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Syria: Is It the Sunnis' or Shiites' Fault?
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks
Monday, October 4, 2010 - 7:17 AM
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For an informed take on Bob Woodward's new book, I thought it would be interesting to hear from my CNAS colleague retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, back when it was thought of as the good war. I think he is right: Woodward has made Gen. David Petraeus the unlikely villain of the book, and Vice President Joe Biden the equally unlikely hero.
By Lt. Gen. David Barno (U.S. Army, ret.)
Best Defense book reviewerAfter powering through Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars on my Kindle this past week, I came away profoundly uneasy. It was a compelling and immensely readable account, but much of its message was troubling.
Not because of the book's unbroken account of fractious infighting, over-sized battling personalities or the lengthy debate among Obama's national security team. I actually see this high level blood-letting generally as a pretty good sign. Vociferous arguments among smart, tough players at this level are required to shine light back into every corner of the competing arguments. And there are few issues more worthy of fulsome discussion than an ongoing war, especially one going badly.
My unease came from the gathering realization as the pages turned that the president was heading toward making his final decision -- one upon which untold lives and tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars would rest -- without getting his chance to dispassionately and fully evaluate the fullest range of possible choices.
According to Woodward, Obama's guidance to his team was clear: "I want an exit strategy" and "I'm not doing a long-term nation-building effort" and "I'm not spending a trillion dollars." Despite this, it appears from the very detailed narrative that all the options he receives are simply variants of The One Big Option: a large-scale counterinsurgency strategy focused on securing the Afghan population.
"The One Big Option" thematic repeats itself throughout the book. But the book's real argument is more subtle. Woodward's unstated thesis seems to be that the (young, inexperienced) [resident was locked in a battle of wills with a (powerful, politically savvy) military leadership who were consumed by their own singular idea of how to fight this war. And that at the end of this painfully long policy review, Obama just gets outflanked by generals who are hell-bent on having it their way. While this notion may be an attractive to those who are inherently suspicious of the role of the military in the United States' political life and foreign-policy, I found it unpersuasive.
The president is the commander-in-chief -- and as such, he is ultimately responsible for U.S. military actions overseas. He not only issues the orders that commit troops, but also frames the national policy that those deployments will support. He owns the policy decision "ends" at the strategic level, but must also understand and approve the broad "ways" by which his strategy will be carried out in the field. Further, he must balance the resources required to carry out these decisions -- the "means" of people, time and dollars that will always remain precious commodities. The military influences that process, often in outsize ways -- but the President owns it.
But Woodward's description of the narrow set of options presented to the president by his military commanders rings true. In NSC discussions, the "zero" option of "get out of Afghanistan now" is always the throwaway. Unsurprisingly, no one supports it. But all the other options are simply some variant of The One Big Option: a population-centered counterinsurgency strategy. The variants only tinker with numbers of troops -- will this COIN strategy be implemented with 20,000, 40,000 or 80,000 soldiers? Or as the military might put it: will you accept high risk, moderate risk, or low risk? And the more boots on the ground, the less risk of The One Big Option failing. Was that truly the "Full Monty" of options that were capable of meeting the president's guidance after nine years of war?
One facet of this intimate narrative is seeing the remarkably small circle of key players who shape the President's final decisions. Unlike his predecessor in the Oval Office, Obama did not bring in regular tranches of outside experts on warfare from whom he could extract new ideas. Instead Obama relies almost entirely on the formal national security staff process, in which a fairly small set of well-known actors clashed or connected, but who ultimately represented generally predictable institutional positions. The wisdom of the nation is coalesced into discomfortingly small pools in the situation room.
The only notable outliers nudging the president toward any "outside the box" choices seem to have been led by the vice president. Biden comes out of this account surprisingly well. He actively marshals a clutch of inside dissenters who improbably come closest to giving the president the one serious option outside the received wisdom of a large-scale COIN investment. The Biden team's option is called "CT Plus" -- a very different kind of 20,000-man "surge" that would focus on rapidly building Afghan security forces while shifting the war to a decisive thrust against both Al Qaeda terrorists and their intractable allies in the hardcore Taliban. At the end of the process, they never really get their day in court. As Peter Schwartz might say the "official future" had been set: The One Big Option of population-centric COIN.
