That’s not the way things work in the military. You get your orders, and you carry them out. Obama says do “X” with 10,000 troops, you do “X” with 10,000 troops.
Okay, so as President, you think that your decision should be between: (1) what a general recommends and (2) total surrender.
That’s a terrible idea on its face. And what do you do if the generals recommend against withdrawal?
The whole reason that the Constitution, and virtually all modern governments, put a civilian as the ultimate head of the armed forces is because the civilian is supposed to represent the interests of the whole country, not just the military establishment, including the country’s relations with other countries.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the generals wanted to have 10,000 troops at seven bases around Afghanistan. And let’s say the State Department is saying that the Afghan Government wants a smaller footprint and will accept no more than five bases.
As President, do you suppose your choice is between accepting the generals’ recommendation and pissing off a foreign government, or total withdrawal against the wishes of the generals, the State Department, and the Afghan government? You think this is a better way to be president, why?
Let me make my stance clear: if a President decides to go against any adviser’s expert recommendation, he does so at his own risk, but he is also the boss. No organization functions if the boss isn’t allowed to question or modify the recommendations of his subordinates.
If the President chooses poorly, he faces the consequences. He might lose his next election, or he may end up retiring in disgrace if the situation is that bad. But to suggest that the President is limited to binary judgments – my way or the highway – is a foolish, short-sighted, and catastrophically bad way of running any organization, especially a country.
If the military worked that way they’d never lose a soldier. “Conquer Germany without a single casualty, that’s an order.”
The orders have to be reasonable.
Generals and military experts can disagree. Unless someone has evidence that Obama took no advice from any general (or former general or other career military expert) that favored the current course of action, then such criticism doesn’t hold water, in my view.
Not that I favor the 5,500 or so troops remaining. It’s probably for political reasons, and I think we should be out for good. Hopefully we will be soon.
Then you go back and forth until you agree on something. The generals need to agree that what you’re giving them is enough to accomplish their goals. If not, then you’re just setting them up for failure. That doesn’t mean you need to give them everything they ask for at the beginning, but when the final order is signed they should have the means to accomplish that order.
The whole reason that the Constitution, and virtually all modern governments, put a civilian as the ultimate head of the armed forces is because the civilian is supposed to represent the interests of the whole country, not just the military establishment, including the country’s relations with other countries.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the generals wanted to have 10,000 troops at seven bases around Afghanistan. And let’s say the State Department is saying that the Afghan Government wants a smaller footprint and will accept no more than five bases.
As President, do you suppose your choice is between accepting the generals’ recommendation and pissing off a foreign government, or total withdrawal against the wishes of the generals, the State Department, and the Afghan government? You think this is a better way to be president, why?
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I think the president often has to make a bunch of shit choices. I wouldn’t want to be president for that reason. But…
If the president chooses poorly he’s not the only one to face consequences. There are actual people over there in harms way who also have to suffer the consequences.
Look, obviously I don’t feel that there’s no room for nuance here. The president doesn’t have binary choices. You said that I’d have to follow orders to nuke China based on my previous post, I’m saying I wouldn’t have to, because another choice would be not to get involved in the first place. Nowhere did I say those were the only two choices, though. Let’s be reasonable.
I remember him getting roundly criticized from the left - hell, from me, IIRC - for trying to win Iraq on the cheap with respect to manpower, once we were there and it became clear that it wasn’t going to be easy.
In fact, there was a lot of talk on the left ~2004 that Bush was going to need to reinstitute the draft in order to keep Iraq from going to hell in a handbasket. The idea, I’m sure, was that (a) he really would need to go to a draft if he wanted enough troop strength in country to do the job, but (b) America wasn’t going to go along with a draft, so (c) he’d have to pull the plug on his Iraq misadventure.
Instead, troop strength was maintained by a pile of tricks, but it still wasn’t enough. Not sure there was an ‘enough,’ but that’s another story.
Oh, please. You get your orders, and you carry them out to the best of your ability unless they are unlawful orders. If you’re high enough up, you resign if you don’t think you can.
There is nothing unlawful about Obama’s orders.
If Generals don’t believe the orders their given are possible, they can and should resign. Generals resigning in protest has a history behind it, and if generals are not resigning in protest due to current orders, then that means that they believe the orders are reasonable and possible, in general.
I don’t know what Hollywood military you went to, but this is absolutely not the way it works. This style of leadership was recognized as disastrous all the way back in the Crimean War. I have never once observed a military planning session in which the commander issued his plan without first considering the requirements of the mission and the resources subordinate leaders required to achieve those goals. Anyone who does attempt this is an incompetent leader and probably on a short road to failure.
I also cannot conceive of why someone would consult a subject matter expert (whether it is a lawyer, doctor, or general) and if they thought their advice was worthless. The entire point of hiring an SME is that their knowledge of the subject is superior to your own.
I may have to rethink my negative opinion of the Washington Times, they appear to have a total scoop on this story! Unless, of course, they are full of shit? Mmmm. Might be best to wait a tick…
I’d agree with that, but at the same time in some respects the military tends to have a decent handle on how many guys/planes/tanks/dogs/porn mags it *needs *to accomplish a given task with any kind of success.
In Iraq they warned Bush that to both fight the war and occupy the country successfully and without taking too many losses they’d need at least three times as many troops as were sent IIRC. Since the troops weren’t there, they couldn’t lock down the country post-invasion which means US troops had to basically batten the hatches on their bases, run the occasional patrol to pretend like they gave a shit/Did Something but ultimately let the country devolve into a civil-warry insurgent fuck-fest with the occasional mortar lobbed their way.
Maybe that’s just post-hoc rationalization on the part of the military to explain away the abject failure, but still.
I guess the salient question is : what does Obama hope to accomplish in Afghanistan with five thousand grunts ?
I can agree with this. I think they should probably resign. That would eliminate any notion that this is political grandstanding, at least.
Maybe they aren’t so arrogant to think that they expect the elected leader of the United States must approve their requests without question.
It is to continue training the Afghan security forces and have a limited counterterrorism capability. U.S. ground combat operations are over.
They can. That they aren’t indicates that they’re at least willing to go along with the current orders and plans.
Generals are Admirals are, by and large, decent and honorable people who would resign if they believe that their orders are unacceptable in some way.
Except there is virtually no recent history of American Flag Officers resigning in protest. The last time that I know it’s happened was in 1949 during the so called “revolt of the Admirals.” I’d bet it’s happened since but I can’t remember it and there is no culture of that in the American military.
What will happen is the COCOM will go back to CJCS and tell him what he thinks the 5,000 will buy the President, and what it won’t, and then he’ll carry on as best he can.
Also remember that one of the reasons that Bush was criticized in regards to Iraq is that we ostensibly went in there to prevent WMDs from falling into the hands of terrorists…And, then we apparently didn’t even have enough troops to guard important weapons facilities from being looted by anybody who had a pickup truck!
It seemed to be a strategy roughly on par with invading, grabbing all the WMD’s we could find, and then mailing them to the terrorists with the hope that they got lost in the mail.
I’d like to remind everyone that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. 
This.
The military *recommends *what is good for it, which has fuck all to do with anything else. I give them the same eye roll I give our “business leaders” who predictably protest any new tax or regulation.
Actually, the top military guys are generally reluctant to go to war, no pun intended. I have it on good authority that war is hell.
It’s the civilians who are more likely to be trigger happy.