Anyone
interested in civil-military relations should read this fascinating excerpt from Jonathan
Alter's authorized account of President Obama's first year in office. Because
Alter had such extensive access to senior White House sources and relates their
views so uncritically, this may be as close as we can get to the "Inside
the West Wing" perspective on President Obama's Afghan Strategy Review 2.0
and, of special import, the ITWW perspective on civil-military relations. That
perspective makes me a little uneasy.
Alter reports that Team Obama (not surprisingly) was very
proud of its review and believed it to be quite literally the model for sound
strategic planning. They were (again, not surprisingly) upset by the leaks, but
(and here is where I start to get surprised) they felt that the leaks were
entirely due to the clever machinations of a media savvy military that
threatened to dance rings around the too-sincere and too-trusting White House. Read
this delicious quote and realize that the "neophytes" Alter is
describing include Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Jim Jones, and Bob Gates:
In fact, the military, practiced in the ways of Washington, now ran PR
circles around the neophytes in the Obama White House, leaking something to the
Pentagon reporters nearly every day. The motive for all the leaks seemed clear
to the White House: to box the president into the policy that McChrystal had
recommended, at least another 80,000 troops and an open-ended commitment
lasting 10 years or more."
Looking past the leaks charge and ignoring (as Alter does)
the daily anti-military leaking from the White House, the ITWW perspective has
a very odd way of describing the military's goal. I am sure that if you
asked General McChrystal, he would say that he thought he was identifying the
plan with the best chance of achieving the stated objectives of Obama's plan to
win what Obama repeatedly (and very recently) called a necessary war -- said
stated objectives having been reaffirmed just a few months prior when Obama
announced the results of what was then described as a thorough, systematic,
top-to-bottom review of Afghanistan policy. According to Alter, Team Obama
thought the military was merely trying to "box the president into the
policy."
Indeed, Alter reports that the signal achievement of the
review, again from the ITWW perspective, is that Obama successfully resisted
the military effort to commit the president to his own war and that, on the
contrary, Obama had boxed the military into an irrevocable and unconditional
exit from Afghanistan. Again it is worth quoting Alter:
Obama was trying to turn the tables on the military,
to box them in after they had spent most of the year boxing him in. If, after
18 months, the situation in Afghanistan had stabilized as he expected, then
troops could begin to come home. If conditions didn't stabilize enough to begin
an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces (or if they deteriorated further), that
would undermine the Pentagon's belief in the effectiveness of more troops. The
commanders couldn't say they didn't have enough time to make the escalation
work because they had specifically said, under explicit questioning, that they
did."
Alter uncritically endorses this view and describes the new
strategy as crystal clear on the terms and timing of the exit. However, as
Alter surely must have known, the exact opposite is true: there has been
considerable confusion and contradictory statements
out of the administration on what the exit strategy entails.
In other words, if Alter is right about what the White House
considers to be its most important achievement in the Afghan Strategy Review,
then the Review was a failure. Moreover, if Alter has faithfully captured
Team Obama's approach to Afghanistan, then there is good reason to be concerned
about the future. Those of us who supported
the president's ultimate decision on Afghanistan did so because we hoped it
indicated a commitment from Obama to win the war of necessity he was in. Alter
reports the team seemed to be more concerned with checkmating the U.S. military
than with checkmating the Taliban.
Let me be clear. Obama was right to be angry about any leaks
from the military, particularly any leaks designed to tie his hands. And he was
certainly right to dress down (in private) any military caught engaging in
those activities. But I wish there were indications that he was also angry
about the anti-military leaks from his civilian staff that he dressed down the
civilians who did it, including those who leaked to Alter about the dressing
down of the military. For that matter, I wish there were indications that Team
Obama understands that the real civil-military problems with their Afghan
policy are not that the military is over-committed to success but that their
civil-military team seems not to have yet achieved
unity of effort, let alone unity of command.
Read More
(5)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE