OK, what comes after ‘dithering’?

Tom Ricks is troubled by how President Obama has chosen to go about making a decision as to Afghan policy. I'm more concerned that he hasn't structured his administration to ensure any policy decision that is made gets implemented successfully.

The last administration made decisions all the time that it later had to revisit, sometimes because they had immediate bad results but more often because it was headed by a President too weak to impose discipline on senior officials who never agreed with the decisions in the first place. I find myself wondering whether we now have a different President, but a variant of the same problem.

Who is in charge of Afghanistan -- not the combat operations but the civilian effort that every counterinsurgency advocate in the country feels is crucial to success? What I see is an administration with a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Everyone is being heard, no one is being cut out, so internal peace within the administration is preserved. If we're actually going to have a chance going forward in Afghanistan, some people will have to be tuned out, cut out, sent to work on other things. Some other people, as in a small number of other people, will need to be organized into a chain of command analogous to what the military side of the war effort has.

You can't run one side of whatever it is we're doing in Afghanistan with a chain of command and the other side with a committee. It's too glib to say that's a recipe for failure, because at this point in the war failure is a possibility even if we do everything right. What it is, though, is a recipe for civilian reconstruction and intergovernment relations that move much more slowly than military decisions. Military frustration is practically guaranteed. Having no one clearly in charge is also a recipe for ensuring that everything that does go wrong is blamed entirely on the President. This is incidentally made more likely when his close political associates from the campaign are so often used as administration spokesmen on this subject.

I understand that the President's deliberative process has been made a lot more deliberative by the fact that his team went into August with one set of assumptions as to an absolutely crucial subject, the state of our Afghan government partners, and had those assumptions dragged through a big muddy field. The choices before it now may not be a lot harder than those it faced three months ago, but they are different. The question is whether the decisions Obama's administration ends up making can be made into effective policy. I don't know how they can, because I don't know whose responsibility it is to make this happen.

I've commented before that I think your "dither" soap box is more a subjective perception injected into your own reporting, which somehow doesn't fit with your ideal process. Oh, well.

That said, I sensed right away that you were starting a meme that was going to be picked up by the president's opponents. And lo, Dick Cheney and daughter kicked off a media blitz accusing Obama of the very same thing.

I don't think any of you are capturing the full picture, but the difference is the Cheneys have a partisan reason to pursue it, and don't care if they're right or wrong.

This whole saga reminds me of when Joe Klein wrote an article during the campaign about "Obama's Patriotism Problem," and then couldn't believe the McCain camp would start talking about how Obama had a patriotism problem.

Personally, I have come to agree with Tom's take on Obama's decision-making process. However, I see the issue being controlled more by complex domestic political concerns than purely military concerns.

Obama has already boxed himself into an Afghan strategy by his election rhetoric, appointment of McChrystal and his March of this year agreement to a general strategy. My guess is that he wishes he hadn’t done all these things and is trying to conjure up a way not to limit his options even more.

His party to say the least is not enthusiastic about this war and he is bright and knows it will become even less so as time goes on. Even some Republican conservatives types are beginning to sense a disaster in the making.

This reminds me of some of FDR’s comments in support of the neutrality act in 1936 demanded by domestic political concerns unrelated to foreign policy. Of course the magician Roosevelt had the deft political skill to maneuver around these earlier commitments, but I am not sure Obama does.

Dithering? The unemployment rate is sky rocketing. The banking system is insolvent and loaded with off sheet toxic assests causing severe financial pollution overload. Gold is soaring on hyper-inflation fears in the long term. The US dollar is in a downward spiral. The US debt for government, corporate, and private sectors combined is at 345% of GDP, a record high. US farmers are hoarding cash because it is almost impossible to get loans to pay for very expensive fertilizer. Many American farmers are facing financial ruin, while agricultural inventories are at 50 year lows. High energy prices are here for good. The USA will need to import 93% of crude oil by 2030 according to the EIA. Our dependency on ME oil will only continue to increase. If crude goes off the dollar, all bets are off. Not good for the most auto dependent country on earth. US major oil companies can no longer replace reserves, four years in the running. Goldman Sachs Commodities is predicting $85 crude by years end, and $95-$105 by next year brining us to over 4% energy cost of GDP. This is a choke point for economic growth. Cheap oil is gone for good. US mfg is in the toilet and declining (except for weapons). Many in the financial community are predicting a currency crises not seen since the 19th century. Some are predicting the US to default on government debt within five years. Economic contraction in real terms is the new reality emerging for USA. Inc.

