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The Generals Aren't Necessarily Right
AP Photo (2)
As Obama postpones a decision on Afghanistan, he should remember FDR's lessons: bring the country along. Rushing has downsides. And dithering costs troops more than you know.
I am in the midst of researching a book on modern American generalship, and so tend to view the current agonizing over the way forward in Afghanistan in that light. I find myself thinking that President Obama, for all his love of Abraham Lincoln, might benefit by turning from that son of Illinois to a New Yorker who was a more recent war president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. A good reason for this shift is that the Civil War was essentially a war of amateurs, with the generals having no greater claim on understanding the conflict than did civilians. But by the time the United States joined World War II, two years of fighting had given both our allies and our enemies a big jump ahead of us. Even so, Roosevelt didn't kowtow to his generals.
In the summer of 1942, FDR had his most serious disagreement with his military leaders. He wanted to get the U.S. military into action against the Nazis. Fearing that Stalin might cut another deal with Hitler, FDR wanted to show Stalin and the Soviets that the Americans were getting into the fight, and not just letting Russians bleed. Also, Roosevelt had congressional mid-term elections coming up, and feared that his Democrats would lose heavily. Roosevelt believed that an American-led invasion of North Africa was just the ticket. He pushed endlessly for it-only to find his top generals, along with his secretary of war, deeply and even bitterly opposed to him.
Don't take any more time than you need. That is, don't dither. Troops need time to train for where they are going.
Army Gen. George C. Marshall, who was effectively chief of two of today's services, the Army and the Air Force, not only was against the invasion of North Africa; he distrusted FDR's motives, thinking the president was pushing for the move for cheap domestic political reasons. In Europe, Eisenhower was equally opposed. He privately called July 22, 1942, the day of FDR's decision to go ahead with the invasion, dubbed Operation Torch, "the blackest day in history."
What bothered the military men most of all was that invading Africa in 1942 meant that a cross-Channel invasion of Europe wouldn't take place in 1943. There just weren't enough troops, tanks, aircraft, and supplies available to fight in both places. So Roosevelt's determination to invade North Africa meant that D-Day couldn't take place until sometime in mid-1944; Eisenhower calculated probably August of that year.
The irony of all this is that we now know the generals were wrong in opposing Operation Torch—not just strategically but militarily. Roosevelt was right on both counts. It was important to Stalin that we get into the war, and doing so directly aided the Russians, by pulling German aircraft from the Eastern Front to the taxing task of supplying the Africa Corps across the Mediterranean by air. We also know now that the U.S. military was hardly prepared to fight a seasoned enemy on the ground in Europe and that it needed to take several small steps, such as amphibious landings in Africa, in order to learn how to get across the beach in Normandy much later. The defeat of the U.S. Army by the Germans at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia (remember the early scenes of the movie Patton?) provided a needed shock to the Army. Training was tightened up, and lackluster generals like Lloyd Fredendall were replaced by aggressive officers like Patton. Even then, the invasion of Sicily the following summer provided another needed shakedown, and gave American soldiers more valuable seasoning.
• Gerald Posner: The Taliban’s Heroin Ploy
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Of course, the conflict in Afghanistan isn't World War II. Even so, I think there are multiple lessons to take away from this, especially because both FDR and Obama had to consider taking risks with people's lives:
First, the generals are not necessarily right, even about military operations, and especially about strategy, which in a democracy must make political sense. In the Afghan case, I think Gen. McChrystal's plan, which calls for a major troop increase in order to carry out a counterinsurgency campaign, is better than any alternative I can see (especially a return to whack-a-mole counterterrorism, supposedly advocated by VP Biden). But the president shouldn't just go along with military advice, even if it is nearly unanimous.
Second, presidents should take all the time they need. The U.S. military wants to have Obama and the people behind this decision. But you need to make a decision and stick to it-not re-open the debate. Even after FDR made his decision, Marshall continued to try to oppose it quietly, or at least re-visit the issue, but was ignored by the president.
Third, don't take any more time than you need. That is, don't dither. Troops need time to train for where they are going. Iraq and Afghanistan are very different places, with remarkably different cultures and terrains, and so units preparing to deploy would like to know months beforehand where they are going. In this case, I thought President Obama had made his decision back in March, and so did a lot of officers. He has some 'splaining to do to the military and to the American people. It matters not just what Obama decides on Afghanistan, but how he does it. He needs to bring the country along with him.
