An Analysis of US Foreign Policy

Yglesias points out an interview Condi Rice gave where she claimed:

And I’m especially, as a political scientist, not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor, but as somebody who knows that structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Matt astutely points out that:

My colleague Ryan Powers reminds us that, in fact, many of the leading lights of the international relations subfield of political science tried to warn the country against the invasion of Iraq.

The warning he links to is a full-page NYT advertisement opposing the war, signed by the leading scholars in our field.

Many points on this deserve comment, but as I'm behind in grading final exams, 3 will have to suffice.

First, I would highly recommend that you revisit the work on this subject done by members of the field. Prof. Patrick Jackson's piece on Weberian Activism is worth re-reading as you recall this debate. Dan nexon re-posted the letter here and you can see a reporting of the signatures here. While not as high-profile as the NYT add, this effort of hundreds of scholars in the field, showed remarkable consensus of judgment that as a political scientist, Rice is running quite counter to the analysis of nearly everyone else in her field.

Second, as a bit of political science, her analysis is quite shallow. As I'm in final exam grading mode, as a final exam for her tenure with the Bush Administration, this effort does not merit a passing grade. First off, many political scientists flat out disagree. The billiard ball model of the international system, espoused by realists, suggests that all states react to systemic, that is to say, structural, pressures in similar ways. Thus, it makes no difference structurally if its Saddam Hussien's Iraq or anyone else's Iraq, as the balance of power works the same for all. I believe, as a Political Scientist, Rice styled herself a "realist." That's an F for IR theory for the semester.

And finally, I agree with Matt on this vital point, and think it deserves more emphasis:

One of the most annoying habits of the press and the DC conventional wisdom more generally has been a persistent habit of ignoring these facts in favor of the rhetoric of “seriousness” that casts war opponents as a much of ignorant hippies and foul-mouthed bloggers who, at best, were right about Iraq by accident or something. But the vast majority of credentialed experts in Middle East regional studies, and the vast majority of credentialed experts in international relations have always been extremely skeptical of the adventure in Iraq. The main supporters of the war have been politicians, magazine and newspaper pundits, and a smallish group of heavily politicized think tank-based experts and “experts” who, for whatever reason, are granted privileged access to the media over people in a better position to offer genuinely independent analysis. I think many political observers watching the debate unfold in 2002-2003 would have gotten the impression that most experts were more-or-less backing the president on Iraq. But while it’s certainly true that most op-ed columnist and most Brookings fellows were behind Bush, the broader group of political scientists who specialize in these issues has always taken the opposite view.

So many of the arguments for the war were so shallow and so dismissive of an entire corpus of knowledge that understood the foolishness of this enterprise.

Labels: IR Theory, Iraq

Certainly not a winning week for the Air Force. Already reeling from the high-profile dismissal of both its uniformed and civilian leader, the USAF was slammed again in two major stories this week.

First, the GAO slammed the Air Force's procurement procedures with a stinging rebuke of its decision to award its major tanker contract to the Northrup-Grumman. The USAF has been looking to upgrade its tanker fleet for years but the entire process has been clouded by scandal. There was the ill-fated sweetheart lease deal for Boeing. There was the criminal interference by senior Boeing leaders and a senior civilian AF official, where the official steered contracts to Boeing in return for a job after retiring from government (this led to actual jail time). Supposedly this competition for the tanker contract would move beyond the dysfunction, but alas, no. The Boeing team cried foul after it lost the contract, and as it turns out, the GAO found substantial problems with the process and recommended the Air Force scrap the existing contract and start all over again.

The Post quoted one analyst:

"We've not seen a document as scorching as this from an independent, nonpolitical agency," he said. "They are essentially saying there is either incompetency in the Air Force or there was political interference that led them to bend over backwards to benefit one competitor because they feared the power of the purse strings. Either way, the Air Force procurement system has gone horribly, horribly wrong."

Given that they were bending over backward to avoid the political interference given the outcome of the previous tanker debacle, I'd lean toward incompetency.

On top of that, we learn from the NYT that the Army, fed up with the Air Force, recently stood up its own air unit to provide UAV surveillance in Iraq.
Since the days of the Key West Agreement, the Army has only maintained rotary aircraft (helicopters) while the Air Force took care of all fix-winged air assets. This has led to years of inter-service tension, as the Army must depend on the Air Force for transport, close air support, and recon/surveillance. The Air Force has long focused on its strategic role (nukes), with an emphasis on fighters and bombers, leaving the help-the-Army portions of the service to play second fiddle.

This overall attitude certainly played a role in Gates decision to fire the top AF brass. Note the discrepancy in assessment of the USAF in today's active combat zones:

Army and Marine Corps officers in Afghanistan have complained that Air Force pilots flying attack missions in support of ground operations do not come in as low as their Navy and Marine counterparts. Instances of civilian casualties from bombing and missile attacks have increased tensions among local populations, which have to be eased by ground commanders, adding to their burden of winning hearts and minds in the counterinsurgency efforts.

“We are supporting the Army as best we can,” Michael W. Wynne, the departing Air Force secretary, said Friday.

Its pretty clear that a large part of the defense establishment has concluded that "as best we can" is not good enough.

Labels: air force, bureaucratic politics, Defense Department, Iraq

In the latest incarnation of the Iraq war issue in the general election, John McCain is criticizing Barak Obama because Obama hasn’t been to Iraq in some time, and therefore, he’s not qualified to comment on Iraq policy because he hasn’t “been there” to “see it for himself.”

Rhetorically, it’s a slick move by McCain. Take a widely perceived negative, his support of the war, and turn it into a positive by emphasizing experience and criticizing Obama’s capacity for sound judgment. There was some press speculation that Obama might now need to visit Iraq as a candidate to blunt this line of attack, which plays into McCain’s hands because its debating the issue on his turf.

This, however, raised a larger issue for me, one with implications not just for the election, but for research methods in the social sciences. Namely, how important is it to be there (or have been there) in order to make an argument and draw a defensible conclusion about a thing. We seem to have a fetish for certain types of experience, thinking it leads to insight about how certain things work. But such doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Take, for example, baseball. You’ll notice that the world of baseball analysts, managers, and team executives is replete with former players who supposedly “know the game” having been there and played it. For a long time this kind of claim to expertise ruled the day, until the “stat-heads” came along and showed that much of what the “baseball people” thought didn’t quite work that way. Hall of Fame player Joe Morgan is celebrated by some as one of the best baseball commentators for his work on ESPN’s Sunday Night baseball. He also has inspired a fantastic blog that revels in point out how foolish most of his comments are when subjected to statistical analysis. Can Bill James, who never played the game, know more about baseball than someone with a Hall of Fame career?

Back to Iraq and the election—can John McCain really “know more” about the war because he 1) served in the military and 2) has visited Iraq many times when compared to Obama who has 1) not served and 2) visited rarely, and not for some time? Does being there really matter? Can one develop and claim expertise from non-experiential research?

Now, before this becomes a stats vs. anthropology argument (as the baseball analogy might portend), I want to suggest that both McCain and Obama have an important point. It is important to be there, but being there alone does not necessarily mean that your evidence, evaluation, and conclusion is any more valid. I’m reminded of an ISA panel I attended, maybe this year, where a number of critical security scholars were discussing the state of the discipline, and one prominent senior member of the panel talked about how important it was to ‘be there,’ to get the mood of the place, to write from that perspective.

Just being there, however, doesn’t mean that you have greater access to “fact” or “Truth” than anyone else. Take McCain in Iraq. He goes on a CODEL. He meets with select troops, who are probably on their best behavior for the famous Senator. He meets with members of the Iraqi government, who probably ask him for stuff, hoping to work the levels of US political power. He tours a marketplace, with a brigade providing security. There’s no way he can get “out” to see the rest of the country, there’s no way he can meet with many of the forward deployed troops out on the FOB—a more representative sample is simply impossible for him. Its just too dangerous (and rightly, not worth the risk to him). Is it important that he goes? Sure. Does this mean that his assessment and evaluation of Iraq is fundamentally superior to Obama’s? Not really.

So, when McCain criticizes Obama, and when those in the “field” criticize those back at the desk, and those who played criticize those who haven’t, they have a very important point to make. Being there does shape and deepen your analysis about certain things in certain ways. But not everything, and not always in the most appropriate way. Just because you were there doesn’t mean you saw the whole picture while you were. Just because you were there doesn’t mean you paid attention to the things you later comment on as an expert. Just because you were “there” doesn’t mean that you are able to understand how “there” is now relevant “here.”

In the social sciences, we arbitrate these disputes with our methodology. We ask—what did you do while you were there, in the field? What did you read while sitting in your office? The methodology gives us a standard for what counts as enough knowledge about a thing or place on which to offer meaningful analysis.

