Admiral Fallon at CENTCOM long seems to have been lukewarm-at-best about the surge so, naturally, just like Petraeus' predecessors in Iraq he's going to be relieved of command. This is what's known in the Bush administration as shaping policy by military conditions on the ground rather than arbitrary dictates in Washington. First, you formulate a policy. Then you find some career military people who agree with it. Then you put them in charge. Then you hide behind them to avoid taking political heat for your own policies. And if they aren't good at serving as frontmen for your policies, or aren't willing to do it, you get some new ones.
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New Generals Needed
07 Mar 2008 08:45 am
Comments (18)
Matt, it seems like there's a whole other inside Pentagon thing going on here. A fight between the force sized for China in 2025 guys and the force sized for counterinsurgency and nation building guys?
Before you go all knee-jerk you might want to ask yourself if you'd rather get more F-22's or more MRAP's.
You mean the Cheney administration.
"First, you formulate a policy. Then you find some career military people who agree with it. Then you put them in charge. Then you hide behind them to avoid taking political heat for your own policies. And if they aren't good at serving as frontmen for your policies, or aren't willing to do it, you get some new ones."
Other than the "hide behind" part, this is the way any agency works. You find people who agree with your policy and put them in charge. If they aren't good at implementing or disagree with the policy, you replace them.
As an officer who served under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, I can confirm that the Bush administration made the officer corps a hell of lot more political - in the sense of Republicans vs. Democrats - than it was before.
This is a very bad development, very injurious to the professionalism of our Armed Forces, and it's one of the main reasons I want to see someone who knows how to leave soldiering primarily to professionals inhabit the White House in November.
I don't see anything changing under a President McCain, despite his prior service, due to his unwavering, almost fanatical commitment to staying in Iraq.
this is the way any agency works
Yeah, maybe, but if the facts on the ground happen to diverge from your assumptions, you'll have to change your policy sooner or later, else you're not gonna get anything done. Of course, this is only of importance if you want to get something done, as opposed to playing political kabuki, in which case it doesn't matter.
Anybody remember General Shinseki who was pilloried by the Neocons for having the temerity to suggest that 300,000 or more troops would be required in Iraq?
I thought Kevin Drum had the right take on this. Barnett is seriously insulting Fallon.
Barnett is living proof of just how far obscurantist bullshit and jargonized magic thinking can take you in the mirror world of Beltway Clausewitzen. He's a total fraud.
"Anybody remember General Shinseki who was pilloried by the Neocons for having the temerity to suggest that 300,000 or more troops would be required in Iraq?"
Anybody remember when General Shinseki had the temerity to suggest we'd need 400,000 troops to depose the Taliban? This, before Rumsfeld bypassed the bulk of Shinseki's army and deposed the Taliban in two months with a combination of special forces, air power, and local proxies (if it helps jog your memory, within three weeks of that campaign, Frank Rich was comparing it to Vietnam)?
General Shinseki was a modern day McClellan. He may have been right that Rumsfeld and Co. underestimated the number of troops required in Iraq (the other possibility was that the same number of troops would have sufficed if they were used more intelligently, i.e., to gradually roll-up resistance in Sunni areas before racing headlong to Baghdad), but if so, he was only right in the same sense that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Actually, Shinseki was more like a stopped clock that might have been right once a day.
What about the present state of Afghanistan supports your idea that Shinseki's estimate was wrong?
"What about the present state of Afghanistan supports your idea that Shinseki's estimate was wrong?"
The Taliban no longer running the country.
As for the continuing conflict with the Taliban in certain provinces, this has less to do with the number of troops on hand and more to do with the Taliban being able to retreat and regroup in across the border in Pakistan, where Nato troops can't follow. No matter how many troops you have in Afghanistan, you will never be able to completely eliminate the Taliban as long as they can escape over the border and you can't follow them.
According to this 2003 Jed Babbin column (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-babbin030603.asp), which you seem to be channelling, Shinseki's estimate was that it would take around 50,000 men to "destroy the terrorists" in Afghanistan. We'll never know if having 50K US soldiers on the ground could have prevented the AQ leadership from escaping out of the country, but you can't actually demonstrate that Shinseki was wrong: we didn't follow his recommendation, and we didn't "destroy the terrorists."
The Babbin column is a great little period piece, though. He argues that Shinseki should have corrected Carl Levin's question about Iraq "occupation" because "the very premise of an 'extended' occupation [was] antithetical to the Bush Administration's policy of liberation."
