Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (35010)	7/25/2002 8:27:15 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

as I said, the Cohen book seems to be a largely innocent bystander hit by Schwartz's attack on Boot. It's not about when to go to war, it's not about the present, it's not even about foreign policy. It's about how democracies should manage the conduct of war. Cohen starts by describing the conventional wisdom that politicians should basically leave the details of war to the generals, avoiding micromanagement, mission creep, etc. He then shows how four of the greatest democratic war leaders in history--Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben Gurion--achieved their successes by doing precisely the opposite. They exercised active oversight of all aspects of the conduct of the wars in question, pushed their generals to devise strategies that would achieve the political objectives they believed necessary, fired those generals who were unable or unwilling to do so, and in general were royal pains in the ass. Cohen's point is that the myth about how Vietnam was lost by civilian micromanagement, and would have been won if only the generals had been left to do their job properly, is complete BS, and exercises a pernicious impact on contemporary war management. Everything in war is political, he notes (as a good Clausewitzian), and only a serious well-informed civilian leadership has the political and moral authority and responsibility to make the tough calls that inevitably have to be made. Schwartz is right that one implication of this argument is that if Bush believes that his generals are McLellans, unwilling to go after Saddam under any circumstances and using hyped-up troop requirements as a cover for their unwillingness to do what's necessary, then Bush should fire them and replace them with others who can and will execute the tasks ultimately assigned to them. But the implication holds the opposite way also, saying that Kennedy was entirely correct, for example, in overruling the wildly hawkish military arguments for airstrikes during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Truman was correct to fire MacArthur when he was insubordinate during the Korean War. tb@precis.com