No, but apparently suffering brain damage doesn’t preclude you from being a great brain surgeon that goes on to be in the cabinet.
I’m not sure if I’m weeping because that’s so on point or because it actually happened :-(
We want the Afghans to fend for themselves, so we get most of our folks out and continue training them. They can’t seem to do it without air and intel support, so we increase back up some of that. But that still doesn’t work, because instead of actually using the support to improve their own capabilities, it seems they rely more on US support the more that is available. So we send in more troops, to shore things up, apparently with the hope that, this time, they can establish enough of a foundation for the Afghans to actually grow into their roles.
But it won’t work. It didn’t work with the ARVN, either. It never works. You take a fundamentally broken institution, which only appears to work because for a while it’s operating alongside and integrated with our forces. After a while, you begin to think, hey, these folks can do the job if they only had X, Y, and Z, because when they’re working directly with you they do ok. You don’t realize (or no one wants to admit) that the only reason things are working is that you are really substituting the US system in place of the local one, and the local forces are becoming US auxiliaries. They’re doing well because you cut out most of the local command structure and all the crap that goes with it. So when you leave, you throw the local forces back into the swamp as it were, and the alligators are still there. You can give them lawyers, guns, and money but it ain’t gonna do much because, like John Lennon said about us, they’re still fuckin’ peasants as far as I can see. “Peasants” in this case though doesn’t refer to the actual soldiers, but to the system into which they are embedded, a system that we cut out of the loop while we were there in force but which will return to strangle any hopes of progress once we leave.
This is correct, but I’d point out that Mattis isn’t really a warmonger. He’s not AFRAID of war, but given that he’s seen so much of it, he knows that it’s not something to go into without a good cause and a good plan. Mattis, by all accounts, genuinely cares about the men under his command. He would not put them in harms way if he could help it.
@TheWombat Thanks for that insight, very useful.
This article also makes a good case why granting the military complete control is a bad idea (regardless of how incompetent trump is)
Speaking as someone who served in the Army, I can’t think of a better man for the job, then. Sun Tzu would agree.
Can’t you say the same of any modern career military man who’s made it to general? Actually, can’t you say the same of any officer who’s not incompetent? I mean, sure, he’s not a raving lunatic, but that’s got nothing to do with the point that he shouldn’t be in charge of where and how many troops we deploy.
-Tom
Not really. Flynn was a General don’t forget.
Well, Eisenhower was a general and made a pretty solid (as we now mostly see it) President, even sharply criticizing the military industrial complex. And George Marshall made a pretty fair Secretary of State and Defense. Admittedly, these guys were sort of the cream of the crop…
Flynn’s problem isn’t that he’s a warmonger, it’s that he’s a shady opportunist. Allegedly, of course.
Timex’s reassurances about Mattis having pretty much sole command of the military are platitudes that apply to any decent military officer. Caring for the men under your command and wanting to avoid the horrors of war isn’t in any way an exceptional quality.
-Tom
You mean it shouldn’t be an exceptional quality, but apparently it is. And that’s not a new thing of our era; I remember being impressed with how The Art of War was explicit in saying that commanders needed to care for the men under their command, and how they should avoid war at all costs if at all possible. I don’t think it would be that explicit if such a thing was common sense back then, and I doubt it is now.
Sounds like a minister trait from Hearts of Iron 3
Generally speaking there has been an inverse correlation between White House involvement operationally in wars, and their success. Lincoln is arguably the exception, although, given the Union’s military and economic advantages, it is hard to call the 360,000+ dead via a war of attrition anything other than a pyrrhic victory.
The first gulf war is a good example of the benefits of allowing the generals to figure out how many troops are needed. It reached a nadir under LBJ, who micromanaged the hell out of troop deployments, vetoing the call up of most National Guard units. Rumsfeld restricting the number of troops in Iraq is another good example of why letting the civilian dictate troop numbers is a bad idea.
I think COIN and training local troops can work. It worked for the British in Malaysia. South Korea ROK troops were awful at the start of the Korean war but after a lot of training by US forces, have become some of the best in Asia and were quite good in Vietnam. There have been obviously challenges with Iraqi troops but they have been vaguely competent against ISIS this last year. There is even good evidence that after Westmoreland and McNamara left ARVN troops were pretty successful winning the hearts and minds of South Vietnam villagers. South Vietnam lost not because of the insurgency but because they were defeated by the regular North Vietnamese Army.
All that said, Afghanistan is pretty much hopeless. I advocated getting out in 2003 at the start of the Iraq war and declaring victory. For a whole host of reason Afghanistan is the worse place on earth for the US Army to fight a war, and turning a highly tribal people into a national army is something that’s like to occur only over generations if ever.
At what point we’re going to figure this out I don’t know.
As a practical matter, the best thing for the world is to have Donald Trump do nothing but tweet all day and give speeches to his base. The less actual decisions that he does with respect to governing the better. I’d say that even if the SecDef was 25-year-old former Army Sergent.
Having somebody of Mattis intelligence and experience is a huge bonus.
No, it’s a good example of why letting borderline incompetent administrations dictate troop numbers is a bad idea. The fact that Rumsfeld flubbed it has nothing to do with him being a civilian and everything to do with him drinking all that neocon Koolaid (although I believe Cheney was the one who was all gung-ho to have a small military footprint in Iraq).
-Tom
No. There are definitely generals who are incompetent, or lack empathy for their men.
Hell, Flynn was a general, and he’s also an imbecile.
I suggest reading up on his reputation especially among Marines. He’s universally idolized.
Well, sure, but that’s not what you wrote and not what I was responding to. You wrote:
You’re trying to single Mattis out for meeting the expectation of pretty much any competent general. But those are just platitudes that apply to anyone in the military who knows what he’s doing. Unless you’re making the case that Flynn’s fucktardedness* is the rule rather than the exception. In which case, citation needed.
-Tom
* it’s a military term
By all accounts from seemingly every single person who had ever worked with him, Mattis is well above the norm. He is an exceptional Marine. His men idolize him.
And from what I’ve read about him, he’s very thoughtful. He is in many ways the opposite of Trump.
Right, he’s one of the few non-loathsome Trump appointees, but I don’t get why you’re bringing that up in response to the obvious point that the military is ideally commanded by a civilian. I couldn’t care less if Mattis is Mary Poppins, the Pope, and Iron Man rolled into one. He’s still a military guy running the show without any meaningful civilian oversight. Do you not understand why that’s not a Good Thing? I can probably link you some reading on the matter if you like.
-Tom
Possibly, though I’d say the ARVN lost because of their own corrupt, inefficient, and utterly clueless government got them into an unwinnable situation a long time before the US left. But yeah, the VC were dead pretty much after Tet anyhow, which was a political victory for them but an utterly disastrous military defeat.
On the bigger issue, letting generals call the shots, that’s true up to a point. The key thing is to have clear, articulated political objectives, decided on by the civilian leadership, before you turn over the “how to” to the generals. Everything that’s done, though, needs to move us closer to the political goal, and sometimes that means not doing what seems to be tactically useful. WWII was full of that sort of decision making, which at the time infuriated generals but in the end proved politically (and hence, strategically) effective. Of course without good civilian and military leaders, it’s all moot anyhow, and it’s doubly moot if there really isn’t a feasible political goal you are shooting for.
I think the notion is totally overblown. Was Eisenhower a bad president? No, I don’t think so at all.