Bob Woodward strikes again! (McChrystal assessment edition)

Posted By Peter Feaver Monday, September 21, 2009 - 12:16 PM Share

By Peter Feaver

The Obama Administration has been Woodwarded again, this time with a major scoop: Bob Woodward has a major front-page story that is more or less a summary precis of General McChrystal’s confidential Initial Assessment of the Afghan situation.  Remarkably, the Post makes this document also available, with slight excisions, here. Obviously, there is much to chew over here and I trust my Shadow Government colleagues will be chewing. I have a few initial assessments of my own:

1. It is not good to have a document like this leaked into the public debate before the President has made his decision. Whether you favor ramping up or ramping down or ramping laterally, as a process matter, the Commander-in-Chief ought to be able to conduct internal deliberations on sensitive matters without it appearing concurrently on the front pages of the Post. I assume the Obama team is very angry about this, and I think they have every right to be.

2. A case could be made that the Obama team tempted fate by authorizing Bob Woodward to travel with General Jones (cf. “whisky, tango, foxtrot”) in the first place and then sitting on this report for nearly a month without a White House response. You cannot swing a dead cat in Washington without meeting someone who was briefed on at least part of the McChrystal assessment, and virtually every one of those folks is mystified as to why the White House has not responded as of yet. The White House will have to respond now, but I stand by my first point: leaks like this make it harder to for the Commander-in-Chief to do deliberate national security planning.

3. Without knowing the provenance of the leak, it is impossible to state with confidence what the motives were. For my part, I would guess that this leak is an indication that some on the Obama team are dismayed at the White House’s slow response and fear that this is an indication that President Obama is leaning towards rejecting the inevitable requests for additional U.S. forces that this report tees up. By this logic, the leak is designed to force his hand and perhaps even to tie his hands. 

4. The leak makes it harder for President Obama to reject a McChrystal request for additional troops because the assessment so clearly argues for them. The formal request is in a separate document, apparently, but it is foreshadowed on every page of the Initial Assessment. Presumably, the McChrystal assessment and request is shared by Petraeus and, I am told, also by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That does not make it irrefutably correct, but it does make this issue now the defining moment in civil-military relations under President Obama’s watch. Obama has the authority and the responsibility to make a decision that runs counter to what his military leaders are requesting, but it is a very difficult thing for him to do.

5. The toughest part in the report from the point of view of the Obama White House is the twin claim that (i) under-resourcing the war could cause the war to be lost, and (ii) the resources need to show up in the next year. The former puts the responsibility for success/failure squarely on the desk of the President and the latter, because of the long lead times needed to send additional resources into the theater, says that failure could result from choices made or not made in the next few weeks. And it said that a few weeks ago.

6. Paradoxically, however, the report does not make it impossible for President Obama to reject the likely military request for additional forces. Because the report is so candid about all of the challenges we face in Afghanistan, many of the arguments against additional forces are substantiated somewhere in the report: the myriad failures of the Afghan government, the self-defeating restrictions imposed on NATO forces, etc. The only anti-surge argument that I have not seen substantiated (though I read this quickly, so I may have missed something) is the extraordinarily seductive one that suggests we can afford to simply walk away from Afghanistan and conduct “off-shore-counter-terrorism-operations” indefinitely.

7. This document will remind anyone who worked on the issue of the internal debate over the surge strategy in Iraq circa Fall 2006. While the Bush administration Iraq Strategy Review did not produce a 66-page report that leaked, we covered much this same terrain and wrestled with many of the same thorny trade-offs and uncertain bets. The report is basically calling for an Iraq-type surge gambit, asking President Obama to do more or less what President Bush did in 2007: (i) change the strategy, (ii) adequately resource the new strategy, and (iii) overcome the strong domestic political opposition to doing (i) and (ii). If successful, the McChrystal assessment claims that this will buy time to allow for a safer eventual shift back to a train and transition strategy. It will not win the war in the short-run, but it will shift the trajectory of the war and allow for the possibility that our side can prevail in the long run. This is eerily similar to how the pro-surge group within the Bush team thought of the Iraq surge.

The domestic political-military stakes have been ramped up considerably with this leak. It is not quite a 3-AM-phone-call crisis, but it is probably the most serious national security test the Obama team has confronted thus far. I trust they will address it with the same care and candor that characterizes the McChrystal assessment itself. We will know very soon if that is the case.