Finally, keep the debate as quiet as you can. We know now how much Marshall and other generals opposed the president on this key step in World War II, but we didn't know it back then. Whoever leaked McChrystal's assessment did President Obama no favors, and made the decision-making process far more difficult. As Marshall angrily wrote in a different context, "If everything pertaining to the Army has to be put on a town meeting basis, we might as well quit before we start."
Bottom line: The Torch debate, while intense, happened behind closed doors. And Roosevelt didn't do it twice. Even then, he took a big political hit. On Nov. 3, 1942, the Democrats lost 101 seats in the House of Representatives, leaving them a majority of just 14. Despite Marshall's suspicions, Operation Torch kicked off five days after the election, much to the disgust of the White House press secretary, Steve Early. The attack went slowly but, ultimately, successfully. I hope Obama is as lucky.
Thomas E. Ricks, the author of Fiasco and The Gamble, is a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and author of Foreign Policy magazine’s Best Defense blog. He was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for a total of 26 years.
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cresttwo
Yes, don't dither. The enemy is in Pakistan and Africa, with a sprinkling in Afghanistan. Get out now.
Don't wait till after your re-election, like JFK. And stop reading the newspaper GI Joes. They don't reflect what the people believe: we're all Ron Pauls and Chalmers Johnsons now.
AuntBarb
cresttwo - I think what you're saying is that the enemy is al Queda...I say that because there don't seem to be any Talabi in Africa, and we know there's more than 'a sprinkling' in Afghanistan.
But if by 'get out now' you mean get out of Afghanistan, I can't aqree. I think we have to keep targeting al Queda operatives there, just as we are in Pakistan and Africa. The enemy is al Queda, and they still have the capacity to make war on us.
estcruzer
Actually the enemy isn't Al-Queda or the Taliban. It's Global Big Business who is using the American Military as a bully around the world to basically rape and pillage in the name of free markets and profit. They created the "enemy" we are now fighting and they need to be made accountable for this disaster, and several others. You really have to root out the basic problem to be able to stop fighting fires.
oliverckerr
This is an open letter to president Obama, posted elsewhere on this site.
This is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need, what we should do, how to do it, and why, what I, an independent candidate for president am going to do upon election to our highest office, a happenstance that cannot be ruled out, as the American people will find out when I wrote this essay and where I posted it.
We adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack. White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should carefully consider what eye say!
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is opium; world wide, the father of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC began a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
That 17% pure heroin bag; available on select street corners in every major city in the western world, started out an opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. You first saw the rich poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz.
93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms! They are not such a backward unsophisticated country as rigid status quo bureaucrats are apt to paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide!
Bill Gates must marvel at their opium / heroin market share. Monopoly! Irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the opium poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for all the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operations in all the neighboring countries, and all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.
The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, its origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into our country, to be sold in our ghettos and suburban streets.
For the cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars!
The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply the Afghan farmers are world wide famous for; choke the supply which would wipe out the opium / heroin smuggling trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea.
We don't have 68,000 troops in uniform, stationed in South America, chopping down the Columbian forest to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening, and won't. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, and the opium poppy stratgegy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.
Surely, you, the reader, hopefully a White House official involved in the deliberations over what and how to proceed in Afghanistan do not want to see any more American blood shed.
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end in the opium/heroin trade nets millions of dollars, peanuts in the big picture, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the region.
But without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose hundreds of millions of dollars and be facing their own recession. All of the illegal heroin in the United States would dry up as the pipeline for the heroin would be destroyed! Do not suggest to me we don't want that! Of course that is exactly what we want.
In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, the opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike! Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed and allowed to while away the day smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover that payroll!
Mr President Obama you are our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but your military bureaucrats, and the retired cable news talking heads are all misreading and misleading the war.
The Wall Street Journal article: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 by Peter Spiegal and Yochi Dreazen states,
"White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group."
Oh! The taliban is more interested in securing seats on the local school boards.
(C'mon). The Taliban differs from al Qaeda in one respect. Taliban are criminal drug dealers hiding behind religion and oppressing the local people they believe is the key to their continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund sensless political attacks throughout their region, and to plan another 9/11 which cannot be accomplished without millions of dollars.
A few years ago a Taliban leader came to Texas. Whatever the official reason for the "trip" that was to meet with, at the least have a lengthy conversation on a throw away cell phone with a Mexican Cartel person about shipping refined heroin instead of tell tale smelly opium. The Columbians got into the act bcause no one would suspect heroin originating in far a way Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America.