Woodward's account is not a verbatim transcript of history -- but it is clearly a rather well-informed description of the 18-month Washington process leading up to a significant presidential decision on strategy for Afghanistan. Without question, his depiction is missing key parts, cruelly unfair to some players, and exceedingly generous toward others. But it remains the best account we have of an extraordinarily important decision by a wartime president on a strategy whose costs in either blood or treasure will impact every American for years to come.
What's missing in this prolonged strategy debate stand out? What was the end game the United States was trying to achieve? What would the enduring commitment -- if there were to be one -- look like? How did this decision nest inside broader strategic calculus and national priorities -- for dollars, troops, global security and international influence? How would the cost versus benefit of these choices fit within broader risks and opportunities, including domestic ones? And how was this going to be viewed around the region and around the world?
Woodward's account in some ways describes a detailed and through decision-making process -- led by a very engaged president -- focused on what seems to be the "Island of AfPak." There is little broader context for a decision that will have global implications, seriously impact domestic resource allocations, and help shape the United States' future role as an enduring (or declining) superpower.
How this future unfolds should keep all of us on the edge of our seats. Nine years on, time is not on our side. And in a sense, we have leapt half way across the chasm. As the president states (battalion commanders in Kunar and Wardak, take note), this approach is "not fully resourced counterinsurgency or nation building… but a narrower approach (focused on Al Qaeda)." Both the July 2011 timeline and the middle-ground choice of 30.000 troops argue that we have effectively settled on splitting the difference.
Most disturbing to me is that even after 18 months of serious effort, we have yet to define our enduring end game -- much less how we get to it.
I forget, are we at war with Oceania yet, or does that come later? Or did we just make peace with them?
Walt
Prediction time: As I have repeatedly stated in past comments once future historians have had an opportunity to reevaluate the Iraq and Afghanistan era’s Petraeus’s reputation will lose its luster. Petraeus is a strong personality whose maneuvering and ‘will’ has mastered two very weak and rather clueless Presidents in both Bush and Obama. When a President is uncurious and stupid (Bush) or politically weak and inexperienced (Obama) it allows a clever ambitious general with his own agenda to fill the power gap by outmaneuvering his political masters. Sadly, the Presidential history of this country for the past fifty years is such that the White House has been filled by second raters (and in not a few cases third raters) who do not enjoy the character, astuteness or iron will of an FDR or Harry Truman.
...&c &c
Halberstam's _Best and the Brightest_ continues to inform. This from p. 664 (here DH is talking about Kissinger's increasing role vis a vis Vietnam):
"To an extraordinary degree the Nixon men repeated the mistakes and miscalculations of the Johnson Administration, which prompted Russell Baker to describe it all as 'the reign of President Lyndon B. Nixonger.' For step by step, they repeated the mistakes of the past."
It never ceases to amaze me how bitter people continue to take pot shots at President Bush at every opportunity. As an Executive decision-maker, Bush will be remembered in history as one of the best. The Surge in Iraq being a prime example. At the conclusion of the Baker commission it was a foregone conclusion by "experts" that he would simple adopt that advice as his own. Instead, he made a bold decision and went with it. It has been hugely successful and now even Obama is hoping he can emulate it in Afghanistan.
This war was secondary to a domestic agenda...
....and I believe that from a strategic point there was no existential need for it. All involved, I suspect, know this. Unless in pursing domestic agendas, both parties are goaded in to actions that become strategic blunders - GOP actions and their brown shirt tea party dunces with fiscal matters and the President who is conducting a war in the model of Athens against Syracuse in the Peloponnesian Wars (forgetting Sparta was the enemy).
Had the President been serious and un-threatened he would have changed out the caretaker regime at the Pentagon both civilian and military.
He will after the election I am sure line them all up for the professional guillotines of Washington and free them to join the others on the payroll of Murdoch, Koch and Mephistopheles where their true loyalty lies.
A few (too many) thoughts, and a little ranting...
- Commander's intent; Obama wants out/wind-down ASAP, with a decent interval. Petraeus is famously willing to extend the race indefinitely, until he wins or rotates out. No wonder Obama issued a terms contract. The handshake on 2011 is not trusted.
- Rapidly build Afghan forces? Petraeus' (and others) rushed run at that sort of thing in 2004-6 Iraq was chaotic. Guns were being tossed unvetted into the Najaf battle. Facilities Protection forces worked both sides. Sadrist militias took the uniformed bit in their teeth- the same forces the Surge/SOI had to push back, to salvage a precarious Sunni toehold in Baghdad.
There's no Af-Pak analog to a 2006 Arab Shiite army/militia threatening the Sunni insurgents with destruction in detail, to force a deal. The non-pashtun Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara warlords will absorb any amount of guns and money we throw to them, as will the IRPak army, which is 20-30% Pashtun. How does that solve the bifurcated Pashtun civil war on the Af-Pak border?
-Big Army COIN suffers the same flaws as the Tank/Artillery mindset- applying the tools it has, competing for budget to Beat Navy. Unlike 'shock and awe', we lack convincing evidence that our army can do largescale popcentric COIN in pashtun lands, or that we'll take the risks and casualties inherent in dispersing riflemen to safeguard Afghan police where they sleep.
- Kandahar waits. The 2007 Baghdad lock-down, or the 2nd reduction of Talafar, are not proofs of the COIN/clear-hold-build concepts. At least not in the sense of providing scalable doctrine. Both were last ditch efforts, too expensive and destructive. Petraeus' and Karzai's reluctance to make Kandahar look like a bigger Ramadi-Fallujah, or a smaller Baghdad seem well founded.
- Long War in Pastunistan is just the kind of briar patch that the Powell Doctrine tried to protect the army and the country from diving into. Where is the military theory that tells us how to step back from military occupation, once we've socked the tar baby? There is none, because facing our limits is really a domestic political problem.
The Iraqis negotiated with a lame-duck Team Bush to force us into a Withdrawal Agreement in Iraq. Think about it. Even as a lame duck, McCain having lost, Bush/Petraeus/Crocker needed the political cover of a limited 'win' to agree to withdraw- extending our occupation in.
- Neither Rangers nor Airborne have the fullt skill sets to stand up village forces against the Taliban. It isn't a run-shoot light infantry problem, any more than it's a strategic air war. Both Petraeus and McChrystal's careers fell short of embracing the Special Forces disciplines at the platoon, company or battalion officer levels. We just don't have 1,000 A-teams, or a command experienced in deploying even 100 of them in a unified effort.
What are the village level insurgency/FID specialists formerly known as Green Berets advising, given what's available? Does it look something like Biden's CT/COIN option?
After seven years in Iraq, our scarce SF super-soldier now spends years studying mandarin, doing laison in FSR and India, for crissake! Isn't concentration of critical forces the most basic of military doctrines? At this rate, we'll be broke and rusted out before we ever get to the Formosa Straights.
Perhaps you would like to consider looking into what Carl von emphasize: that war is not waged for its own sake, but waged to obtain a particular aim, or rather what he calls the political object of war. As Clausewitz stated, "the political object is a goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose."
President Obama seems to have the relationship with these mentioned generals in Woodward's book, that one could liken to that old phrase of the relationship of a swordsmith to that of a fencing master.
Obama should be the swordsmith and his generals the fencing master, but in this case, it seems to be the other way around.
Thx for straightening me out on von C's question number one
I've been thinking Q1 was 'what kind of war is it?' The nature of a particular war has to proceed from "What are we fighting to achieve?'
In Iraq, our big interest was in Iran and Arabia, although I'm not clear on what we expected from either. Once the adolescent impresses the girls with his muscles by ringing the bell, it's all wasted if he doesn't get a date out of it.
In Afghanistan, Iran is there again on one side, with the Islamabad purveyors of 'Allah's bomb' on the other side, still hosting our favorite Egyptian-Yemeni AQSL duo. Again, it's not clear what we want IRPakistan or the Iranians on the Hazara-Beluchi frontier to be doing. I mean, given that they're not going to make us happy by turning their countries over to us.
I wonder what Clausewitz would say about campaigning in the next country over to the one where an undetermined effect is desired? Even a two-fer is a bad deal, if you don't like the product.
This is great misdirection by the Secret Team and its member - Bob Woodward.
They decided to expand the war, it was not up to the Pentagon or Obama. Petraeus said it clearly, "He's fuckin with the wrong guy." It is Gates who is calling the shots. Gates said yesterday the USA will never leave Afghanistan.
However, the American people assume Obama runs things, and that he relies on advice from the Pentagon. They would be confused as to why a guy who supposedly only collect "intelligence" at the CIA is calling the shots as a key member of the shadow government.
