December 20, 2007

[Globe] In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites -- a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)

[Senator Obama] “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/

Anyone who thinks the main post here makes sense is probably still on board with the idea that the first Gulf War was a great victory because we attained the objectives specified in the relevant UN resolution.

The fact that the way that war ended left us stuck with a major, permanent military deployment intended to contain the government we had just defeated merely reflected the ambiguities inherent in war. In no way did it represent a failure of planning or imagination. With respect to Libya, the case is the same; the United States establishes the conditions for the no-fly zone, and then steps back with arms folded to watch everyone else step up to the plate.

And if they don't? We must respond with vigorous communication! Good, candid, hard-hitting discussions! Not with Congress, obviously, but between the military leadership ordered into war and the civilians in the administration who talked the President into giving the order. The purpose of strategy is to enable the linkage between the operational and political levels that will help us figure out what on God's earth we are really trying to do in Libya.

Incidentally, the end of the Gulf War also left us with a couple of hundred thousand Shiite Arab dead. The UN resolution didn't tell us we needed to prevent that, so it was all good. Now, we're trying to use air power only to prevent something similar (albeit on a smaller scale) in Libya. And if air power alone isn't enough, we'll just have to mobilize those good, hard-hitting, candid discussions and send them into battle again -- because this time, we are committed to preventing Qadhafi from overpowering his enemies and murdering them. If he's able to do this in spite of President Obama having decided that it was time Susan Rice won a policy argument, it would be bad.

Gee Tom, I see you have mapped out the best-case scenario quite well. Now how about a think through of the worst-case scenario? One more thing, how about the U. S. Congress, where do they figure into all this?

As a tonic to Tom’s optimism (he very well may be dead right and I hope he is) I suggest a reading of George Will’s column in today’s WP.

Remember in bringing-up Sainted Carl, that his first dictum of warfare “tries to discover how we may gain a preponderance of physical forces and material advantages at the decisive point. As this is not always possible, theory also teaches us to calculate moral factors: the likely mistakes of the enemy, the impression created by a daring action.”

Is it possible that we may have created, by the moral factor, and daring action, an expectation in the minds of the anti-Kaddafi forces that American support will be on-going and if necessary, transcend onto terra firma?

In the John Wayne movie "The Quiet Man," the Duke sees a young Maureen O'Hara at church and introduces himself after the service by saying good morning, whereupon her oak size of a brother comes up to Wayne and says, you may have said good morning, but it was good night you had on your mind

Indeed our military and civilian leaders better sit down and have a frank discussion, that includes whether this was a good morning introduction or will continue toward good night for Kaddafi. Because we are now in for the whole pound. . .err Euro, and as long as Kaddafi stays upright, we have an unresolved situation in Libya

"The clearer we are now about command and control, rules of engagement and other organizational aspects of the intervention, the harder it will be to pass if off. Better they do it in their own way than we make it so they can only do it our way.

What we need now is good, candid, hard-hitting discussions between our military leaders and their civilian overseers. Because war changes the reality of the situation every day, it is essential for the operational, or campaign, level of war to be connected to the political level. That is the purpose of strategy, and of those free and frank discussions."

Shouldn't this sort of stuff be figured out before we go in?! Shouldn't these free and frank discussions have happened before the first Tomahawk left its cost spot on a Navy ship? This whole sort of shoot first, figure out the strategy later stuff is really hard to swallow. What if NATO and friends can't get their act together and take over from the US? What if Qaddafi pushes back? What if this devolves into a civil war? What if certain countries will only participate if the US continues leading it? Tom all you are doing is picking the best-case scenario, and ignoring all the hard questions about worst-case scenarios. Which is exactly what I think everyone is so pissed off about right now. Ok, the no-fly zone is established. What next?

Right now no one has an answer and that is an absolutely criminal place to be when bombs are already falling. What if those pilots died in that F-15E that crashed today? What would Obama tell their families? Can you answer that? Because if you can't, you have no right whatsoever to be in a war.