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army.
The unalighned unofficial Afghani militias know how to fight. With a little strucure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, they will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the criminal and international terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The only thing going across that Pakistan / Afghanistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers hauling their cargo. The Afghan opium is key to everything happening there!
We own the opium and the country is ours. Free. Opium control means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.
(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)
Your failure to respond to this open letter will lead to loss of American lives, and seal the possibility of Barack Obama being reelected to a 2nd term in our Highest office. As the person who created the Vehicle for World Peace, I promise you that much. But I am not the issue here, only what eye say.
The opium production and our clear ability to control that opium, is the only issue.
Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals CIA with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two for the house, compliments of us.
Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can so easily overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole crop raw, just like unefined brown sugar, and we will pay the refined opium heroin price which is similar to tacking on an additional 50 cents to a bushel of Iowa corn.
The war momentum will immediately shift! Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off every other day as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the opium poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up, our invited guests.
The key to Afghan quality of life for Taliban, thugs without a country when we defeat them, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop.
Would that be Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul? At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate an eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only their military bureaucrats are against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.
Instead of knee jerk reactions to my Red October reference to 'Montana," just get creative and plant that in their newspapers! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog!
Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for you, Mr. president, and for your Secretary of State Hillary Clintstone, too, but maybe not.
Certainly wagging this Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want! The Paks have nothing going for them under the Taliban gun.
Don't you know the Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how they established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! Mr. President, you are surrounded by bureaucrats who wouldn't know the scent of an opium house were they standing at the door.
Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd as soon as they understand the opium harvest has been taken away from them. It isn't about religion, or the neighbor hood school board, or how many times a day you pray to Big Al (Allah to you), it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! Seeing as you can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for less than a dollar, one million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban grunts.
In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the fields, create comfortable foxholes on every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a wide safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by CIA shelling out Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! Super incentive for the farmers. Less work more money.
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and cross the poppy fields instead of picking us off with their remotely detonated roadside attacks. Retired military will be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to tell you why because they support that opium trade just the way it is.
We are purchasing their poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. Though I pun CIA as standing for Cash In Advance this is a job for our enlisted soldiers in the field to negotiate with the farms where they are dug in, not CIA officers who are from Kabul, not living on the farms in foxholes!
The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields where we will defeat them!
When they come down the yellow brick Afghanistan road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.
The extra virgin first milk is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that. The farmers are out of the picture as they are already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers and spread the soil with the chopped up results to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million heroin addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars in projected sales.
Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts, with a helping hand from us.
We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hasish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. or run the risk that that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
Regardless what your surrounding bureaucrats say, we occupy the opium fields, purchase the whole crop, and all the heroin sold every day in our country will dry up! Young kids in poor neighborhoods will not become addicted to heroin. Don't we want that? Don't you? The opium / heroin dry up is guaranteed because all of the other countries where opium grows, they only have planted enough for their own home land and neighboring clientele.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, world wide! The above poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money, Mr President. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all of their murderous plans. Wasn't the twin towers brought down and their Pentagon attack enough for you! You inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy! We cannot risk allowing that to repeat. We cannot!
Unless you want it guaranteed before the end of your first year that you are a lame duck one term president, then ignore what eye say.
michaelslevinson.com
Cazart
Michael, two things.
1) You are 100% correct. We are being offered two bad choices, when in fact there is a third, much better way.
2) Dude. Learn to edit. I guarantee you I'm the only one who read your whole post.
oliverckerr
Cazart!
Because of your succinct guarantee, I'm positive others have decided to do what you did. Read.
I am spelling out the way to eliminate, at least seriously dent giant drug cartels and all who collect from their largesse. Hot!
Maybe I can create a sharp vastly edited version.
I posted a copy of the above on a Posner Afghanistan article and he read it through, picked up on what I said and was on MSNBC this a.m taking about the heroin being so readiy available to our troops. I know he picked up on my post. Good.
michaelslevinson.com
free copy of "New World Hors D'ouevres" for you. http://michaelslevinson.com/newworld.pdf
Georealist
This onsense sounds like it was written and edited by the Unibomber...The key to Afghanistan is not opium..if it were everyone from Alexander the Great to the British could have ruled..rather than merely conquered it. The Opium trade was not a factor then..and it is a poor third to geography and religious based warlordism today.