Obama will not protest, because they selected him as President many years ago. Recall "they" vetoed Obama's firm decision to close Gitmo. I know this confuses self anointment experts who gather their knowledge from corporate TV and corporate newspapers controlled by the Secret Team.
Steve Coll has his take in the New Yorker and it cuts against the grain of what has been the dominant narrative (see Eliot Cohen's snarky WaPo piece that I believe Tom linked to). Coll sees a President totally immersed and taking charge.
It's tempting to characterize a smart and deliberative President as weak in what was a super charged, testosterone filled milieu. And Coll correctly points out that his actions aren't "classically heroic". But they are indicative of "realism and intelligence".
Of note: he writes the President has "mastered the details of the Pakistan conundrum" - quite a compliment coming from Coll.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/10/11/101011taco_talk_coll
He may be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. Doesn't give him special vision, but does perhaps elevate him above his vapid and career-driven peers in the US Army.
This little scrap with the Afghan irregulars has baffled our military leadership. The earth's most powerful nation can't best a collection of tribal bands. Time to say the obvious: Army leadership, generalship, strategy, and execution are just plain awful.
Military reform should be the next serious undertaking, in the Pentagon and - more importantly - in Congress.
And let's finally have an end to the AVF and return to the draft: we tried that AVF gimmick and it has failed miserably. It's a good tale during peacetime but the AVF cannot conduct extended combat and win. Vide Iraq. Vide Afghanistan. Vide our reduced posture and capability everywhere else.
Let's end our schoolboy discussion of COIN and other versions of how many angels can dance on a pin. Our military has failed.
When the tool at hand is a hammer...
Without prejudice to the humanity of brave Pashtun fighters and their families, if you go after something like ants with a hammer, you wear yourself out killing individuals, with no discernible effect on the collective. Accurate 'order of battle' is more important that attrition data, in this analogy. I haven't seen either, friend of foe, in 10 years of Afghanistan or Iraq.
Population protection, which Pashtun elders tell us both sides claim to be selling, is necessary, but not sufficient. There are fundamental (non-religious) issues on both sides of the Durand line that make killing and violent death more attractive, or more profitable than slow starvation under malevolent governments. Security buys you time to deal with causes, a decades long process.
For all our money, tools and good intentions, we are allied with TWO governments that Pashtuns fear and fight against. In this limited analysis, how much deadly force in support of those governments will be sufficient? How many more 'surge' troops would give General P. the wherewithal to 'just keep on fighting' thru the next decade?
If in this case there's no deciding 'battle of baghdad', semi-contained along well defined river, canal and 30M roadbed barriers, then swinging two hammers instead of one just wears the force out faster.
With an ally like Pakistan......
While Obama may have been boxed in by Generals to go for the ‘surge’ when he really was looking for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, his goal of stopping ‘the terror cancer’ spreading from Pakistan to Afghanistan was going to be in conflict with his ’early exit strategy’ anyway.
"We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review according to Woodward‘s book. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was "so the cancer doesn't spread there."
Obama’s US is NOT going to be able to stop the cancer spreading from Pakistan to Afghanistan because after nine long years of war in Afghanistan, US has neither the will nor the resources to attack the root cause of cancer now safely residing in Pakistan.
Obama’s US has intentionally ignored Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.
With an ally like Pakistan, US Afghan mission was doomed to fail right from the very beginning in 2001.
It is interesting that of the twelve comments registered so far there appear to be twelve individuals who are to one extent or another dissatisfied with America’s wars in Iraq but most particularly Afghanistan. All the commenter’s names are familiar and many of them have extensive military experience and/or are keen observes of foreign policy and military affairs. As a subset of the general population I would consider this group unique as having strong and affirmative ties to the armed forces of our country and yet still remain very disturbed by the professional judgment and performance of those very forces of which we are faithfully attached to in a variety of ways. I think this speaks volumes about the failure of leadership at both the political level and as RD accurately suggests at the military level particularly the U. S. Army.
The fundamental flaw in our strategy
George W. Bush and the poltroons around him sent the AVF to war. They should have sent the nation.
You placed it well, JPWREL....
remember in the movie when Henry Fonda just wanted to talk about the verdict. There was something missing. There is something missing.
