By Samuel Rubenfeld
NBC News Military Analyst Gen. Barry McCaffrey (Ret.), who has more than a 30-year career with the army, discussed the many foreign policy issues likely to face the next administration, including the ground situation in Iraq and Afghanistan in the annual Donald J. Sutherland Lecture in the Liberal Arts at the Monroe Lecture Center on Tuesday.
McCaffrey, who was once chief commander of Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), delivered a half-hour lecture based off a bullet point presentation of the major issues facing the country in the next 10 years, which he said will not likely all be addressed, because he said the White House simply cannot handle all of the complicated issues at the same time.
“We’ve got a mess on our hands,” McCaffrey said, referring to the Bush administration’s handling of foreign policy issues. “It looks as if we’ve lost every strategic sense of what we’re doing.”
But McCaffrey was hopeful for the future, especially concerning Iraq policy and the people currently handling it, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus. “The fellows on the ground are amazing,” he said. “He [Petraeus] is the most talented man I’ve ever met.”
Since Petraeus’ troop surge reached its highest level during the past summer, the situation on the ground has been much more stable in Iraq, McCaffrey said.
He said the next major issues facing the U.S. in the Middle East are the instability in Pakistan and the burgeoning nuclear system in Iran, which McCaffrey said is 10 years away from a nuclear weapon.
McCaffrey believes U.S. relations with Europe will improve in the next administration “because of common value systems;” however, he said that relations with Russia will continue to be hostile.
McCaffrey was critical of the foreign policy plans of the presidential candidates, however. “The candidates’ solutions are not all that intellectually complex,” he said. McCaffrey did not elaborate further.
“He highlighted that there are a lot of issues the [next] president will have to handle,” said Veronica Kennedy, a freshman broadcast journalism major. “I wish he would have talked about the priorities because the president will not get to everything.”
Prior to his lecture, McCaffrey met with a few Honors College and ROTC students in a small private reception in Hofstra Hall, where he answered questions from students in a more intimate setting.
A New York Times article from Sunday accused the administration of using military analysts, including McCaffrey, “as a kind of media Trojan horse-an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.”
Asked about the article, McCaffrey objected to it, saying that it “started with an-anti war hypothesis” and that he has been an ardent critic of the administration’s execution of the war. “If you Google my name along with ‘Rumsfeld,’ you’ll find more than 14,000 hits of me criticizing Rumsfeld’s Iraq policy,” he said.
“In the nearly 8,000 words of the article, only 25 were about me and Gen. Downing,” he added, referring to his counterpart at NBC News. The article alleges that both were members of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group created in 2002 with White House encouragement to “help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein,” as the Times reported.
“He never did have the nerve to heave the direct accusation about me. He did it in innuendo,” McCaffrey said.
“He spoke the truth that although Iraq is a sticky situation, major progress is being made,” said Alex McHale, a sophomore political science major who is an ROTC cadet. “The man swore an oath to the U.S. Army to protect the best interests of the nation and of the Constitution. I also swore to the same oath.”
(University Relations)