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The Neo-Nixonian Presidency
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks
Monday, June 27, 2011 - 7:11 AM
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I never would have expected that the Obama Administration's Justice Department would prosecute a National Security Agency whistleblower but decline to investigate cases in which people died while being interrogated by U.S. officials. The case against the NSA official fell apart like a cheap suit, by the way. Viewing things as I do through the prism of national security, I think that of the entire administration, Eric Holder and his Justice Department have been this administration's least valuable player.
I still consider myself an Obama supporter, but mainly for non-national security reasons. In that arena, my worries grow. I hear Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute is leaving the White House soon. You may not have heard of him, but his departure may prove significant, because from what I hear, he is one of the few generals who has felt not only heard but understood by this White House. And he was a carryover from the previous administration, which may indicate that this team has not on its own found anyone in the military with which to have candid exchanges. This crop of White House officials may or may not be politically astute (I am not a good judge of that) but in the area I know, I fear they are in the D range in their handling of policy deliberations with the military. That's LBJ territory. So far this hasn't caused any major problems, but it could: In a sustained crisis, their failure to build relationships of trust and understanding with today's four star officers will hurt us all, but especially those out at the sharp end of the spear. And it may be later than you think: By August 1965, the American phase of the Vietnam War was just months old, but Johnson had made the two negative decisions that would lose the war and break the Army -- to not pursue the enemy into his cross-border sanctuaries, and to not activate 100,000 reservists or extend the enlistments of active-duty forces.
What especially worries me is that I fear the Libyan intervention may be the wave of the future: A small, messy operation in which the United States is a minority partner, providing unique capabilities such as ISR and refueling, but not leading the action or dominating multilateral discussions of the way forward. Yet so far I have to meet a single person in the military who thinks intervening in Libya was the right thing to do. Again, this is a recipe for trouble down the road.
Here's one short-term test: Will Lute be replaced at the White House by another general? If so, who will it be?
I can well imagine a new President with Barack Obama's background having to learn on the job with respect to relations with the military.
I think he's made some mistakes, most of them having to do with his determination to try persuade everyone involved in a given decision or policy that everyone has been heard and is therefore invested. That's not how the military, or at least the warfighting part of the military, has traditionally worked. There are a lot of other components of American society that don't work that way either.
I have to ask, though, what we're being asked to compare the Obama administration to in this area. Its immediate predecessor, as everyone remembers, treated senior generals as valued members of the President's team most of the time. Former President Bush reveled publicly in his role as Commander in Chief; his Vice President, a former Defense Secretary, promised the military at the 2000 Republican Party Convention that "help was on the way" after eight years of the distrusted Clinton administration, and never thereafter ceased to act as if he were pro-military and his political opponents anti-military. Civil-military relations during the Bush administration, from the military's point of view (or at least the view of its most senior officers) were pretty good.
And yet the fruit of these good relations was one war that went very wrong, and a won war that somehow got well on the way to being lost by the time Bush left office. Thousands of Americans died, and many thousands more were maimed. The military was put to work doing things it knew it wasn't very good at, and which it didn't do very well. The military's honor was stained by scandals over detainee abuse in Iraq, for which scarcely anyone beside low-ranking enlisted personnel was disciplined. Money poured into the Defense Department as it had not since Ronald Reagan's time, yet the Bush administration left office with the country still mired in the two wars it had started, and no better able to fight some future war than it had been eight years earlier.
So there are senior generals now who do not quite trust President Obama. They may have good reason. He may have equally good reason to question whether the military's senior officers are quite as good at their jobs as they think they are.
"Money poured into the Defense Department as it had not since Ronald Reagan's time"
And poured back out into contractor's pockets. But I guess that was business as usual, just turned up to 11.
The president does double as the commander-in-chief, and has a SecDef, as well as a CJSC. . .I don't understand why a War Tsar, along with his wife the Tsaritsa, is necessary?
Is LtGen Lute just a carry-over from the Bush administration that Obama wasn't sure what to do with? The administration certainly can't be listening to Lute's advice since no sane American general would recommend the kind of operation we’ve been pursuing in Libya. . .or would they?
Perhaps the position has been marginalized and will be left vacant, falling into obscurity when Lute leaves, with trivial historians such as myself wondering why the position was ever created?
This wouldn't be happening if LTG Lute was still alive!!
Do we think things will get worse after he leaves? Like Brownie, he is doing a heckova job!?!?! I thought this guy was supposed to do interagency "stuff" not explain to the White House what an M4 is.
The White House needs to get their own Mil SMEs, preferably not active duty GOs. Some guys that got out as 03s might be a big help. Anybody think that Commanding D-129 Fld Arty might have given Harry Truman some insight when making Mil/Pol decisions? As noted CinC already has SECDEF and CJCS to provide the echo chamber recommendations.
Lute retired months ago, but remained on in civilian capacity -- a role he has been serving in since the beginning of the Administration. Even when on active duty, he was in no way accountable to the military -- DA or CJCS.
He deals with Afghanistan and Pakistan (and presumably Iraq) -- not Libya.
Someone will fill that role within the NSS. Whether it is a military officer or not remains to be seen.
Yes, yes RBB you are probably right in the end, however the position is just another layer of bureaucracy with minimal established lines of authority, and does it really make things run more smoothly? How? Pakistan and Afghanistan are a mess.