In the campaign, it looks like we might have “We’re winning, can’t you see?” vs. “You were wrong then and you’re wrong now.”

Labels: Barak Obama, election, Iraq, John McCain, research methods

The New York Times has a fascinating article uncovering an unclassified report by RAND for the Army that details the multiple instances of failure of US policy in Iraq. The report, based on documents, public information, and interviews with over 50 policymakers, identifies failures at all levels, from the White House to CENTCOM to the State Department to the Intelligence agencies.

The Army, concerned that the report bit off more than the Army wanted to chew, buried the report, ergo, all we know about it is what Gordon revealed in his NYT story from his paper copy. Timothy Noah at Slate likens the study to the Pentagon papers, but as of now, the NYT doesn't quite see it that way.

Labels: Iraq

From LGM:

MM... Pithy

Kenneth Waltz, via Travis Sharp:

To say that militarily strong states are feeble because they cannot easily bring order to minor states is like saying that a pneumatic hammer is weak because it is not suitable for drilling decayed teeth.

Labels: IR Theory, Iraq

Several days ago, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-MI) returned from a visit to Iraq and called for the ouster of Prime Minister Maliki, calling him "non-functional."

On the one hand, Levin makes a critical point. The main problem in Iraq is political, not military, and the dysfunction of the Iraqi government is not really helping to solve the problem. Indeed, the Iraqi parliament is indicative of the sectarian and political conflict that continues to plague the country.

On the other hand, be careful what you wish for. In the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again,
its not but it is comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, (this debate and policy reversal is so rich, it could and probably should be the subject of a separate post, but my syllabus isn't done yet and classes start Monday. So it will just have to wait....) I wanted to bring up one historical lesson that seems somewhat relevant and foreboding in this instance.

In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground...

No, wait, wrong Vietnam parallel....

In 1963, a crack commando unit of the ARVN Army overthrew and subsequently murdered South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in a coup sanctioned by the US Government. The Kennedy Administration was frustrated with Diem's government as they were not making sufficient progress in the fight against communism, autocratic, ineffective, and such. To make a long story short, what they failed to appreciate was that sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. The successive Vietnamese governments after Diem were no more effective in fighting the communists, while US participation in the coup gave the US a deeper responsibility and commitment to the successive Vietnamese governments. Indeed, many historians see the 1963 coup as the moment when Vietnam went from bad to disaster for the the US.

So, perhaps in this instance, the Bush administration's backing of the Maliki government isn't such a bad idea. Its a problematic government, to be sure, but Maliki is the devil we know, and we might want to be wary of engineering a transition to the devil we don't know, especially when any alternative to Maliki seems no better at 'solving' Iraq's current political crisis.

Labels: Iraq, Vietnam

Political leaders have long relied on historical analogies to frame, explain, and justify important policy choices. The current administration is no exception when discussing its policy toward Iraq—the most recent instance occurring when Tony Snow described keeping US forces in Iraq “as we have in South Korea.” Indeed, Iraq has been a war full of analogies: Bush’s father analogized Saddam Hussien to Hitler in the first Gulf War, Rumsfeld wanted to rebuild Iraq like Germany after World War II, the insurgents in Iraq created another Vietnam, though the US did not want to leave like Vietnam, with Baghdad well on its way to becoming a new Beirut, and now it looks like the US will remain, as we have in Korea.

Analogies are more than just passing references to history. Analogies are caricatures of key moments seared into the country’s collective memory, commonplaces that evoke a particular emotion, triumph, or failure. The specific details of the historical moment in question are less important than the memory it evokes. At Munich, appeasement failed and subsequent Munichs are avoided by leaders invoking the analogy and standing strong against aggressive dictators.

Leaders use analogies because they offer a powerful tool to legitimize policy options. Analogies frame the discussion by identifying the key issues at stake. Historical commonplaces are known for one key moment. Beirut is a once proud city in the chaos of an intractable civil war. Invoking Beirut brings the discussion to civil war and sectarian strife. German reconstruction successfully created a thriving democracy out of a former enemy, focusing the discussion on democratic success. Analogies explain policy by laying out a simple story of how a process works. Each historical moment has a caption, and that widely recited caption gives a logical progression of how a goal can be achieved. Robust deterrence contained the Soviet Union and brought about its downfall. Analogies justify by drawing on widely shared collective judgments on historical events. The unfamiliar situation of the present can be read through a well-understood template on which society’s collective judgment has already been rendered. Everyone “knows” Vietnam was a failure, so avoiding another Vietnam in Iraq is to avoid national humiliation.

When Snow invoked the Korea analogy, he was attempting to legitimize the Administration’s current policy in the face of substantial criticism. Korea frames the policy as a discussion of long term engagement with a partner country in the face of a mutual threat. Korea explains the policy: just as a robust but isolated US presence deters further aggression from North Korea, allowing South Korea to thrive, so too would a sustained US presence in Iraq help ward of future threats from terrorism in the Middle East. Finally, Korea justifies the policy as a successful, sustainable, and affordable price to pay to realize a key national interest.

The problem, as political scientists who study the use of analogies readily point out, is that analogies are a particularly bad way to make decisions and lead to highly flawed policy choices, usually with disastrous outcomes. Analogies are caricatures of history, not history itself, and as a result, this selective memory leaves out the messy, complicated, and contingent details that produced the relevant outcome. The strained comparison between past and present glosses over significant differences between wars and important historical details that are, in fact, essential factors of success or failure. Iraq is neither Germany nor Vietnam nor Korea, and treating it as such is sure-fire recipe for disaster. Trying to win the last war is no way to win the current one.

Quibbling over the accuracy of a historical comparison—Korea, Vietnam, Germany—misses the larger significance these analogies the contemporary policy debate. As historical commonplaces, analogies are rhetorical tools to define a debate and legitimate its resolution. Despite overwhelming public opinion to the contrary—61% of Americans say the war is not worth fighting and 55% want to reduce US forces in Iraq—the Bush Administration has made a clear decision to maintain a substantial military presence in Iraq for the long haul. Deploying the Korea analogy narrows the debate. Discussion moves away from what kind of progress the troops in Iraq are actually able to make and what future outcomes are even possible to hollow choice of Korea or Vietnam. If the administration can shift the debate to a question of what a sustained US presence in Iraq looks like by using the Korea analogy, it will make the point that such a presence is acceptable to the American public. In doing so, it will gloss over the tremendous gap between Yongsan Garrison in Seoul and the Green Zone in Baghdad, and side-step the fundamental question of what now constitutes success in Iraq and what compromises we must accept to approach it. Korea is not a model for the future of the US in Iraq, it’s a justification for a policy that the Bush Administration would rather obfuscate with history than discuss and defend in the present.

Labels: Bush Administration, history, Iraq, war

How many ways, how many times, can one say that the US is screwed in Iraq?

Today, two of the better military correspondents following Iraq (each with a must-read book on Iraq) dispense key insights as to how problematic Iraq is for the United States.

Michael Gordon in the NYT reports that:

The top American military commander for the Middle East has warned Iraq’s prime minister in a closed-door conversation that the Iraqi government needs to make tangible political progress by next month to counter the growing tide of opposition to the war in Congress.
In a Sunday afternoon discussion that mixed gentle coaxing with a sober appraisal of politics in Baghdad and Washington, the commander, Adm. William J. Fallon, told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that the Iraqi government should aim to complete a law on the division of oil proceeds by next month.
The admiral’s appeal, which was made in the presence of Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, a senior political adviser to the command and this reporter, elicited an assurance from Mr. Maliki that he hoped to make some progress over the coming weeks. But he also offered a lengthy account of all the tribulations facing the Iraqi government, including tenuous security, distrustful neighboring Sunni states and a complex legal agenda.

The US, now driven by domestic politics opposing the war, wants yet another quick fix to the problem of governing Iraq. Time and again, the US has pushed for institutions, events, and milestones hoping that the country would catch up to its 'leaders' while ignoring the large-scale political processes necessary to legitimate such institutions of government that allow them to function. Gordon's pearl of wisdom:

At times, the two sides appeared to be operating on two different clocks. While Admiral Fallon emphasized the urgency of demonstrating results, Mr. Maliki cast the political process as a long journey from dictatorship to democracy.

Therein lies the rub. We need a quick fix for Iraq, but there is nothing quick about fixing things in Iraq. The US is part of the problem, and yet, the US leaving is also part of the problem. Staying allows the Iraqi government to put off the really tough choices it needs to make about how it will govern and who will be part of the governing coalition. Leaving opens the door for a whole host of political factions to vie for power in what could easily devolve into a civil war. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Hell of a way to run a war.