I find it astonishing that the Leftists attack an administration that is irate when military people, even non-commissioned officers, go public with their insubordinate ideas. Yet these same Leftists continue to demand civilian control of the military.
MacArthur/Truman...remember?
I find it astonishing that the Leftists attack an administration that is irate when military people, even non-commissioned officers, go public with their insubordinate ideas. Yet these same Leftists continue to demand civilian control of the military.
MacArthur/Truman...remember?
Juan is right. Shinesiki is held up by the Left as a Prophet, in keeping with their habit of loathing the military except when they find someone they can love as a victim and a puppet, or they find a fallen soldier's coffin they can drape themselves over in fake mourning for the photo op.
The Left conveniently never mentions Shineski's recommendations for 400K troops in Afghanistan, while the back door remained open to Pakistan because of Pakistans insane and continuing to be insane internal Fundi Muslim radicalism hamstringing efforts to end them being a sanctuary.
Al Qaeda has taken more damage in Iraq, but we did an pretty good number on them in Afghanistan, with only a few remnant leaders left alive up in the Hindu Kush. The ones Obama wants us to invade nuclear Pakistan for and take 30,000 to 250,000 casualties and years-long occupation so we can start to look for them (It took 8 years to find Eric Rudolph on the friendly soil of the USA. Other FBI "most wanteds" remain unfound for over two decades.)
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Matt, it seems like there's a whole other inside Pentagon thing going on here. A fight between the force sized for China in 2025 guys and the force sized for counterinsurgency and nation building guys?
Before you go all knee-jerk you might want to ask yourself if you'd rather get more F-22's or more MRAP's.
Posted by Dirk
The answer is that people that want MRAPs over naything are fighting the battle of 5 years ago for equipping a garrison army in a squalid 3rd World backwater. Same with "Body Armor! More Body Armor!" liberal Nannies that think they are being helpful but are really just thwarting Army wishes for nimble, fast forces and replacing that with slow moving expensive ponderous targets that have too much armor weight to fight effectively and are just a replay of a too-small a size force (because they are too expensive) assembly of knights in armor that proved easy for hit and run attacks by peasants with pikepoles, then overwhelmed after attrition, depletion of the King's funds, and exhaustion as enough peasants massed to overwhelm them..
The answer to the question is we want F-22s, not more MRAPs built for an occupation of a 3rd world land we will soon either be either become a non-occupier ally welcomed to stay (as with Germany, Japan), or gone.
The answer is F-22s because our Army and Marines are built smaller than other potent nation's armies on the notion that the Air Force and Navy will maintain control of sea lanes and win air superiority within a few weeks and air supremacy within 50 days against an opponent. Ceding our ability to project power across oceans & command of the skies would mean we would have to at least double the size of the Army and Marines to compensate for 5th generation Sukois and MIGs now being built having partial control of the skies in a future confict. And that would assume that we would be able to cross those seas and skies to get ponderous, over-armored soldiers and vehicles to a conflict.
After Iraq is over, the vehicles will come back and all the heavy armor will be stripped off so combat vehicles are ready to be transported quickly and in numbers to the next possible conflict.
Chris Ford and Juan are morons.
The reality is that if you follow conventional counterinsurgency ratios, you'd need half a million troops in Afghanistan to control the situation.
You need 20 troops per 1,000 population - basically a platoon in every neighborhood. Afghanistan has 31 million people.
Do the math.
And it still wouldn't work any more than it would in Iraq - because you're an occupying power in a tribal society - not a Western one - and sooner or later they're going to drive you out.
The Pentagon is incredibly diverse in opinion within its ranks. The public sometimes perceives (wrongly) a monolithic stance. Dirk correctly observed earlier in the comments that any agency will operate like this. In fact, the media often formulate their opinion on the war, find some career military people that agree with it, laud them as courageous opposition, and hide behind their analysis when reporting the news (Tony Zinni, Merrill McPeak, Wesley Clark, etc.). Whether Pentagon or media, it's not nefarious, just self-serving, and normal. Nothing to get too worked up about. Further, the men involved on either side may have their degrees of ego, but they're mostly honorable, differing men who served admirably.
Comments closed March 21, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Matt, it seems like there's a whole other inside Pentagon thing going on here. A fight between the force sized for China in 2025 guys and the force sized for counterinsurgency and nation building guys?
Before you go all knee-jerk you might want to ask yourself if you'd rather get more F-22's or more MRAP's.
Posted by Dirk | March 7, 2008 8:52 AM