Also, the problems with the war are not a matter of politicians not allowing the troops to fight to win. The problem is that Bush has waged this war as a conventional campaign when it is a counterinsurgency. Massive displays of force (as with Fallujah) are counter-productive to the goal of success and such campaigns tend to be manpower and resource intensive. Basically, they’re losing because Bush and the Republican Congress ignored military advice, were too slow to recognize the nature of the conflict, and didn’t send enough troops and resources to win, not because of anything the Democrats are doing now.

Blaming the Democrats for losing the war in Iraq is about as ridiculous as Michael Moore blaming Bush for causing 9/11. In neither case was the party in office long enough to be truly responsible for what happened.

The point of fact on UBL in Afghanistan, though, was that Clinton was free to override the generals if he disagreed with their advice about hitting bin Laden. He chose not to because they made their point, and they made their opposition to the plan clear. The generals may have disagreed, but they would have followed orders had Clinton given them. That or Clinton was perfectly justified in replacing them. He didn’t do any of that because he realized that the plan was untenable at that point and the public probably wouldn’t have supported it.

Most of the criticism about the military and Clinton’s judgment back then is based on hindsight, not on the practical reality of the time. So I think it’s unfair to lay too much blame on either party…their chosen course of action was rational at the time.

Stephen,

I agree with you about the ridiculous “logic” of those who oppose intervention in Iraq but support it in Darfur. Their position is untenable to say the least, and often hypocritical. I’m a supporter of nation-building in Afghanistan only because it’s something that had a direct influence on our national interests and has the support of the international community. Clearly Darfur and Iraq don’t meet those standards, regardless of who’s sitting in the White House.

Disclosure: My extreme dislike for Bill Clinton was exceeded only by my extreme dislike for George W. Bush…so my foreign policy objections are not a result of partisan affiliations, but are a result of hating bad policy.

* I recognize that people who oppose the war oppose it for different reasons. The ones I am referring to here are priniply Bush haters who would have supported the war if their guy was in the Whitehouse. I know that most libertarians who oppose the war (such as Ron Paul) do so as a matter of principle and would not be in favor of humanitarian military campaigns in Darfur or anywhere else.

If things are not better by that time and the troops leave, we better prepare ourselves for a humanitarian crisis not unlike the aftermath of Vietnam.

Funny that this is never brought up by the surrender Iraq crowd.

If things are not better by that time and the troops leave, we better prepare ourselves for a humanitarian crisis not unlike the aftermath of Vietnam.

The biggest problems with this war is that 1. the civilian leadership and the politicians will not allow the troops to fight to win (the rules for engagement are too restrictive; the insurgents have not signed the Geneva Conventions and therefore these rules do not apply) and 2. The Democrat Party is doing everything it can to make sure this war is a failure so they can achieve more political power. If things turn around in Iraq, the Democrats are finished.

I think its also important to remember that the war in Iraq is but one front in the war against Islamofascism. If we allow them to win, we will only have to return and the cost in blood and treasure will be much higher than if our leaders would take care of business now.

Conceded. However, the military’s job isn’t to decide what the acceptable level of collateral and political damage or loss of life is in a situation like this. That’s the job of the politicians. In this case, the military flat out refused to provide the politicians with all the available options, instead saying that the only two choices were to go in with multiple divisions (start a war, in effect, instead of a specops raid) or don’t go at all. The specops raid may have been untenable for a variety of reasons, but those reasons were policy related. That cliched line from Top Gun is true: “We don’t make policy, gentlemen. We carry it out.”

In fact, if you read some of the reasons Rumsfeld gave for why he treated Shinseki the way he did, he cites the Clinton/OBL policy fiasco.

Re: Ghost Wars, I was actually going to make the same recommendation to you. Very good book.

Bush didn’t have a secret plan that he wasn’t telling Rumsfeld about, he didn’t have a plan at all. And neither did Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al really seemed to be believe the nonsensical idea that invading Iraq and deposing Saddam would be a cake walk and that there wouldn’t be an insurgency problem because we’d be greeted as liberators. As a result, they failed to plan for what several Generals was telling them would be a likely outcome of the war and, most importantly, failed to provide enough troops both for the war itself and the immediate aftermath.