It's not even correct to call Afghanistan a proper country..it's more fractured and less tractible than the Balkans..
As for Mr. Ricks...I strongly suggest he read considerably more military history and maybe some Bismarck for "real politic." The US is NOT sending more troops (they'll absolutely be sent) to secure political stability thru a hearts and minds strategy. These new troops are simply time buying fodder for a withdrawl 12-16 mos from now. They are being sent to demonstrate American resolve to present and future client states...period.
The idiot Biden is actually correct...special ops and drones (airpower) are the best approach..but they entail civilian casualities..MacChrystal is foregoing air power and artillery for a defensive posture...Break out the body bags..and by the by..this will be Mr. Obamas noose to carry around..enough blaming Bush..he's diddling down in Texas.
ellamontgomery
Why don't the military just drop herbicide by drone over the opium crops and kill the crop for a decade, ie., poison the soil. I know that sounds critical, but we can recompense the farmers to do something else, that way we keep the soldiers and military out of the way of the evil crop and its temptation. You are onto something though.
Daveparts
" that the Civil War was essentially a war of amateurs" Really?
Ever heard of Robert E. Lee? Led brilliant campaigns against twice his number and won again and again.
Only when forced into a set piece battle where his forces could be ground down was he defeated. Had Lee led the Union forces the war might have ended in six months.
bhavanibbana
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
mikefromArlington
And nuclear bombsies.
AuntBarb
I think you could view the American Civil War as a 'war of amateurs' in the sense that no war like it had ever been fought. Most military officers experiences in the Mexican American War didn't prepare them for what they faced. Lee, Jackson, Grant and Sherman seemed to adapt, but everybody in that new kind of war made plenty of mistakes, even toward the end.
Threemagisteria
"Amateur" does not mean "incompetent". History is full of gifted amateurs and bungling professionals.
A high percentage of leaders on both sides had either no military background, or had not seen active service since the Mexican War.
As a professional military man, Robert E. Lee was not an amateur in the strictest sense. He was, however, as inexperienced as everyone else at directing a full-scale conflict between two organized powers with access to late-nineteenth-century technology. Neither the Mexicans nor the Native Americans fighting on the frontier had offered the kind of opposition that could have prepared generals for the realities of ACW conflict. Therefore, not even West Point graduates with years spent in uniform were really prepared by training or experience for the responsibilities they would assume.
That Lee was so successful despite this speaks even more highly of his innate talent.
whipmawhopma
Lots of amateurs as generals during the Civil War, particularly the political generals...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_general
And some of the amateurs were pretty damn good...
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (September 8, 1828 - February 24, 1914) was an American college professor from the State of Maine, who volunteered during the American Civil War to join the Union Army. Although having no earlier education in military strategies, he became a highly respected and decorated Union officer, reaching the rank of brigadier general (and brevet major general). For his gallantry at Gettysburg, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was given the honor of commanding the Union troops at the surrender ceremony for the infantry of Robert E. Lee's Army at Appomattox, Virginia. After the war, he entered politics as a Republican and served four one-year terms of office as Governor of Maine. He served on the faculty of, and as president of, his alma mater, Bowdoin College.
And with a Regular Army of some 16,000 men at the beginning of the Civil War leading to some 2.5 million men having served in the Union Army by the end of the war, I would venture that there were a lot of amateurs involved, especially in the state regiments.
Admittedly a good number of the leading lights served in Mexico as Regular Army, but so did that ultimate disappointment McClellan, as well as Bragg on the Confederate side.
HiredGoons
Sherman.
retired-army-1SG
Generals Lee, Grant, and Longstreet were all at the senior levels. The officers leading the actual battles were amateurs - months earlier they were planters, druggists, preachers, even lay-abouts who knew a state politician with enough pull to get them a command, or enough money to fund their own.
johnstafford
=mr. ricks is right on.
i especially liked his example of FDR's insistence on going thru north africa, instead of directly to europe as his generals wanted, at the beginning of our invovement in WWII.
>as ricks points out, our inexperienced soldiers needed a softer target before tackling the germans, who had been fighting, by november of '42, for three years, head-on. (in north africa, sadly, our first "enemy" were the french forces defending their colonial territorities, and the entire "afrika korps" consisted of only 2 panzer divisions and an understrength infantry regiment; the bulk of axis forces in north africa were italian, who were, at best, reluctant allies of the germans).
>my favorite story from that theatre is the remark that erwin rommel made after his forces won their victory vs. the u.s. at kasserine. rommel's staff was celebrating--understandably, since they made us look like the amateurs we were--but rommel was somber. "what's wrong, sir?" he was asked. his answer was prophetic: "these americans know less, but learn faster than any soldiers i've ever seen."
>we never lost another battle.
allonfla
When W was in office, which dead president did the media obsessively claim he should be like?
Veronicaxy
He laid new ground for Presidential behavior. He's now become an icon to be compared to.
allonfla
OK so were their endless Op-Eds calling for Clinton or W to be more like FDR?
I'm just saying I feel like I'm reading the same articles over and over.
BrawkSamson
An autistic Reagan?
mikefromArlington
heh
HiredGoons
spot on!
raggedyann
The generals certainly know more than someone who has never served in the military. Doesn't training and experience count for anything?
pennsykid2000
Neither counts as much as judgment. In the 2008 election, Repubs kept pushing the lack of experience as a knock against Obama, when judgment is the critical factor (indeed, experience informs judgment and is not separate). Obama showed he had better judgment than Clinton or McCain, particularly in opposing the Iraq war, as well as in dealing with the economic crisis (recall McCain's "suspend my campaign" nonsense).
pennsykid2000
The link to FDR is fine, but I think the lessons from JFK are more apt, since he was dealing with insurgencies and not a world war. As crest says, he shouldn't put off a tough political move too long, as JFK tried to do in Vietnam (waiting for his re-election). Yet, JFK overrode nearly all of his advisors in advocating the blockade of Cuba and in accepting the deal with Krushchev to remove missiles in Turkey and promise not to invade Cuba to end the Missile Crisis of 1962. (Read "One minute to midnight" to see the craziness of the military leaders that JFK had to combat.)
Bottle
The main lesson to take away from this is that Americans are not exempt from history. The other downfalls in Afghanistan were a perfect predictor of our own, and anyone who chose to ignore them is unqualified EITHER as president OR general OR chess player. (A poster in these threads opined yesterday that President Obama is a good chess player.)
As a chess player, I want to say that somebody who always plods forward like George W. Bush or John McCain will not last for long. Temporizing also is fatal. One must be equally adept at moving forward and backward.
But chess and games and even Winston Churchill's battle board are irrelevant to glooping one's nation downward into every possible quagmire. Most wars are idiocy. This is one of them.
MajorRage
Bottle: "The main lesson to take away from this is that Americans are not exempt from history." What the fudge does that mean? Who's history are you referring to? Ricks has ineptly contrasted Obama's present situation to that of Lincoln and Roosevelt. In both cases cited - those presidents put the nation on the path to war and, presumably, understood their war aims better than any general. That is not the case presently with Barack Obama. His generals have been at war for years. No one has more knowledge or experience at this kind of war than our current crop of Army and Marine Corps brass. The plain fact of the matter is that Obama is the amateur and our soldiers and marines who are at the sharp end are paying a price for his dithering and incompetence. If there's any quagmire here - it's between the President's ears.
estcruzer
I don't know how long the Russians played the same game our generals are playing, but in the end, they failed. Afghanistan history is full of examples of invaders - they come and go - but the Afghans are still there, they still do Afghan things and they are probably wondering (for the most part) what we American's think we are getting out of this "war". History is useful if you want to understan what worked and what didn't. Not much has worked in invading Afghanistan in the past - we should definitely not be trying to emulate the failures that are well documented.
camfield
There also is a great similarity with President Harry S. Truman. I was in the U.S. Army through most of the Korean War, and my recollection is that General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of command by Truman because he (MacArthur) wanted to expand and continue the war by fighting on to some nebulous "victory". MacArthur, I believe, wanted to push the enemy, which was reinforced by troops from communist China, on out of North Korea and all the way into China. I stood in MacArthur's honor guard at San Francisco airport, when he arrived back in the states after being relieved.
I also lost two close friends in Korea (although I myself was not among those sent into harm's way).
There certainly seems to be a similarity between N. Korea/China and Afghanistan/Pakistan.
MajorRage
Canfield - "There is a great similarity with President Harry S. Truman." Oh, really? Harry Truman had served as an artillery battery commander in the Missouri National Guard. His unit was called up and shipped to France in WWI. He gained some experience leading troops in wartime and also dealing with top brass like MacArthur. Any similarity there with our current president?
