Strength

…through dithering:

OK, I get that the political piece is vitally important, and for Eikenberry, up to his armpits in scheming warlords and bureaucrats in Kabul with his frontline diplomats daily engaged in pitched and desperate note-passing against an entrenched corruptancy, the light at the top of his own well probably is awfully dim and far away. This is a highly complex situation. Thinking outside the box, maybe it does make sense to put the cart ahead of the horse. It is intriguing, though, that in the middle of a hot war in which a determined, murderous enemy is making gains, there are ”options beyond military planning” that are so pressing that they actually trump military planning. Sounds like the president, in a show of resolve, wants to signal more firmly to Karzai and the scheming warlords that the United States is prepared to hold its breath until the Afghan people turn blue, or that the United States might even take its bat and ball and go home. Also, to signal to the United States military that he won’t be pushed around if it kills them.

One bright spot, in the Vietnam avoidance agenda. Remember how they accused LBJ of picking targets from the Oval Office? Can’t accuse Obama of that. He’s actively not picking targets from the Oval Office.

Amazing.

26 thoughts on “Strength”

  1. In other news, largest counter-terrorism asset seizure in history:

    New York (CNN) — The federal government is seeking forfeiture of properties belonging to the Alavi Foundation and Assa Corp. — accused of transferring money to a bank owned by the Iranian government — including a Manhattan skyscraper and at least three mosques.

  2. He can’t exactly claim to have “inherited” this one. He actively campaigned on taking the war aggressively to Afghanistan. He criticized his opponent in the election, George W. Bush, for NOT having a strategy for Afghanistan — implying that he did.

    Well, he doesn’t. And his continued refusal to think about it is getting Americans killed.

    Maybe if he spent as much time attacking Afghanistan as he did attacking his own country, the “president” would make some progress…

  3. Eikenberry is no State Department desktop warrior. He is a retired Lieutenant General with a distinguished career. In fact, Eikenberry did two tours in Afghanistan while in the Army. In his first, he served as Security Coordinator for Afghanistan and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan. In his second, he was Commander of the Combined Forces Command.

    If this guy is saying an Iraq-style surge isn’t necessarily going to work, we should at least consider what the man has to say before launching into absurd polemics about the President “attacking his own country.” The President damn well better think about what we do next and he is, or Afghanistan will be this generation’s Vietnam.

  4. Afghanistan has too many borders with too many unfriendly/unstable nations. Fighting in such places is ridden with peril. At this point I would just balkanize or fence the whole thing.

  5. LBJ losing Wally Cronkite over Vietnam was nothing compared to our Community-Organizer-in-Chief losing Megan McArdle over Afghanistan.

  6. Based on some reports I’m hearing, maybe what we need in Afghanistan isn’t more troops, but sane rules of engagement. I recall that one element of the Iraqi surge, little mentioned, was a shift in rules of engagement allowing our soldiers to be more aggressive with the enemy. Refusing to properly engage because there’s a mosque in the neighborhood is a sure way to lose.

  7. Balls, Justin. In the first place, if Obama thinks Eikenberry — who sounds kind of like he commanded a lot of desks in Afghanistan, for what that’s worth — then McChrystal, then he ought to fire McChrystal and put Eikenberry in charge.

    But if not, then this is just bullshit. He’s got the best advice from the winningest team on the planet — McChrystal and Petraeus — and further than that he does not have the competence himself to meddle or fiddle. Decide if the strategic interests of the United States are better served by fighting or abandoning the place, then give the commander on the ground what he wants, if you can, then get the hell out of the way.

    In the second place, Obama has had no less than EIGHT MONTHS to think about his Afghanistan strategy. Not a single important new fact or shift in events on the ground has happened in that time that justifies the delay. FDR and Eisenhower planned D-Day in far less time. George Bush and David Petraeus planned and executed the successful Iraqi surge in less time.

    I think the plain fact is, this guy can’t think of any way to spin any decision to his domestic political advantage, and he has no balls for a tough political decision. Never has, and the GQ-cover metrosexual isn’t going to magically grow a pair now. One thing the stumble-tongue cowboy from Texas never had to worry about.

    I don’t think this is going to turn out well, and it is really going to suck for the men in Afghanistan.

  8. Carl, Eikenberry is our Ambassador to Afghanistan. McChrystal is the theater commander. So, your statement about firing McChrystal in favor of Eikenberry is non-sensical.

    The President IS trying to decide which course of action is in the best strategic interests of the United States. I don’t know where you get the idea that he’s meddling in the tactical planning. McChrystal and Petraeus won in Iraq, and only after the Bush administration let it go to hell because they ignored the warnings of men like Gen. Shinseki. Iraq is NOT Afghanistan. A one-size-fits-all policy ain’t gonna cut it.

    I’d much rather have a President who takes the time to do the right thing for our country as a whole than one who mistakes having “balls” for sound foreign policy.

  9. Carl, Eikenberry is our Ambassador to Afghanistan. McChrystal is the theater commander. So, your statement about firing McChrystal in favor of Eikenberry is non-sensical.

    Well, it does depend on if you fight a war via the State Department or the Department of Defense. Certainly, since the war isn’t actually against Afghanistan anymore, you need to work through the State Department. But let’s be honest, Obama isn’t giving the theater commander the time of day.

    The President IS trying to decide which course of action is in the best strategic interests of the United States.

    Candidate Obama suggested he already knew the better course of action a year ago. The question isn’t what he is doing. The question is why is it taking so long?

    I don’t know where you get the idea that he’s meddling in the tactical planning.

    I don’t know why you made this comment. No one has suggested Obama is meddling. Reread what Carl wrote. Personally, I wish he would put meddling in the affairs of Chrysler, GM, and the salaries of CEO’s on the back burner for awhile, and spend some time on the troops in Afghanistan, but that’s me. Carl can speak for himself.

    McChrystal and Petraeus won in Iraq, and only after the Bush administration let it go to hell because they ignored the warnings of men like Gen. Shinseki.

    Right… And so Obama is being different how? Beyond making claims you are poorly backing up, there is no actual evidence Obama is doing anything beyond photo ops. Bush is out of office, and MfK makes a more compelling argument why Obama can’t continue to blame Bush.

    A one-size-fits-all policy ain’t gonna cut it.

    Again, the question isn’t whether the policy fits or not. The problem is there is no policy other than “business as usual” (except for GM, Chrysler, and banking CEO’s). What’s the damn policy? And hopefully Obama has something more functional than “Iraq is not Afghanistan” and “it’s all Bush’s fault”. If he goes with the latter, than step up as President and pull the troops out. He once said he would, so at least then he may keep a campaign promise.

  10. “Eikenberry is no State Department desktop warrior. He is a retired Lieutenant General with a distinguished career. In fact, Eikenberry did two tours in Afghanistan while in the Army. In his first, he served as Security Coordinator for Afghanistan and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan. In his second, he was Commander of the Combined Forces Command.”

    “Carl, Eikenberry is our Ambassador to Afghanistan. McChrystal is the theater commander. So, your statement about firing McChrystal in favor of Eikenberry is non-sensical.”

    Um, Mr. Obama is Commander-in-Chief. He could put a bill through Congress to appoint Mr. Kugler as a General and make him theatre commander if he wanted to. General Eikenberry would only have to be un-retired as a General. Mr. Kugler just got through telling us about General Eikenberry’s impressive military and leadership credentials, and now the idea of him being theatre commander is non-sensical? I call Gell-Mann* on everything else Mr. Kugler is saying.

    *Richard Feynman commenting on his fellow Nobel Laureate and Caltech colleague Murray Gell-Mann, who believed everything he read in the papers except those things on which he had direct knowledge, in which he had first-hand knowledge that the papers had got it all wrong.

  11. Let’s see…
    Candidate makes predicessor’s inaction on Afghanistan a campaign issue, promising to persue AQ and the Taliban vigorously.
    Appoints Gen McC as HIS theater commander ordering him to recommend a course of action
    Receives McC’s plan and subsequently spends less time with the General than with Oprah
    Dithers for months.
    As others have said, the planing for D Day took less time. Afghanistan is an annoyance to Obama.

    It is abundantly clear that this Administration’s focus is on radical domestic social change with industries to be subsumed into the government or at least placed under its direct control. Those are indesputable facts. The only foreign policy effort is a series of worldwide tours apologizing for America’s existance. Oh, and a trip to Copenhagen to accept the hard earned Nobel Peace Prize. How could I forget?

  12. Rand, could you consider a filter against comments where words are capitalized as a way of making a point? There are people I agree with doing this along with people a disagree.

    I am of the opinion that arguments or opinions should be supported by the quality of one’s prose rather than by raising one’s voice, and the use of all-caps, even for certain words to me is a form of scolding. It is one step removed from bumper sticker slogans.

    I once tried the Alinsky tactic of ridicule, likening this device to the alleged writing style of the late Patsy Ramsey. A person should look up the Ramsey Case putative ransom note on the Web. If it weren’t evidence in a grim unsolved murder, that note would be a hoot. Part of why Mrs. Ramsey had been suspected of writing that note as part of a cover-up is that the note has the righteous earnestness characteristic of the educated social classes. The putative kidnapper identifies themself as “part of a group of individuals”, and people commenting on the note asked, “what is that supposed to mean?” What it means is that one can belong to a group, such as the supposed terrorist cell in the note, but according to the ideology of the educated social class in question, allegedly Mrs. Ramsey’s, one still remains an individual and presumably retains one’s self esteem or whatever attributes a person is supposed to retain, even when associating with a band of thugs.

    But the Ramsey Case ransom note, however, uses exclamation marks for emphasis (How I hate that on bumper stickers. I am stuck behind you at the light and I can read your bumper sticker and what it says and means OK. What is the exclamation mark supposed to mean? That I am too stupid to understand that you feel strongly about that issue?) The ransom note doesn’t employ the device of words in block-letter caps.

  13. Yes. Karzai is looking very bad. Then again this is hardly surprising since he started off as a supporter to return the monarchy to power in Afghanistan.

  14. “In the Afghan election, it looked strongly like Karzi rigged it.

    Yea, it’s almost like having more troops there to monitor the polling stations may have been necessary. For Obama, having thugs stand outside polling stations intimating voters isn’t really that big a deal it would seem.

  15. Rand, could you consider a filter against comments where words are capitalized as a way of making a point? There are people I agree with doing this along with people a disagree.

    Paul, my concern is that this might trigger on acronym heavy prose too. If we get talking about the MTBF of NASA’s SRBs and how that contributes to STS LOC/LOM numbers, then we might trigger the filter. Not that that’s a bad thing ;-), but there could be other unintended consequences.

  16. Paul, my concern is that this might trigger on acronym heavy prose too.

    It doesn’t really matter — learning PHP and hacking WordPress comments scripts isn’t very high on my agenda right now.

  17. Yes, Obama could do what Paul says, but Carl’s suggestion itself is still a non sequitur. Obama taking the advice of his Ambassador – with his ample military experience in the region – over that of his theater commander doesn’t necessarily mean he should replace the theater commander with the Ambassador.

    The theater commander’s job is to make his recommendations and, then, to carry out the orders given him. If McChrystal is not willing to carry out the orders he is given or does so incompetently, only then should Obama fire and replace him.

    As for whether Obama has given McChrystal “the time of day” or not, I honestly don’t think it matters. I would refer to Professor Mark Grimsley, Chair of Military History at the Army War College, who said to Wired, “Obama can and does confer regularly with McChrystal’s boss, [U.S. Central Command chief] General David Petraeus, and that’s as it should be… Obama’s practice is thus the rule, not the exception.”

    Grimsley also said, “In any event, Obama already knows what McChrystal thinks. At this point McChrystal, in effect, needs to know what Obama thinks. That is to say, the president needs to give McChrystal a clearly defined national security objective that is the prerequisite for any coherent military strategy.”