Incidentally, by the NSS to you mean The National Speleological Society, you know, that organization committed to the exploration and knowledge of caves, which would fit, because this is a position that shouldn't see the light of day.
How he weighs the views of various advisors outside the Principal members of the National Security Council (and who he chooses to include in that core group) -- that is his perogative. Accordingly, the President organizes his National Security Staff the way he wants it. He can't exclude the SECDEF or the CJCS from the NSC, but who he listens to is another matter.
So whatever role Lute played vice Donilon and McDonogh and Jones (or Mullen or Gates)-- that was up to President Obama.
Does a President need a current/former general who is working in the West Wing instead of the Pentagon?
It entirely depends on his own confidence in his understanding of security policy, his comfort level with the DoD bureacracy, and the credentials/capability of his trusted advisors.
Lute's presence doesn't seem to have helped this mess...
This quote basically encapsulates and sums up the Obama Admin's utter failure to address and reverse the many constitutional and legal abuses committed by the Bush Admin...in fact Obama has entrenched and expanded many of these disastrous policies. "I never would have expected that the Obama Administration's Justice Department would prosecute a National Security Agency whistleblower but decline to investigate cases in which people died while being interrogated by U.S. officials."
I naively thought when Obama was elected, that Bush and Cheney could not possibly avoid prison. Bush's memoir, I believe, has him openly admitting that he ordered the breaking of the 1996 US law on war crimes.
Since I like and want to like President Obama, I want to think that he is not letting the laws operate of the former president and vice president because it would be devisive and counter-productive. This is just like President Lincoln being strongly opposed to treason trials for the leading confederates. It would just be bad for the country, and in the Civil War case, not help the healing we needed.
That said, that the laws can't be allowed to operate on people who openly admit breaking them shows we have a crop of lousy citizens as much as it shows anything else.
Walt
Now granted it's the world according to Woodward, but in "Obama's War" Lute came off as the one guy in the whole national security apparatus who understood what was going on. It was also remarkable to me how Lute was filling the role of the JCS and the service chiefs. The Chairman is supposed to be the CINC's primary military advisor, but the book makes it seem Mullen's job was to carry McChrystal's water, the service chiefs were completely out in left field, Jones was on the sideline, Donnilan worked hard while having no idea what the initials DoD stood for, and Lute the one guy who could be counted on to give honest advice when it was needed. It will be very interesting to see where he winds up. A possible SECDEF or NSA someday?
Please email Tom at ricksblog@cnas.or so that I can email you directly with a pdf of all US unit locations with photos.
RVN SF VET: You're pulling my chain. :-) The folks posting on this blog represent a lot of experience in odd places....just coincidentally you and Bearcat apparently had some connection with a couple of places I'm interested in historically.
I meant locations in RVN. It has been put together by a chopper pilot circa 1972. No leg pulling.
Bearcat was a base and/or a call sign.
Spend a second to read over your writing Tom!
Some of your sentences were just gross. Cmon Tom!
Or all of them?
Thanks,
Tom
just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in
Tom,
Just when I was considering ending my daily viewing of your blog, you put an article like this up which is both terrifying and fascinating at the same time. I only wish that the other 99.999% of Americans would read articles like this which explain what a dire situation we are in with regards to national/foreign policy.
That's one impression of senior military officials that comes through in Woodward's "Obama's Wars," which seems required reading for anybody trying to understand the current state of affairs. Mistrust of senior officers seems to have been secretary Gates' view and advisor Jones' view as well. Woodward records Gates telling one senior officer that the president was serious when he asked for information. He really wanted the information. This seems to have surprised the officer. Woodward also makes clear that the president had been told that if he didn't supply the surge the military was demanding in 2009, mass public resignations of military commissions could be expected. Elsewhere, NSA Jones was making clear in public by October 2009 that senior military commanders were trying hard to break their own words in support of their idea of how America should be investing in Afghanistan.
Under these circumstances, I don't see much reason to rate the current White House team in the D range for their handling of policy deliberations with the military due to "their failure to build relationships of trust and understanding with today's four star officers." Some of those senior officers seem actively to have been both withholding and denying such understandings, hardly a seedbed for presidential -- or national -- trust.
Hard also to understand the claim that what went wrong in Vietnam was failure to pursue the enemy's cross-border refuges. Laos and Cambodia were struck by more bombs than the Allies dropped on Germany during World War II, and that seems like pursuing the enemy across borders. Inaccurately, it also seems. And pointlessly. A kind of pre-Libyan campaign, but with deep pockets?
We didn't start attacking Laos and Cambodia until 1969, when the situation was already well out of hand. Had we started in 1964, things might have been different. But probably not; I dare say that America's worst Vietnam-related decision was the one that had us getting involved at all.
Laos- we started earlier than 1966
As an old Laos hand I can assure you we started much earlier. We were doing military ops as early as 1958 and were engaged in full-scale ground and air war by 1962.
By 1966 our Laotian engagement was in its third generation.
...if another one leaves the White House, why does it matter?
It is not about us....out here at receiving end of the email...
...it is a question directed to the Chicago Housing Authority that runs the White House or the President himself...if another senior military adviser from the traditional services leaves, does it really matter?
... have deeper understanding about what we observe. Hypocrisy grows so tiresome.
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