Truman relieved General MacArthur in the spring of '51 because MacArthur's public comments contradicted Truman administration policy. So far, no one is accusing General McChrystal of contradicting the president. No similiarity there, either.
If there is any similarity in these two situations - it is that in times of war the president's vision of our national purpose and ultimate objective must be articulated with all possible authority and clarity. Truman's catch phrase was - The Buck Stops Here. Obama's is - Hope and Change. Do you detect any similarity there?
RandyMiller
Everybody is missing grand strategy here. Strengthening our homeland security is much more sustainable than trying to 'Win" in Afghanistan. If we had done that in 1991, improved our intel, and paid attention to the intel at that time, 911 would have been just another day.
The WW2 references are interesting. You could do another WhatIF. What if, after El Alamein, the Germans had realized that closing the Suez canal and invading the middle east were unreachable goals, and had retreated from Africa altogether. The could have spent all those resources on Festung Europa.
mcmchugh99
Part of the reason that the US attacked North Africa, then Sicily and Italy was that Churchill had misgivings about a cross-Channel invasion of France and kept postponing it, although this enraged Stalin. Indeed, the Russians were suspicious of the West in any case, especially after Chamberlain and the appeasers surrendered Czechoslovakia without firing a shot in 1938.
We can speculate all day whether an invasion of France in 1943 would have been successful or not. That was the year of Hitler's last big offensive on the Eastern Front and the German Army was very hard pressed when Hitler ordered them to throw everything they had into it, and they lost. They might have had a very difficult time holding on in France as well, and there were already rumblings about how Hitler was leading them into disaster.
It's impossible to know what would have happened, although Marshall and Eisenhower were very certain that FDR and Churchill had it wrong in 1943, especially with Churchill's desire to keep landing troops further and further to the east, in Greece and other places, to keep the Russians out. To the American generals, that whole theater of war in Italy, Greece and the Balkans was just not going to be decisive, and they preferred to push across France right into the heart of Germany. In Patton, they had a very aggressive, attack-minded commander who had been saved for just that purpose.
By the summer of 1944, the German Army Group Center had been crushed on the Eastern Front, in a defeat even more destructive to the Germans than Stalingrad. At that point, the door was open for the Red Army to drive right through to Warsaw and Berlin, and there was no longer any doubt that the Russians were going to end up in control of most of Eastern Europe. The US government realized that months before the Yalta Agreements in February 1945, which simply ratified a situation that already existed on the ground. By that point, the Russians had overrun Poland, Hungary and East Prussia, and were on the Oder River, about 60 miles from Berlin.
Had Army Group Center not been crushed in the summer of 1944 and the whole Eastern Front collapsed, the Germans might have been able to throw in more forces against the Normandy invasion. As it was, they were barely hanging on by their fingernails at that point.
jg90210
You really need to impose a message length limit here. These open letter things are ridiculous !
nortonclybourn
Will a General ever fail to say that he needs more troops?
Garvagh
The primary fallacy in General McChrytal's analysis of the military/political situation in Afghanistan, is to believe making the matter even more an "American war" than it already is, is beneficial. In fact, it will ensure failure.
carlosjii
The Afghan mistake - Why sending more troops won't work
BY MAJ. DANIEL L. DAVIS
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/04/3939847
First, the bulk of all combat forces must be withdrawn from Afghanistan...continue to make appropriate investments in the Afghan government at the State Department/Foreign Ministry level
White House explained that American policy had "a clear goal in Afghanistan. We will help the people of Afghanistan defeat the terrorists, and establish a stable, moderate and democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens, governs its territory effectively and is a reliable ally in the War on Terror."
These objectives go against centuries of culture in Afghanistan to a remarkable degree.
Sun Tzu "Know thyself, but not thy enemy, and you will lose as many battles as you win."
Where the lives of Americans are concerned, there is no room for political correctness in the search for effective policy.
23 consecutive years of warfare before our arrival in 2001.
It is vitally important, then, that we reorient our effort in Afghanistan and throughout the region in a way that acknowledges cultural and historical realities and postures the U.S. and NATO to deal effectively with transnational terror groups that pose legitimate strategic threats.
BullMoose
Dither dither dithering dock, who started this "dithering" crock?
Had to be some talking points memo the Repugs told their fellow kool aid drinkers to babble on about, using the same descriptive adjective ad infinitum.
Thank you.
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