Infrastructure under investment is at an all time high. State and local governments are on the whole basically insolvent, with tax revenues dropping like lead, and legacy costs exploding across the board. California is the bell weather, recently issuing IOU's and using smoke and mirror accounting gimicks to appear solvent. Commercial real estate is the next shoe to drop. Commercial empty space is soaring. Buildings under construction are being abandoned. Commercial and residential construction is in the toilet. Residential real estate has around another 20% to drop, with no rebound on the horizon. Huge amounts of mortgage holders are drowning. 70% of our economy is consumer driven. The US consumer is tapped out and broke. US college graduates are holding $20-30,000 in student loan debt and can not find work. Vast amounts have degrees in decling sectors like finance, business, and marketing. US colleges are strapped for cash and some are claiming the system is going to crash.

US students are scoring at the bottom compared to other OECD countries in hard sciences. Americans living in poverty is increasing. Homelessness is rising along with the lack of mental health services. 45 million Americans have no health insurance. America is suffering from an obesity/diabetes epidemic. Even the military is suffering through a fatbody problem! The US prison population is the highest in the world. We have over 7 million in the system one way or another. Mexico is imploding. Northern Mexico is stateless. They will no longer be an oil exporter within 5 years, tops. Systemic corruption is taking hold in the social, political and economic realms. Government secrecy is out of control. The United States is in serious trouble. We are reaching a tipping point. It's starting to look like 1790's France around the Belt Way. Miles of fairways, rivers of booze, and lots of hookers. The US Congress looks and acts like a game show host convention. Congress is broken beyond repair. Members voting on bills they have never, nor will they ever read.

If I lived in the Belt Way, I would either consider moving, or would start looking into installing 40 foot blast walls around my house. Sadly, social unrest is coming to America. Empire collapse is not pretty. I guess Ricks and his deluded imperialistic salon friends think the "Dithering" President should spend all of his time thinking about idiotic things like COIN, and wasting Billions and Billions of borrowed dollars and barrels of blood in rat holes like Afghanistan.

Jay's reports are being misread and lag any feet operationally. This is a bottom up issue at the moment, even though top brass and civee leadership seem to lack the movement.There is a power struggle in the halls right now. Intelligence coming from Centcom changes by the minute while over at the ranch dni folks keep presenting solid materiel. Though in the end they lack the ear of the boss. Pentagon and the ranch need to get on the same page and present something that merits A+.

"What can you do in 10 weeks than you can't do in four?"

Bingo!

To be completely honest, I can argue reinforce or withdraw with equal effect. I really don't know what the right answer is here. Both options are bad and fraught with uncertainty and more precious lives lost.

However, the one thing that I do know is that a half-measure - say 10,000 troops - would be a terrible decision. It will undermine our troop morale, scare away our allies, embolden the Taliban and Al-Queda, and not be enough to carry out General McCrystal's strategy.

Despite a few years out of uniform, I still consider myself a military man and as such instinctively head toward the sound of the muskets. That makes it hard to turn from a fight. But if the president decides to wind down our commitment to Afghanistan, announcing that our original intent is complete, I will support that decision. If he decides to give McCrystal what he has requested and continue the fight, I will support that as well.

But... if he makes a political calculation and tries to find some nonsensical middle ground, then he has lost me completely.

will not follow Pres. Obama into Afghanistan...so all the talk is how to do something without throwing away the next election...all politics are local...who said that?

every American president wins with the promise of stopping a war and ends up loosing because he started another!

is history going to repeat itself this time again?
desert storm costed Bush Sr. his presidency, Yugoslavian costed Clinton his, Iraq costed Bush Jr! will afghan cost Obama?