About a year ago, I received a letter from the Navy historians. I had sent a note to SecNav about the change of jacks at the direction of Gordon England in 2002. It was never in history flown by the United States during conflict. It may not have existed as flown in its present form until 1876 - over hundred years after it was supposed to have been flow on the Delaware by privateers. Navy's historical pros response was that this was in honor of the American's resistance against tyranny. It just didn't seem correct. If it was so...then why didn't they fly it when they were really resisting tyranny. Either cause could have...not even the CSA thought it appropriate. So I can't help but thinking my old school may be turning out the brass capable of elaborate deception of the public for its own agenda...may be it continues in bigger matters beyond flag bating. I don't have confidence that we understand what underlies our actions post 911. There is something missing.
Do it get to pinch the bridge on my nose yet?
When I read the 12 comments what I see is a pissing contest between "wannabees" or "wannabees who want to look like we know exactly what's happening". Personally, I think Obama should not be underestimated. I think he knows what he's doing, he just likes to take his time in doing it. I don't know if that will be brilliant or fatal on his part. I don't think we know how to read him yet. I just hope he's around long enough for someone to figure it out.
Biden's option, as you present it, is about an vague and unrealistic as you can get - defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban - with fewer troops and less resources. As the Taliban was at the time taking over whole swaths of Southern Afghanistan, including Kandahar, the "Option" had little chance of accomplishing much of anything. If the Biden option had been implemented, it is safe to say that the war would probably be over at this point in time, for all practical purposes. Maybe we can live with a re-Talibanized Afghanistan but I think the risks would be extreme, as Peter Bergen among others has argued. And the suggestion that, having driven out the U.S. they would decease further attacks on the West, or reign in Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, is unrealistic.
It is easy to pretend that their were other options (besides simply withdrawing) available to Obama but no one has seemed to come up with any realistic ones, especially those on the liberal side(Frank Rich, Arianna Huffington,etc) who once claimed that Af/Pak was the central front in the war on terror. Remember those bygone days?
...an aircraft carrier parked in the Arabian Sea, just outside Karachi harbor, with General David Petraeus on board. One of these days the Pakistan Army will fly Mullah Umar in a helicopter to the aircraft carrier where he will receive the document of surrender.
How much would delivery of AQSL senior leadership cost?
Obviously $25M bounty was lowball, a fraction of what we give IRPakistan annually for OBL/Zawahiri prospecting rights. So what are we willing to pay, what does Pakistan really want?
A few billion$, with a missile shield from Indian nukes? Done, I say. We can hold an international war crimes trial out at Diego Garcia.
And give the same air/missile defense to India. (Chinese won't like that.) Let's see if Reagan's recipe for disarmament works, in the S. Asia lab.
Who's surrendering to whom in your fantasy?
You got it.
Absent from the general's analysis is fact that Obama chose the war in Afghanistan as part of a cynical, short range political calculation - he did not embrace the conflict because he had a clear sense of how to fight it or why to fight it or what the strategic consequences of fighting or not fighting it might prove to be be - he chose 'the good war' because in order to beat Hillary and then Bush he needed to conjure up a military, commander in chief persona for himself that he could sell to both liberals and independents. Is it any wonder then that Obama doesn't know what he's doing, is at a loss when it comes to making real world military decisions? That he's vulnerable to being pushed around by his generals because they know exactly what he is - a naive political opportunist who on a purely rhetorical level leveraged his opposition to the war in Iraq and his support for the war in Afghanistan to promote his grandiose ambitions?
And why exactly is it we assume that Biden's plan wasn't rejected for reasons of political expediency? I mean anyone who has followed the intense debate within the military about COIN knows why Petraeus et al would have had little time for Biden's plan - but why do we then assume that Obama was boxed in by the Petraeus vision of COIN? Seems to me rather that Obama was boxed in by his own naive embrace of the war in Afghanistan and that made Biden's small, contra Petraeus, endless CT engagements without clear victory version of the war politically untenable.
The left wing media - of which this blog is a stalwart member - has consistently misread and misrepresented Obama on war - he's been unduly lauded for his opposition to the war in Iraq as if his stance was logical and nuanced and full of strategic brilliance [which it wasn't] and had nothing at all to do with savvy political calculation [which it absolutely did] - and likewise with his embrace of the war in Afghanistan during the primaries which the left has never either acknowledged or understood was all about political considerations. Take the long gestation period for the current Afghanistan policy: the distended process is always presented as a reflection of Obama being so engaged on the problem and so wanting to get it right - but to me the drawn out process is more a reflection of Obama either being way in over his head or, once again, the manifestation of political calculation ie he knew the policy would not sit well with his base so he had to give the impression it was the result of deep and profound soul searching and the application of academic intellectual rigor - in other words, the long gestation period was a political charade.