For being so dead-set against this intervention. But this isn't a "game", not even a "match". Its a precedent and a very dangerous one. The president has basically pushed away a mostly reluctant spineless Congress in this decision to commit military power against yet another sovereign state. He has done this to pacify the McCains and Liebermans and other Mad Dogs. He has pushed out the lead team of cajones seeking political women (For themselves or their own trophy shelves?)--Madames Clinton, Rice, and Powers and he has set the strength debate firmly in his corner for the coming Presidential election.
Never mind that the act of American fire power across the beach is so far too easy to do, but never, ever, easy to stop. Let us know how that "turn-over in days not weeks" thing goes. Bickering Europe and NATO and scared of their own shadow Arab League types are just stepping up to the plate to grab the reigns of this Odyssey Thing right fast. ...Yes they are.
These military machines and weapons are far from capable of doing everything that the instructions written by Grumman, GE, McD-Douglas, et al, claim. We've already dropped one in the sand and yes, put Marine boots on the deck in Libya to scoop up the aircrew. What happens when we loss one over Qadaffi HQ and the aircrew get dragged through the street a la Mogadishu? We all gonna get on board when every paper above the fold shows that pretty sight?
Tom you post a Fox 18 on the photo above. That carrier deck is going to be in range very soon. The USN is pissing their pants in anticipation of participation too. Who is going to get tired of this first, them or us?
You don't like exit strategy talk, but tell me how the USA will leave this mission to the likes of the bickering others and be satisfied that all went well?
Sign me out "Cynic", I don't care. As one of my old skippers used to say: "This is 3 out of the 5 dumbest things we've ever done".

Like Flight Leader Rex, Mr. Ricks and his Squadron of Arab Leaguers bravely attacked the entire Jagd Gruppe. Alas his entire squadron bolted for home. Any "Piece of Cake" aficionados out there? Hello ANYBODY?

CINC Afrika (not Rommel or Cruewell) GEN Hamm coming out on the 2nd day of the war looking for some future notional HQs to take over this thing was kind of interesting. Total disarray. I think it is likely to be a Battle Handoff (in STANAG Terms) not a Battle Handover.

If the only endstate is to be out, why get in?

Mr. Ricks,
I heard your NPR interview this morning. While your comments were technically correct, I believe you fundamentally misinterpret the military's desire for clarity of purpose from the administration. The ambiguity the military embraces focuses on the situation and environment. The clarity we require is the political objective of our actions. This clarity of purpose defines the actions the military can take; it limits the options. Certainly, the leaders of this foray into Libya do not need to be told how to do their jobs nor do they expect a systematically prepared order. What they do need is an understanding of the strategic policy goals, the end state; what Libya looks like after the military completes its mission. Without this understanding, military operations are disjointed. Without an understanding of where we are going, it is very difficult to draw up a plan to get there.

As a budding operational planner, I admit that my experience of linking campaign objectives to strategic goals is academic at best. My fear, not being in the know, is that our actions will have unintended consequences that hurt the overall policy objectives. Military actions do not have predictable outcomes and this is exacerbated if no desired policy level objective is present. Your comments, stating that the military should put up or shut up and act in an environment of ambiguity (my interpretation of your words, maybe not the message you intended) struck a chord. The military does not want a Powell Doctrine answer, in my opinion. They want to understand how this looks at the end. They may have that, I don’t know but think the fear is we a slowly inching into another Arab nation’s war. Nation building (or whatever you want to call it) is a slow process.

I recently heard a new reporter ask an Egyptian about Western intervention into Libya. The Egyptian said the West shouldn’t involve itself in the domestic affairs of an Arab state on its own. The reporter replied by saying the African Union and Arab League (?) supported the intervention. The Egyptian retorted by stating, “I think it is now understood that those government’s do not represent their people (paraphrase).” Wow – I thought.
There is a Clausewitz quote that I was looking for but couldn’t find which goes something like, "no sane nation starts a war without first knowing their desired ending conditions." I am going out on a limb here but I think understanding clarity of purpose is important for understanding the types of actions we are taking and making sure they linked to achieve our political objective.

