By Peter Feaver
Lawrence Korb has an odd op-ed in today's Washington Post that warrants a quick response.
Korb's thesis has two parts. Part I is that senior military officers
should give their civilian bosses their candid professional opinion, even if it
is not what civilians want to hear. I heartily agree. Part II is
that the Chairman of the JCS, Admiral Mullen, has violated this precept and
deserves public censure.
Part II is the "interesting" part of the argument and it is so interesting it
borders on explosive: Korb is charging the chairman of the JCS with a
dereliction of duty. I don't think Korb makes this case and if I were
Mullen I would demand a retraction.
Korb claims that Mullen misled the Congress in late 2007 when he was pressed about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the priority then
given to Iraq: "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what
we must," Mullen said. "There is a limit to what we can apply to
Afghanistan."
Mullen's response clearly indicated that in his view, Afghanistan would require
additional resources but that given the constraints Iraq had to take priority
for now. This is precisely the sort of cross-theater risk analysis that
the chairman is supposed to give; there is nothing wrong or surprising if it
differs from the view of subordinate battlefield or theater commanders, nor if
it happens to conform to the view of civilian superiors. On the face of
it, then, the response was not derelict.
It might have been derelict, however, if it was dishonest and did not reflect
Mullen's true view -- if, as Korb alleges, it was dictated by a desire to curry
favor with President Bush rather than a commitment to provide his own
professional opinion. Is there any evidence to support this allegation? Since Korb presents none, I assume there is none. Instead, Korb
presents evidence that the Iraq-before-Afghanistan view was not what the Afghan
commander General McNeill was telling Mullen, nor what the CENTCOM commander
Admiral Fallon was telling Mullen. But he presents no evidence one way or
the other that Mullen secretly agreed with them and was bullied into saying
otherwise.
Korb's allegation in the absence of evidence is all the more interesting
because we actually have a case in the past year of a senior official
apparently instructing a military subordinate to shade his military advice based on what
the president wanted to hear. This is not quite a smoking gun for the
Korb argument, but it is close enough to count as a whisky, tango, foxtrot
moment. Even if it were just a poor choice of words on the part of the
senior official, it comes far closer to violating the civil-military principle
Korb claims to be interested in upholding than does the incident Korb cites.
Why does Korb ignore a civil-military problem in one case in order to
manufacture a civil-military problem in another case?
Read More
(0)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE