Barack Obama’s Afghanistan
commanders are something else. First, they promoted a highly debatable
counter-insurgency strategy. Then, despite the numerous and cogent
contemporary critiques, they got the president to buy into their
particular brand of wishful thinking, and they got from him the
additional troops supposedly needed for success. They have since failed
to deliver. There are no convincing signs of progress toward their
promise of pacification.
You would think they would have enough to do in Afghanistan. They
should keep pretty busy managing an international coalition, bucking up
the Karzai government, building an Afghan army, and distributing U.S.
largesse, not to mention figuring out where the assorted bad guys are
and how to put them in their place. But no, they manage to find quality
time to spend with the media, unburdening themselves at remarkable
length.
Stanley McChrystal and his aides got carried away, and now David
Petraeus has caught the media bug, going on a blitz earlier this week.
He wants us all to know that he rejects “a graceful exit,” even though
that is probably the best to be hoped for. He assures us that he is
working hard to “achieve our objectives” (whatever they may be). And in
impressively technocratic language he sheds light on the situation on
the ground by indicating that he is close to getting “the inputs about
right.”
The real general in command seems to be confusion. There is most
obviously confusion about what the personalities are up to. Heaven knows
what Petraeus has in mind. Has he suddenly recalled that Nixon’s troop
withdrawal from Vietnam was a version of “a graceful exit” strategy —
and he wants no part of a repeat? Or has settling into McChrystal’s
chair convinced him that the situation is far worse than he imagined?
So
he turns to the U.S. public and the president with a plea for more
time. By doing so, it seems on the basis of the evidence offered in
Jonathan Alter’s
The Promise that he is double-crossing his
commander in chief. Late last year at the end of extended deliberations
over Afghan strategy, he joined Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen in making a firm
commitment to respect the 2011 deadline for beginning significant U.S.
troop withdrawals. Petraeus may well calculate he can get away with this
reversal: an inexperienced president with one sacking behind him is not
likely to attempt a second, especially if the fresh challenge is
mounted adroitly.
Is it possible on the other hand that Obama is at least tacitly
behind this backpedaling?
There is precedent
for a president using his field commander for political ends: Johnson
brought his Vietnam commander, William Westmoreland, home in late 1967
to sell a war even as it was going badly in the field. This doesn’t seem
Obama’s style, but the gap between promise and performance in
Afghanistan and the competing claims of other causes closer to home must
be creating intense pressure on the president.
General confusion is also at work in civil-military relations. No
question, the era of the political general has arrived. Vietnam taught
at least some in the military establishment that generals need to speak
their mind forcefully. But where exactly is the line that defines
civilian control under the new dispensation where generals freely
address the public and negotiate with the president on ultimate
strategic goals? Where does civilian control end and insubordination
begin? We may be watching in McChrystal and Petraeus some senior Army
leaders not just trying to find that line but also to move it.
Finally, in grandest terms, general confusion reigns in the American
national understanding of itself. Over the last several decades the
country has undergone a militarization notable for its breadth (a point
elaborated in Andrew Bacevich’s
The New American Militarism).
Generals and admirals have fanned out from the Pentagon to populate the
upper levels of the decisionmaking apparatus throughout Washington. The
society is enamored with military virtues so strikingly missing in the
everyday life of most Americans. Politicians and the media heap praise
on the sacrifice of servicemen and women while banishing any thought
that that sacrifice should be shared, least of all through universal
military service. Patriots boast of their country’s prowess on the
battlefield — a might far exceeding any imaginable combination of powers
— even though U.S. expeditionary forces regularly reveal the limits of
brute coercion.
This militarization of America, of which McChrystal and Petraeus are
symptoms, would shock the founding fathers. Fortified by a well
developed sense of history, the founders identified foreign military
adventures as one of the prime dangers to the survival of any republic.
They were certain that foreign wars raised up generals, who in turn
became celebrated men on horseback and in the bargain a threat to
democratic values and institutions. Their America, they warned, was no
more immune to a subversive militarism than had been Greece, Rome, and
the Italian city states.
Maybe Obama should be reading
The Federalist Papers. He
could start with Alexander Hamilton’s no. 8:
“The violent destruction of life and property incident to
war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual
danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for
repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy
their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become
willing to run the risk of being less free.”
This might be a good time to put a stop to general confusion and to
that end assert firm civilian control, order the brass back to the
Pentagon, and above all ask if the militarization of our society is
consistent with our historic values.
Michael H. Hunt is Everett H. Emerson Professor of History
Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His ten
books include The American Ascendancy: How the
United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance and A Vietnam War Reader: A
Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives.
His comments “on Washington and the world” appear here regularly and
can also be found on his website.
Iran
launched a new surface-to-surface missile called the Qiam 1 on Friday.
According to Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, the missile is
better able to avoid anti-missile systems because it has no wings.