-chris

doubles down on obfuscating bullshit.

How many Arab countries, with their second rate air forces, are going to participate in this adventure now that we lost an 15e?

Look, if the goal among you guys dialed in to the power structure is to take out Q because he's been poking his finger in our eye for 40 years, then great, I can get on board with that.

Just don't serve bullshit and tell me it's mom's apple pie.

For all the Tom critics here who admonish his 'technicality' while still citing the sovereignty of Libya, take a second pass. Libya is about as sovereign right now as Somalia - before the intervention. Dictators forfeit their right to sovereignty when they cease acting on behalf of the people.

The terrible thing about doing the right thing is that, even if you succeed, your critics will never be able to tally the costs of inaction. I have confidence that if resolution 1970 hadn't been passed, we'd all be sitting back today watching a river of blood flow out of Benghazi.

"The international consensus changes every day, so our operations need to change with it."

This statement skips or dismisses as unimportant the policy questions about why it makes ethical and strategic sense to conduct the operation, both at all and not also in a dozen other places, and how much we allow international consensus to determine where our overtasked resources go.

Soccer matches are conducted for known, definite reasons. A soccer match has a finite, immutable endstate and two clearly defined opposing teams who consent to a match with three possible outcomes that are precisely definable from the outset. The game is not played on a field full of defenseless innocent bystanders, some of whom are inevitably killed by stray goalkicks. The teams do not need to consider whether they have enough players to spread between this game and two more that are ongoing and that got way out of control due to the same lack of planning conducted for the game which has just been started. Unstated assumptions about the inherent righteousness of playing soccer do not contribute to conditions in which the children of people loosely associated with the losing team fly planes into buildings full of people they know nothing about years after the fact.

I have trouble believing that the international community thought war was so desirable that they would've equally risked their own lives and equipment had we not gotten involved. I have trouble believing that the populations of Arab and Muslim countries have, in good faith, been included in the relevant measurement of the international consensus. If you don't want to see these critical assumptions on your blog, that's your decision. But regardless of their accuracy, it is right and good to assert publicly that, when in doubt, we should opt not to kill people.

Tom, nice comments on NPR this morning. Especially at the end with regard to the military's perception of Obama v. Bush.

I have to agree with CAV GUY about the ambiguity part though. Nobody wants ambiguity when it comes to strategy. Operations and tactics have to be flexible because war is dynamic and kinetic. But not strategy. The military is flexible...yet prepared. Hence, we've got both Deliberate Planning and Crisis Action Planning capability. Its nice to have a Deliberate plan on the shelf for a template...when the Crisis comes we dust it off and update it with reality.

Anyways, the press keeps refering to this as a U.S.-led military campaign. I get it the JFACC (CFACC?) is a U.S person.... and the U.S. is doing most of the damage. But, I believe this is really a U.S/Brit/French-led military campaign that is going to transitition to a NATO-led campaign, most likely with a follow-on SFOR which we will have no part of in theory. Why take the brunt of this, give it to NATO.

“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it" Clausewitz

From the NY Times:
"But Channel 4 News in Britain said that six villagers were shot by American troops during the rescue operation (of the F-15E crew). None of the villagers — who were interviewed by a Channel 4 reporter in a nearby hospital — were killed, though a small boy could have a leg amputated. The United States military said it was investigating the reports."

So you want the military to step up and be adaptable to shifting objectives and endstates, achieve them by means defined acceptable by ever-changing standards, and get it all done within an unspecified amount of time.

When we say the military ought to be adaptable, we don't mean to its leadership. The President is the Commander in Chief, for Pete's sake. He's part of the chain of command, not the enemy situation. You're advocating the kind of crap mentality that breeds ideas like "courageous restraint."

To use your analogy, even in a soccer game I know which goal I'm trying to put the ball in, where the boundary lines are, and how much time I have. The ambiguity lies in what the enemy is going to do, not the friendlies.