Tom Ricks dispensed his wisdom in one of the Washington Post's regular on-line chats about Iraq, Q & A style (with me paraphrasing the longer Q's, but his answers in full). His central insight:

I think the beginning of wisdom on Iraq is to understand there are no good answers available. So the question is, What is the least bad answer?

Question: Is there a way to get out without making things worse?
Ricks:

That is very much the vibe that I picked up in Baghdad in recent weeks--that there are different ways of getting out, or reducing the US military presence, and that we could do it in ways that intensify the violence, or we might be able to do it in ways that lessen the violence, and that we should starting thinking through these courses of action.

As one officer put it to me, "Just because we invaded Iraq thoughtlessly doesn't mean we should leave it that way."

Question: Does that mean we we're in for another 18 months, until Bush is out of office?
Ricks:

18 months? That's optimistic. In my view, this is a Shakespearean tragedy. His works had five acts, and I think we are only in Act III.

When I was writing 'Fiasco' I'd sometimes look out the window at about 3:30 in the afternoon and see a group of kindergarteners being led from the elementary school down the street to a nearby day care center. On my pessimistic days (most of them), I'd think, "One of those kids is going to fight and die in Iraq."

I do think that is a possibility. I don't like it. But I think that Iraq is a tougher problem for the US government, and people, than the Vietnam War was. We could walk away from that one. Yes, it was awful if you were Cambodian, or a Vietnamese who had cast your lot with the Americans. But the United States as a nation could pretty much wash its hands of Vietnam. I don't think it will be as easy to walk away from Iraq.

It is too bad we didn't have this conversation in the summer and fall of 2002, huh?

Question: So will Iraq ever be able to govern / secure itself?
Ricks:

This question gives me a headache. That doesn't mean it is a bad question, it is just that it points to how damn difficult the Iraq situation yes.

No, there is no guarantee that Iraqi security forces will be competent--or even-handed. Again, that is another reason US planners are thinking about a "post-occupation" presence, because Sunni leaders might ask for such a force to guarantee that Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and police forces don't attack them. But just how do we guarantee that? Do we attack the Iraqi government? Do we post soldiers to protect Sunni enclaves?

I think the fingers-crossed answer we will get from American officials is that political accommodation should ease the security situation, and so lessen the need for US intervention. But that's a hope, not a plan.

Iraq doesn't seem to get any easier, does it?

Too bad there are no candidates from Hope running in this election (sorry, bad pun!).

Here's the heart of the matter-- for all those on the far left or far right who think the the 'only way' to go in Iraq is to either get out now or stay the course (it doesn't matter which)--its high time to recognize that neither is much of a solution--its "a hope, not a plan." Unfortunately, trying to sell a bad anwer to Iraq is a sure loser in any election, which is why no one wants to do it. But its pretty clear that we have painted ourselves into a corner from which there is no easy way out. The honest answer is to admit as much.

Labels: Iraq, military

The conventional wisdom is that young people, as in 18-29 years old, are at the vanguard of opposition to the Iraq War and the Bush Administration. Well, perhaps the Conventional Wisdom is wrong. From the NYT.com:

The younger generation is opposed to the war in Iraq, right? Wrong. Actually, they're divided on the war, far more so than their grandparents, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll in March. Seems younger people are more supportive of the war and the president than any other age group.

Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have lived through many other wars. Twenty eight percent of that age group said the United States did the right thing, while 67 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

This is nothing new, said John Mueller, author of "War, Presidents and Public Opinion," and a professor of political science at Ohio State University. "This is a pattern that is identical to what we saw in Korea and Vietnam, younger people are more likely to support what the president is doing," he said.

A review of the March poll suggests Mr. Mueller has a point. Overall, 34 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the president was handling his job, and 58 percent disapproved. But younger Americans were more approving than older Americans. Forty percent of 18-29 year olds said Mr. Bush was doing a good job, while 56 percent said he was not. While 29 percent of people 65 and older said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job as president, 62 percent said they did not.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted March 7-11 with 1,362 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

A look back at the Vietnam years showed a similar divide between young and old. Older Americans were defined as 50 and older, but the comparison is still apt. In October 1968, when Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and George Wallace were running for president, a Gallup poll found that about half, 52 percent, of people under the age of 30 supported the war in Vietnam. But among those 50 and older, 26 percent supported the war.

Some of the respondents to the March poll were called back to talk about the differences between the young and the not so young. "Experience," "the draft," "other wars," were mentioned by respondents on both sides of the generational divide.

