General William E. Odom – Dead at 75

h/t to jimstaro.

General William E. Odom died two days ago of an apparent heart attack.

General Odom was a harsh critic of Mister Bush’s Iraq misadventure:

“Among senior military people, he was probably the first to consider the war in Iraq a misbegotten adventure,” Brzezinski said yesterday. “He believed that we’re just stoking hostility to the United States in that region and developing an opposition that cannot be defeated by military means. He was very outspoken.”

Well before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Gen. Odom warned that military action in Iraq would be foolhardy and futile. He outlined his positions in The Washington Post’s Outlook section Feb. 11, 2007, in the essay “Victory Is Not an Option.”

“The president’s policy is based on illusions, not realities,” he wrote. “There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq.”

Gen. Odom became a fixture on news programs and never altered his critical stance toward the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq and Iran. On Tuesday, he and Brzezinski wrote an op-ed article for The Post in which they stated that the White House’s “heavy-handed” approach toward Iran would backfire and “almost certainly result in an Iran with nuclear weapons.”

General Odom was no easy character, he was a hawk in the Cold War.

But he was also a scholar:

Gen. Odom was a career Army officer who was also a serious scholar of international relations and a leading authority on the Soviet Union. He was the military assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and director of the National Security Agency during President Ronald Reagan’s second term.

I am no expert on General William E. Odom, nor am I a great fan of generals or the military.  But I do recall when he spoke out early against the war and that he continued to do so.  For that I honor him.