yet we are governed by that. So you may not know this, but if we do a press conference with international press, we have to get everything basically approved by Washington. We have much more leeway with local press. And when we're going out and having local interviews and here is where I would say that the military has an advantage over the civilians because our approval time takes forever. And I think it really impairs us when we need to get messages out very quickly.

Amb. Crocker: [00:25:12] Kind of the media side was one of the brighter spots in my cosmos when I was ambassador, 07 to 09, that two year period, we had terrific spokespeople for the embassy, Phil Reeker, who went on to be an ambassador, followed by Susan Ziada, who could do a press conference in Arabic. Again, I would underscore the importance of language. The number of fluent Arabic speakers we had, military and civilian was infinitesimal. And you're running half blind if you don't have that language ability embedded in you. We heroic translators and interpreters, some who died looking out for us. But it's not the same. My ability to at tough moments to go see the Prime minister and close the door. Just the two of us. No translators, no note takers, no nothing. Just the Prime Minister and myself steered us through a couple of very rocky patches. Coming back to the media, you're absolutely right on the cycle, which is why, and I know this is the same on your side, Ray and Lloyd, we didn't clear anything.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:20] Now we know.

Amb. Crocker: [00:26:21] I mean, there wasn't any time to clear anything. And besides, what are they going to do? I mean, they've already sent me to Iraq. You know.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:30] This concludes part one of our panel in front of a live audience at National Defense University on civilian military relations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stay tuned for part two, where we will continue the panel discussion on working with the media and cover issues, including the chain of command briefing presidents and the critical need for a playbook on civilian military relations in the field for use in future crises.