Update: After I sent in this blogpost, I read the companion article in the Washington Post that appears, to me at least, to tip Woodward's hand on the backstory to the leak. Here is the crucial bit:

... But Obama's deliberative pace -- he has held only one meeting of his top national security advisers to discuss McChrystal's report so far -- is a source of growing consternation within the military. "Either accept the assessment or correct it, or let's have a discussion," one Pentagon official said. "Will you read it and tell us what you think?" Within the military, this official said, "there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration."

The civil-military dimensions of the challenge confronting President Obama could hardly be more clearly spelled out. This is significant and serious.

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, MILITARY, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
 

BLUE13326

4:03 PM ET

September 21, 2009

The guy's a community organizer

The guy's a community organizer; of course, he's going to sit on this report, he has no clue what to do, it's just so far from his experience set he has no idea how to reason toward a conclusion and he is too arrogant to learn.

 

ZATHRAS

3:48 AM ET

September 22, 2009

Whatever one thinks of the

Whatever one thinks of the Iraq surge, the process by which the Bush administration finally decided on it was highly irregular. It involved individuals, some of them without command responsibility, doing end runs around the chain of command in a fairly brazen fashion in order to get to a President anxious to hand the Iraq quagmire off to his successor.

Within the military and the security community, the surge itself is now regarded as a success and its promoters -- Gen. Petraeus prominent among them -- as heroes. It is possible that people associated with the report prepared for Gen. McChrystal regard the creativity of the Iraq surge's advocates as a worthy precedent. I cannot say which among those people might have acted on this belief. It just seems to me that if McChrystal himself is behind a leak that makes it look as if he is trying to stampede the Obama administration, both President Obama and Sec. Gates badly misjudged the man they went to considerable effort to place in command in Afghanistan. This seems unlikely to me.

 

SAINTSIMON

12:17 PM ET

September 22, 2009

I don't understand why few

I don't understand why few seemed to have put it together that Obama's 'indecision' on Afghanistan stems from the fact that his original commitment to the war was merely a campaign ploy - he needed foreign policy street cred to woo independents and so signed off on Afghanistan without having a clue it seems what was involved - I'm sure when he turned to McChrystal he was looking for an 'easy' way out, not further complication. Nothing in Obama's past suggests he has the slightest interest in or sympathy for the historical, military and foreign policy implications of the war in Afghanistan - unless of course it involves appeasing the adolescent pacifism of the left, as he did so well in opposing the Iraq war.

 

JAY GETTY

2:12 PM ET

September 22, 2009

Nice long lasting war and sell lots of weapons

Nothing more, nothing less.

If Obumer trys to intifere in this war he will be shown the door.

War ends, We win: only when:

We stop buying mid east oil! Embargo all mid east oil, none goes out; no food goes in! No internet, no air travel! Close down Saudi, Iraq, Iran, the Emirates oil industry. WAR ENDS WE WIN! (it is the funding stupid)

We can run our cars on cellulose ethanol today. I built a still and converted my car to only ethanol by 1984. Brazil already does it! Only invalid objections/canards exist against ethanol.

If Obama said: all our cars will run on ethanol in one year; the stills are being built in national emergency setting; the price of oil would fall to $10/bbl that same day; build the stills anyway: full employment, balanced trade deficit; cleaner burning.

 

JAY GETTY

2:13 PM ET

September 22, 2009

Nice long lasting war and sell lots of weapons

Nothing more, nothing less.

If Obumer tries to interfere in this war he will be shown the door.

War ends, we win: only when:

We stop buying mid east oil! Embargo all mid east oil, none goes out; no food goes in! No internet, no air travel! Close down Saudi, Iraq, Iran, the Emirates oil industry. WAR ENDS WE WIN! (it is the funding stupid)

We can run our cars on cellulose ethanol today. I built a still and converted my car to only ethanol by 1984. Brazil already does it! Only invalid objections/canards exist against ethanol.

If Obama said: all our cars will run on ethanol in one year; the stills are being built in national emergency setting; the price of oil would fall to $10/bbl that same day; build the stills anyway: full employment, balanced trade deficit; cleaner burning. War ends, we win:

Alternatively: Nice long lasting war and sell lots of weapons!

 

MOHAIR.SAM

7:56 PM ET

September 22, 2009

Are you kidding?

What does Middle East oil have to do with Afghanistan?