It's high time people accept the fact that Obama is a con artist - which happens to make him a very good politician and I've never denied that in a very limited way he's a damn good politician - but the presidency demands leadership and Obama's no leader, and I didn't need Woodward's book to teach me that - it's been obvious since that keynote address in 2004 what the man's about and only the ideologically deluded should be surprised.
SAINTSIMON, writes: “Absent from the general's analysis is fact that Obama chose the war in Afghanistan as part of a cynical, short range political calculation –“
This is quite true; I think everybody commenting on this forum recognizes the purely political dimension of Obama’s decision. But all decisions to go to war reflect a certain political calculation and manipulation on the part of the nations leadership (or contenders to leadership) whomever that may be. The act of making war is never isolated from the political life of the nation. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was the ultimate political decision made palatable to the public by being wrapped in a blanket of deceit and mendacity.
Replace everyone with divorce lawyers
Obviously Obama's strategic objective is to get out of Afghansitan because he knows he can't sustain his support within the mainstream Democratic party otherwise. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate into the general's operational implementation scenario.
I read this someplace, it's not an original thought, but it was suggested that perhaps what we need is a group of smart divorce lawyers to replace the generals, because the divorce lawyers are the true exit strategists, with the abilities to work out the details.
"Politics is the womb in which war develops."
"The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes."
"War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means."
"War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means."
"We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception."
So I guess the view that somehow Obama got politics mixed up in this Afghanistan thing has some intellectual firepower behind it. And that those who decry a role for political considerations in the strategy of war are either naive or incurably partisan.
sorry - you make common mistake of assuming what Clausewitz understood by politics is at all related to what Obama et al understand politics to be - for ol' von C politics was about the autocratic extension of power for the purposes of securing defenses, creating useful alliances and filing the Treasury with bounty - politics as war was the life blood of any country that hoped to be master of its own fate - politics for Obama is about securing votes for the purpose of either flattering his ego or promoting an idealogical agenda that has little to do with politics as Clausewitz would have understood it.
To say there's a political component to war is a virtual tautology and of no use whatsoever if one doesn't define the nature of the politics involved - for Obama it was not about winning a war or improving America's strategic posture or even burnishing his own glory or ideological pretensions but instead merely about getting elected and Clausewitz would have consider that a rather poor and foolish use of both war and its political adjunct.
But won't back down from the notion that politics - the exercise of power in and by a nation - drives war, even if others expound some twinky definition of the topic.
The notion that Obama's pre-election stand on Bush's wars won the election for him suggests that the nation was (and is) a lot more engaged in these forlorn contests than is the case. Fact is, he stomped his Republican opponent handily, and if you want to talk phonies, take a hard look at the many manifestations and permutations of John McCain.
What Obama got handed to him on 20 January 2009 were two sacks of shit. He did what he said he would do with the one labeled Iraq: we're out of there in a combat role and standing down overall. The other sack - Afghanistan - had been so thoroughly mismanaged and badly waged as to defy any fix. But Obama tried, and was told by his military advisors that the course of action he directed would work. Well, they were wrong. It's time to end our longest war, with full blame for the idiot who diverted our military from that theater for imperial dreams in Iraq and for the AVF, which has proven to be a parade-ground force unable to prevail in sustained combat.
Blaming Obama for these wars is like blaming the street sweepers for the mess after the elephants paraded by. In fact that's what happened: the Republican elephants - Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Fieth, Rumsfeld, and the chorus of sycophantic general officers - made a horrible mess of our foreign policy for 8 years. Those who align with this bunch of buffoons would do well to not criticize those elected, overwhelmingly, to pull our nuts from the fire.
Fascinating discussion. I'd be interested in this group's critique of our dealings with the IRP & thoughts re. the future.
Isn't that the critical variable, & the one over which we have the least control ?
Anyone missing Musharraf yet ?
Advise to Obama on strategy, warfighting & victory
I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don't like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don't solicit their opinions or votes.
War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.
This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
My aim then was to whip Al Qaeda and the Taliban, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.
If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
The voice of the people is the voice of humbug.
I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the Taliban begs for mercy.
I intend to make Helmand and Kandahar howl.
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
If you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir.
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