Mildred Jenkins, 68, a retired telephone operator from Somerville Tennessee, said: "We've experienced more than the younger people. Older people are wiser. We've seen war and we know." Ms. Jenkins said she usually votes Republican but "may go Democratic this time."

More than one person who lived through the Vietnam war mentioned the draft and the absence of one for this war. "It's because of life experience," said Jimmie Powell, 73, a bartender and factory worker from El Reno, Oklahoma. "I don't think younger people really know a whole lot about anything. They don't care because there is no draft. If there were a draft, we'd finally have the revolution we need."

Mr. Powell describes himself as a political independent.

Some of the younger respondents said they were more aggressive than their elders by virtue of age.

"I think old people tend to want to solve things more diplomatically than younger, more gung ho types," said Mary Jackson, 28 a homemaker from Brewton, Alabama. "Younger people are more combative."

Younger people are also more optimistic. Forty-nine percent of them said the United States was either very likely or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, while only 34 percent of older people said the same thing.

Since many of the readers of this blog fall into the target demographic (young voters), why do you think this is so? Does this poll reflect what you see among your peers?

Labels: Iraq, public opinion, youth

Two lead articles in today's news reveal severe trouble for the Administration with respect to Iraq policy. Both are "inside-baseball" type of articles, but they are indicative of real problems with the overall direction of the course of the war.

The first was the Washington Post's front page story:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation. At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position...

One of the former Generals who turned down the position hit the nail on the head:

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

To summarize the fundamental problem, the top NSC official now in charge of this is Meghan O'Sullivan, a young, fast-rising national security policy star. Her fundamental problem, though, is twofold. First, she can't "task" agencies, which is to say, she can't direct State or DoD to do X or Y. Second, she's still relatively junior and in no position to win bureaucratic battles with Gates and Rice. The Administration recognizes (about 4 years too late) that interagency cooperation is needed to run an overall war effort by the US Government, where the talents, resources, and capabilities of each agency work together rather than at cross-purposes, and they need someone in place to make sure that happens (though as Crooks and Liars asks, isn't that Bush's job?). But, as Sheehan points out, you can only direct a war when there's somewhere to go, and to repeat his line, "The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going."

Then the report (I first saw it on the NYT) that the Pentagon is extending combat tours for the Army in Iraq to 15 months, up from the 12 months they now (used to) serve. The given rationale is that

Mr. Gates said the change would enable the Central Command, which runs American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, to maintain an increased number of American troops in Iraq to stabilize Baghdad for another year if necessary....

Mr. Gates said the impetus for the increase in Army combat tours had come from the service’s leaders, who saw a demand for “more clarity and fairness.”

As strains on the military have increased, some soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan have had to go back before a year’s rest. At least now, General Pace said, soldiers will know when they are coming and going. He said they would be able to “sit around a dinner table and know on such-and-such a date,” and plan their lives accordingly.

The new policy will ensure a year at home and that “all share the burden equally,” Mr. Gates said.

The WaPost points out what this 3-month extension says about the overall approach to Iraq:

The announcement makes official what had been an ongoing military strategy of keeping force levels up in Iraq, as commanders had sought extensions for several brigades over the past year to maintain pressure on enemy forces, especially in Baghdad. Gates and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference today that the broad-based extensions will provide a predictable and dependable deployment schedule for troops and their families.

The extended tours are also an indication of how much strain has been placed on the Army as a result of repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for wars that have lasted far longer than expected.

In essence, the long-time criticism that there just aren't enough troops in Iraq to secure the country was spot-on, and the difficulty that the Military, the Army in particular, has in meeting those increased troop requirements is now starkly revealed. In the short run, this should help the regional commanders because they have some more troops for a sustained time. Officially, the Army can do this (and any soldier worth his salt will always say, sure we can do it-- that can-do attitude lies at the heart of the US military), but these demands are severely straining the military, and will have a profound effect for years to come, as experienced, veteran NCO's and Officers don't re-enlist, and instead abandon military service, taking hard-learned lessons and institutional knowledge with them.

Taken together, these two stories reveal the serious, profound, fundamental difficulty and disconnect at the heart of the Administration's Iraq policy. It can't find anyone willing to take charge of the situation (begging the question, who's in charge now), and it can barely sustain enough troops in theater, and does so by running the Army into the ground.

Labels: Iraq