I'm disappointed in you. There's no room for ambiguity once 5000-pound JDAMs are released. That's a precision weapon. It's going to put itself on a 10-digit grid. Is it the grid you want? Some of the most brilliant minds in the world developed that weapon so we could use it in a very specific way, and you're still sitting there advocating an approach that looks something like horseshoes. You may get off the hook this time if (and that's a big if still) things go well, but it won't be because of rigorous pragmatism. You'll be lucky.

Put down your Nam reading for a week and go talk to the Reaper pilots in Vegas flying the missions over 'Stan. Get 'em in a place they feel secure and buy a round of beers and then ask just how nervous they get when they're getting ready to drop a load on a target in the border regions. They're scared to death because they could lose their careers over it. There's your ambiguity.

I think for as much as you've studied and written on it, you've still missed a salient point. Or maybe just forgotten it. Ambiguity is an acceptable thing when a bunch of guys with walls full of books do the mystical hand-waving over powerpoint slides, but it's not so cool for the guy getting shot at.

So let me tie your "acceptable level of ambiguity" to one end of this yellow ribbon I got here and...

I think the war is a like a soccer game back in the good old days. Entire villages playing against each other kicking a pigs bladder to and fro, the goals maybe a mile apart in each village. Random number of players on each side, entering or leaving the game at will. The game was rough enough that people would die or maybe drown in the stream between the villages.

Ambiguous enough? What's not to like?

all the details does not mean there's no plan.
“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it" Clausewitz
Right, but if you tell everyone, then even the bad guys know the plan. That's why there are no microphones in huddles: on the plus side, your fans will be in on the plan...but so will the other team. Why smart people assume that other smart people are so stupid is one of those human traits I can't quite sort out.

Mr. Ricks should probably not take the feedback from a bunch of mainly retired guys (Foreign Service Peace Corps and Furriners) as some sign of combat refusal. The young AD guys are just scratching their heads; What do they want us to do?

Combat refusal is interesting, we always assume everyone will fight like lions but that is not the history of war. When I was a CPT we got a chance to talk to LTC who had been a CPT in Vietnam, a Co CDR was relieved and he got tagged to take over "F Troop". They refused to march, BN CDR and CSM flew in to help get the Co going and walked point w Co CDR until they got to laager night defensive position. He fired a bunch of NCOs and slowly started rebuilding the Co. That was the kind of story that makes you pay attention when you're a young CPT.

"Tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire. If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!" Marcus Flavinius There are some who say that Jean Lartéguy made this up, Lartéguy and "The Centurions" are both real and a pretty good read.

In America guys like GSF, Folks w skin in the game, Parents of Marines, Wives of Soldiers, Kids of Airmen and Sailors should have the right to voice an opinon even if it differs w Hillarys'

Bearcat, you are absolutely right. In America, the folks back home should have the right to vigorously voice a different opinion than that held by the Administration. But it just occurred to me that this has some unintended consequences when it comes to our All Volunteer Force. After the experience of the Vietnam War, our military leaders had had enough of draftees. They wanted instead a small, nimble, but powerful force of volunteers, professionals, whom they could deploy quickly and easily, without worrying about the hometown hassle. They got what they wanted. Problem is, when the folks back home disagree with the Administration's policies, they don't encourage their kids to join the military. So now we see what we've got: an AVF stretched thin, lowering of recruiting standards, the feeling among the Active Duty force of being unappreciated, and the civil-military divide that has been discussed elsewhere in this forum. AVF? Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.

Destroy the government's ability to wage war by targeting all ADA, aviation assets, artillery, armed vehicles, and armor. Destroy the government's ability to communicate with and control its ground and air forces. The leaders of the Libyan government are not to be targeted. ROE will provide for causing the minimum collateral damage. Except for SAR, no US troops will set foot on Libyan soil.

Hand-off all direct, strike action to allied forces ASAP. Continue to provide support to allied forces until otherwise notified. Do not release any statements to the press unless cleared by the NCA. Any exceptions to this order require the approval of the NCA.

ADDENDUM: All US SAR missions will be conducted by Recon Marines with the rank of E-5 and above augmented by Navy Corpsmen of any ran with officers ranking O-2 and above.