    From what I can tell, Paul, you’re a fan of calling “Gell-Mann.” My conclusions are based on my first-hand experience as an intel officer from 2003-2005 and my analysis of what I have read from a variety of sources since then. If you think I’ve got something wrong, make your argument. Don’t insult my intelligence with a cheap shot.

  18. Obama taking the advice of his Ambassador – with his ample military experience in the region – over that of his theater commander doesn’t necessarily mean he should replace the theater commander with the Ambassador.

    Give me a break. Nothing could be more corrosive of command authority and morale. Have you ever actually commanded men? Even managed them in civilian life? This is not how it’s done, at least successfully. If you have a manager (or commander), then you either trust him or you fire him and put someone in you do trust. You do NOT keep him there but ignore his judgment, substituting the judgment of someone else at random intervals. That’s my point there.

    My larger point is that all this taking of advice and thinking and cerebral planning is bullshit. There’s no need for it. Obama himself, the community organizer, lawyer without actual Courtroom experience, and lecturer on Constitutional law at a snooty Chicago college, is utterly incompetent to manage a vicious guerilla war in the dusty hills of Afghanistan. He’s not even competent to choose between options presented to him by people who are expert in this.

    There are only two things he is competent to do, and which he must do. The first is to pick a military commander whom he trusts, who he thinks will give him the unvarnished truth, and who will make the decisions he would make if he had the appropriate skills and knowledge. Obama can do that, and should. Supposedly he already did, by appointing McChrystal. If he no longer trusts McChrystal, McChrystal should go.

    The second thing he can do, and must, is to decide whether victory in Afghanistan is necessary to the interests of the United States in general. I have grave doubts about Obama’s insight into this, myself, but what is also without doubt is that Obama was chosen by the majority of voters to represent them — and whether I like it or not there is no better candidate for the one person who can reflect and understand what the people of the United States see as their interests.

    Neither of these decisions takes eight months. Neither involves asking the Ambassador to Afghanistan what he thinks. The only thing necessary is for Obama to take a good long hard look in the mirror one morning while shaving, and make up his damn mind on both points, then have the brass and discipline to stick to it.

    If he wants to abandon Afghanistan, because last year’s campaign booshwa was just for the rubes, then he damn well ought to do it, pronto. To stay in just because otherwise people will wag their fingers and say you lie! is morally corupt, given the lives of soldiers that will be lost to save the President face. On the other hand, if he wants to win in Afghanistan, then he should give McChrystal what he wants, all of it, without further quibble or qualification, or else he should find some other commander he trusts, and give him whatever he wants.

    Listen, I’ve served on college faculty commitees with academics. I recognize very well what Obama is doing. It’s called I really don’t want this responsibility; how can I diffuse it into some committee so that no one will hammer me personally if it goes wrong? That’s OK in a professor. In a Commander in Chief it’s disgusting.

  19. Carl Pham – I think if you read Justin’s post you’d find that he had commanded men. Not sure about when you were in the military, but the way it worked in my day was I told my boss what I thought we should do, he made a decision, and I did it. Whether or not I agreed with the decision was irrelevant.

    I think Obama is asking the question “what is victory in Afghanistan?” Under what set of conditions could we go home?

    Regarding Neither involves asking the Ambassador to Afghanistan what he thinks – WTF? Why are we paying to have an ambassador in Afghanistan if we’re not going to ask him what he thinks?

  20. Reading through the original story a bit, it doesn’t sound like indecision, but rather that Obama decided some time ago (not surprising since that was one of his campaign promises) to reduce the US troop force and get out of Afghanistan. The Eikenberry report might be a face saving way for Obama to stick to his guns rather than just appear to ignore the recommendations of his commanders without justification.

    I wouldn’t be surprised to see these officers replaced in a few months.

  21. The theater commander’s job is to make his recommendations and, then, to carry out the orders given him.

    Any idea what those orders are? That’s sort of the heart of the concern. The orders don’t seem much different than President Bush’s “stay the course”. I’d be happy to see the deltas.

    As for whether Obama has given McChrystal “the time of day” or not, I honestly don’t think it matters.

    It doesn’t, so long as orders are coming down to him. Again, what are those orders? How have they changed?

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