http://www.danielsrepublic.com

Meet The Press 11-1-2009

GREGORY: Jon Krakauer, I want to get to a key element of your book, "Where Men Win Glory," about Pat Tillman and how it relates to this current conversation about Afghanistan. Because it does involve General Stanley McChrystal, who was obviously critical on the stage now and was critical in the Tillman story of well. As a reminder, if you look at pictures of Pat Tillman, the NFL star with the Arizona Cardinals, decides to enlist in the Army, serves in the Rangers after 9/11. This was certainly a big story when he enlisted. And at the time, General McChrystal was actually head of Special Operations command. So Pat Tillman was killed in a friendly fire incident and ultimately won the Silver Star, and that's what you focus on in the book and in a subsequent piece that you wrote for The Daily Beast. And here's what you wrote: "An October 5 Newsweek article [said, about General McChrystal] that `he has great political skills; he couldn't have risen to his current position without them. But he definitely does not see himself as the sort of military man who would compromise his principles to do the politically convenient thing.' In the week after Tillman was killed, however, this is precisely what McChrystal appears to have done when he administered a fraudulent medical"--excuse me--"a fraudulent medal recommendation"--we're talking about the Silver Star--"and submitted it to the secretary of the Army, thereby concealing the cause of Tillman's death." Briefly explain what happened.

"MR. KRAKAUER: The--after Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal--Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire."

GREGORY: And that's the important piece of it. And, and he actually testified earlier this year before the Senate, and this is what he said about it.

(Videotape, June 2, 2009)

LT. GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Now, what happens, in retrospect, is--and I would do this differently if I had the chance again--in retrospect they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture--or I didn't catch that if you read it you could imply that it was not friendly fire.

GREGORY: Even those who were critical of him and the Army say they don't think he willfully deceived anyone.

MR. KRAKAUER: That's correct. He, he just said now he didn't read this hugely important document about the most famous soldier in the military. He didn't read it carefully enough to notice that it talked about enemy fire instead of friendly fire? That's preposterous. That, that's not believable.

I highly doubt the President trust's McChrystal. My heart goes out to Pat Tillman's mother, for all the suffering she has endured at the hand of McChrystal.

"Galula" huh? Personal friend of yours, saintsimon? I'd remind you it's Lieutenant Colonel David Galula - thank you very much!

Well, Mr Ricks, I entirely disagree. I read you often at the Post and read your books because, even though one could sense a bias influencing your writing, it was effectively hidden away and that allowed me to give you the benefit of the doubt long enough to consider what you were saying. I don't read you much anymore because your prevailing 'sentiments', as Zathras would have it, get in the way - but I suppose if you're only writing to please the people already predisposed to share your opinion then a gauze of sentiment is not a problem - in fact, for the Zathras-like out there in the mawkish blogsphere, it's no doubt a necessity.

Personally, if I read Descartes, I know he's highly motivated to prove the existence of a God, but I'm not going to give his Meditations the time of day if he can't win my trust that his arguments will be fair and evenhanded. I understand you Obamaphiles are anxious to demonstrate the godlinees of your leader, but still I wonder how you can expect your devotion to be taken seriously [that's for you, Zathras] by nonbelievers when you can't even proffer a simple but legitimate criticism of the man without at the same time apologizing for it.

Mebbe one thing you can do in ten weeks that you can't do in four is establish in an insecure (leaks & misleading propaganda from Kabul are only parts of it) environment is establish just how much truth and fact there is in an application to spend more American lives from the Pentagon. And how much romantic fantasy.

And if this takes more than ten weeks, as well it might, every day taken is a potential step on the path to righteousness. Earlier military demands for support in Afghanistan by the military have not been leaked to the news media, so we have no benchmark to establish whether truth and fairy stories dominate in these documents. After all, it's hard to believe that tommy Franks was telling the president of the day that if he got the forces the president ultimately gave him, the US military would still be there eight years later, and in the views of the current commanding generals, Petraeus and McChrystal, losing to the Taliban.

The president must also consider valid matters that might not be within the Pentagon's demand, or interest. In November 2001, seven million Afghans needed food aid to avoid starvation. The current figure seems to be nine million. Not the Pentagon's interest? Probably. But certainly, America's.

If Ricks gets the Christmas gift he claims top crave, will be be going to church on that famous birthday, and thanking Jesus? Or just continuing to grump at the current president's seeing things differently -- and much better informed -- than Thomas Ricks?

Ricks's view seems to be that complying with Pentagon demands should be America's only interest. Or, at least, Obama's.