Are you saying you think the President and/or the Congress have allowed the Military to call too many of the "shots"...????? Or are you saying the top Military leaders have been calling for the wrong directions?
Both.
The pols let the military call the shots because over 90% of congress doesn't know how to wear a uniform...and never have.
Meanwhile the military kept those in command who had no clue how to manage an insurgency. I can understand why they did that initially because they did not expect one (They should have planned for one however, because most wars result in some kind of insurgent effort). Once the insurgency started there was no excuse for not bringing in our own experts. Well maybe one excuse....their own greed for power and money. They were more interested in taking advantage of the situation to get another promotion than prevailing in the war. I believe that with all my heart.
What happened?
The military won the first phase one.
The political decisions made immediately thereafter screwed it up. The problem is at that point the decisions should have been made by pols but were delegated to the military because the pols also had no plan (nor a clue). Our military doesn't know how to stand up a government. That is not taught in our military schools. We had the blind leading the blind. That may be why Petraeus announced in an interview this week that he is feeling his way.
Isn't that how the blind get around?
The military sent the entire Iraqi army home with weapons and ammo and surprise surprise...some of them were still willing to fight. While they were getting organized our military was busy disbanding every Iraqi security structure. When the insurgency started there were no Iraqis available to secure free Iraq. Things rolled ever faster down hill from there.
Those running that direct action piece have been provided too much power to call the long-term shots and to subordinate even - fracture - our other efforts.
Do you think this is because no Westerner can really understand the Arab mindset? Or were we being too PC? Or is there anyone in the entire government (ours) who knows anything?
Direct action is anything but PC. That is not the problem. The problem is we have allowed and enabled power shifts in our forces that make no sense.
In the 1920s or 30s, while explaining man's greed, TE Lawrence wrote - "The fools don't realize that their possessions, in time, come to possess them."
Think about that one. It applies to our senior leadership.
Lawrence also wrote, "the only minds worth winning are the warm ones about us. If we miss those we are failures."
We are working to appease so many minds that are cold to us, we look like fools.
He wrote these things after having spent years living with Arabs. His book "Seven Pillars of Wisdom or the earlier version titled "Revolt in the Desert" should be mandatory reading for our military. I have yet to find an officer outside SF who read it.
I have a copy of the early version (Revolt) dated 1926, and have never considered parting with it. Lawrence was a true master of counterinsurgency and a successful one at that.
He understood and wrote about our way not being their way and we must let them do it their way as imperfect as it may seem to us.
For 6 and 1/2 years we have been trying to impose our way.
Some gall, eh!
The direct action guys have won the hearts and minds of those who control our nation's purse strings....all of them collectively believe thay can win this through attrition.
GWB, himself, recently bragged about the direct action guys killing 1100 extremists a month or 13,200 annually. There are 125-150 million of them. Figure out how in many years years the direct action guys should prevail unless the extremists recruit some more. After you do the math you will come to realize that is not the solution and never was....yet that is where the bulk of our effort and money has flowed and continues to flow.
The real question after 6 and 1/2 years is what have we won, what have we gained politically or militarily? The answer to that question defines our progress or lack thereof.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Is that not exactly what we are doing? |