As for the war itself, the military saw its purpose as capturing and killing key Taliban and al-Qaeda figures. As it stood we went in with insufficient troop numbers and relied too much on local and Pakistani forces to help us. That’s part of why bin Laden was able to escape from Tora Bora…the non-coalition forces failed to hold up their end. It’s also arguable that the tactics the Pentagon was proposing in Afghanistan would have worked better for us than for the Russians since the Taliban were largely despised and the Afghanis have pretty much accepted our mission as justifiable. The Soviet forces were hindered by massive popular opposition from the outset.

For the record, I didn’t have much of a problem with how we handled the initial Afghan invasion (aside from letting bin Laden escape and not holding Pakistan accountable for giving shelter to him and the Taliban). My problem with Bush there is with the apathy he’s displayed for the post-war situation; choosing instead to focus on Iraq. He chose to nation-build the wrong country and pursue the wrong enemy and now it’s allowed al-Qaeda to rebuild.

“True, but when you’re dealing with overwhelming numbers like this, it just isn’t politically possible to ignore the will of the public.”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s my biggest criticism of the Administration when it comes to their prosecution of the war. They refused to fight for and maintain their CoG.

UCrawford:

While Shinseki may have given Rumsfeld a legitimate and informed estimate this time around, look at some of the planning of the initial phases of OEF (the invasion of Afghanistan.) The Pentagon’s initial plan seemed like it was lifted directly from the Soviets’ lovely foray…go in with several divisions of heavy mechanized troops and spend several months slowly slogging through the country. A real winner. Also, if you look back to the relationship between the Pentagon and the Clinton Administration with regards to Afghanistan/OBL/al-Qaida after the ’98 Embassy bombings, the Administration actually wanted to send in, in the words of Pres. Clinton, “helicopters with black ninjas” to capture/kill OBL. Unfortunately, when they went to the Pentagon for a plan, the smallest intervention the Pentagon was willing to plan for involved several divisions. I’ve written more about all of this here.

So the bottom line is that while the Pentagon may have had to deal with a lack of respect for military advice, a lot of that was self inflicted as a result of their past actions.

I’ll offer an extremely weak defense of Rumsfeld by saying that the mission he apparently thought we were trying to accomplish was the removal of Saddam and the negation of WMD. He explicitly stated that he believed U.S. forces would be removed from Iraq immediately after Saddam was captured and the WMD threat was eliminated. Bush apparently either didn’t explain the mission to Rumsfeld or changed the mission on Rumsfeld (assuming Rummy wasn’t simply lying). That doesn’t justify invading Iraq, but it does lay the blame where it properly belongs…squarely with the Commander-in-Chief.

And yes, I completely agree with you how infuriating the lack of respect for military advice was on the part of the administration. Shinseki gave Rumsfeld a legitimate and informed estimate and Rumsfeld skewered and disgraced him for it. The judgment and behavior of the administration was abominable…especially considering Bush’s continued accusations about his critics trying to micromanage generals.

Petraeus is a very good general…but even he needs sufficient resources to win, and he simply hasn’t got them. And frankly the war in Iraq was being fought for all the wrong reasons anyway, by the worst possible president.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the most outrageous thing about the War in Iraq isn’t so much that we fought it based on bad intelligence, but that people like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz basically ignored advice from the men in uniform about what they needed to do to plan for the aftermath of the war.

Just remember. Operation Desert Storm utilized almost 400,000 U.S. and Allied ground troops. Operation Iraqi Freedom, which was a far greater undertaking, utilized fewer than half as many ground troops.

However, as all of us are well aware, just because a large majority of the population thinks something is a good idea doesn’t necessarily make it so.

True, but when you’re dealing with overwhelming numbers like this, it just isn’t politically possible to ignore the will of the public.