You appear to believe that oil is only used to fuel automobiles. Oil is used in many vital products we need, including pharmaceuticals, plastics, et al. Cutting off all ME oil would cripple our economy, even if our cars ran on milk. Oil is also prominently used in energy generation of nearly every kind.

Ethanol has problems all its own. In part because it is so heavily subsidized, we all pay for the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest (converted to farmland to grow corn for U.S. ethanol use), and more farmland in our country is devoted to growing ethanol-grade corn. This drives the price of corn up, as a lot of poor Mexicans recently discovered to their dismay. Sugar-based ethanol, as is the standard in Brazil, faces an uphill battle here -- the sugar lobby is one of the most powerful in D.C., and even then, we'd face a similar problem of having to grow enough sugar to produce enough ethanol to fuel our entire economy.

Buying oil on the open market doesn't require war in the first place. Iraq under Saddam was more than happy to sell us all the oil we need.

Your simplistic scenario is so fraught with problems I don't even know where to begin.

I'd continue, but I'm sure I'm wasting my time ...

 

GRANT

6:09 AM ET

September 23, 2009

Is it just me or do Democrats

Is it just me or do Democrats and the military simply dislike each other?

 

CK21114

10:09 AM ET

September 23, 2009

Put your back into it!!!

Peter

Your correctly note that the post-script to your blog is perhaps most important. Frankly, too much of the blog focuses on the "leak" and the media's odd focus on its implications to strategy -- rather than the more substantive story that this administration seems to be grasping at what it is really doing in AFPAK.

The president's announced troop deployments and heralded a new strategy in March and switched commanders over the summer. But since late June the statements of this admin on AFG clearly show that they were still assessing the situation and grasping at what to do in the face of an election that appeared as if it would be fraught with corruption and looks even worse after the fact. Jones' trip in July and the over dramatic "WTF" comment and Flournoy's recent comments all but dismissing McCrystal's review all suggest Beltway silliness that is more focused on process, structure, rank and conformity rather than mature policy.

Note to would be civilian policy staffers at DoD and NSC - military field commanders don't care if its hard, inconveniant to ask for something of the President during a War. Gen (R) Jones should be embarrassed for himself -- I am.

Back to the post script - there is clearly frustration with a guy who campaigned as if he wanted to fight and now seems to have second thoughts after a bad election and increased casualties. HOWEVER, the president is not as stuck as your analysis of the lead suggests if he wants to buck conventional wisdom and strike out on a new path. WHAT HE NEEDS TO DO IS LEAD. At the end of the day most of the powder-puff generals and civilians at the Pentagon don't want to fight in AFG. Most of them don't want to go do a tour over there and understand the conflict even less.

The military brass will go along with a new vision/ strategy, so long as it absolves them of some blame for the situation in AFG. But they are not going to be beating a drum to support a President's plan that he isn't willing to back w/ all of his usual rhetoric. Sure you will get a few disgruntled COLs and Generals -- AKA "leakers" who have bad things to say...you media types call them "sources" when they give YOU some inside scoop, but that is the nature of this town -- if your opinion doesn't carry the day, you will probably get a story in the Washington Post as an unnamed official. The military will follow whatever the President wants to do - there is no civil-military crisis, but they have a reasonable expectation to find out if their commander-in-chief has a backbone to set a course and follow through...any course!

 

GORDIDUK

7:09 PM ET

September 24, 2009

The War in Afghanistan

There is a pretty simple solution to the War in Afghanistan but of course all of these brilliant politicians and military geniouses cant figure it out.
It goes something like this:
1-tell the terrorists that the U.S. is giving up because we don't want to get trapped in another Vietnam.
2-pack up and go home.
3-wait for the rats to come out of their holes (or caves)
4-follow the rats now they are out in the open and exterminate them.

End of story....situation resolved, no more causalties, no more war in Afghanistan.

Of course, the President, and the military would have to keep all this a secret until it is complete....Fat chance that could ever happen...

 

KLOGTHEBLOG

8:54 PM ET

September 30, 2009

The alternative to failure

Important to note that the alternative to probable failure is not certain success, even if we find the troops.

Afghanistan is not Iraq, and Iraq is not Iraq. Afghanistan might not be Vietnam, but it just might be Afghanistan.

Here’s a snarky and inconclusive run-down on the issue.

http://klogtheblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/afghanistan-in-60-seconds/

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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