Admiral Fallon to head Centcom, Petraeus at MNFI

[Merv Benson]

This post (http://prairiepundit.blogspot.com/2007/01/admiral-replaces-abizaid-petraeus.html) is based on an ABC News story.

I don't know if this portends more naval operation with Iran or not. The story did not indicate any change in Gen. Mattis' role.

[jcustis]

Wtfo?!?...

[RTK]

I understand Petraeus. The Admiral is lost on me.

[Menning]

I'm with you gentlemen-I cannot understand why CENTCOM needs a naval commander when it is fighting a ground war.

[jcustis]

Well he is an experienced aviator. Maybe we'll be starting a Rolling Thunder campaign against the insurgents.

[Smitten Eagle]

All I know about the Admiral is that he actually quite respected as a diplomat, believe it or not. He's apparantly been instrumental in lots of the engagement with host nations in the pacific rim in the wake of OEF (OEF-Phillipines being the biggest operation, I'd imagine.)

In the wake of the ISG report, which calls for greater engagement/appeasement with Syria and Iran, I'd say his presence in CentCom is quite logical. Remember, the post of Combatant Commander is probably more diplomatic than military, being responsible for military-to-military relations with scores of countries and all. It seems that the warfighting functions of those CinCdoms have been devolved to task forces and such.

Just idle speculation though.

[Meinertzhagen]

I think the Fallon move fits within the portended changes for overall campaign strategy in Iraq and the Middle East. ADM Fallon has made major shift in strategy away from pure hard military balancing against China and NK towards a holistic view of security in the greater region. He’s spent much of his time working to engage China while at the same time building U.S./India military relations. At the same time PACOM has focused more on the smaller regional security threats directing considerably more energy towards Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Kashmir and the Philippines. At any rate, he’s just about single handedly developed and implemented a new and effective national strategy in Asia with very little support from the State Department and other national agencies.

Having met and heard ADM Fallon speak several times and I am impressed with his understanding of the need for, and ability to develop and implement a complete strategy across the DIME/PMESII spectrum. If he can take same approach to CENTCOM and Iraq we’ll be a little further along the path towards turning things around.

[jcustis]

I guess I've betrayed the fact that I was hoping to see a man some people call Mattis somewhere in this equation.

[Smitten Eagle]

I second that, jcustus.

But actually, I'd prefer to see Mattis at MNFI, where Petraeus is going. But Petraeus is fine.

[jcustis]

Hell, I vote Mattis for SecDef. Oh wait...that'll be some time down the road. Darn!

[Merv Benson]

I have updated my post (http://prairiepundit.blogspot.com/2007/01/admiral-replaces-abizaid-petraeus.html) on the change of command at Centcom. The NY Times reports that Admiral Fallon is highly regarded by the Joint Chiefs. He also stood up to a judge in the Philippines who tried to disregard an agreement on dealing with troops charged with crimes. My post has a link with more details on the Marine who was tried on a very questionable rape charge by political opponents of the government who wanted to scuttle the anti terror cooperation.

[jcustis]

My mother-in-law is back in the P.I. right now, and she and most other reasonable folk are pissed about the B.S. around the case, because it embarrasses the country. I catch at least one story per day on the Pinoy news channel. There is a high level of suspicion that Smith and the accuser had some sort of boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, and he became a pawn in a drama stirred up by idiots.

[zenpundit]

"I'm with you gentlemen-I cannot understand why CENTCOM needs a naval commander when it is fighting a ground war."

Unless there is going to be a carrier based EBO campaign against Iran. Then the appointment makes quite a bit of sense.

Also as a signal to Teheran.

[SWJED]

Bush to Name a New General to Oversee Iraq (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/middleeast/05military.html?ref=world) - NY Times.


President Bush has decided to name Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus as the top American military commander in Iraq, part of a broad revamping of the military team that will carry out the administration’s new Iraq strategy, administration officials said Thursday.

In addition to the promotion of General Petraeus, who will replace Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the choice to succeed Gen. John P. Abizaid as the head of the Central Command is expected to be Adm. William J. Fallon, who is the top American military officer in the Pacific, officials said.

The changes are being made as the White House is considering an option to increase American combat power in Baghdad by five brigades as well as adding two battalions of reinforcements to the volatile province of Anbar in western Iraq...

[SWJED]

Bush Is Expected to Shift U.S. Ambassador in Iraq to U.N. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/middleeast/05nations.html?ref=world) - NY Times.


President Bush intends to name Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born diplomat who has been ambassador to Iraq for the past 21 months, to be the new envoy to the United Nations, part of a diplomatic shakeup as Mr. Bush prepares to announce a new strategy for the war.

A senior administration official, who had been briefed on the decision but had to discuss it anonymously because the change had not been formally announced, confirmed Thursday that the president had decided to nominate Mr. Khalilzad to the United Nations post.

The official said Mr. Bush intended to name Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Pakistan, to replace Mr. Khalilzad in Baghdad...

[Tom Odom]

Here is another key change coming:


Gates Picks Intelligence Undersecretary (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301667.html)

Washington Post

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has chosen a career military intelligence officer, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., to be undersecretary of defense for intelligence, according to administration officials.

Clapper, who retired in June after five years as director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), ran the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during the 1990s, and handled Air Force intelligence during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.



LTG Clapper was my DIA Director when I was a Defense Attache--and he actually tracked how those of us in the hotspots were doing. More importantly he supported and listened to us. He was kind enough to review my memoirs in Military Review last year.I see him as fresh wind in the DoD intel arena--he replaces the guy who had much to do with the former SecDef's dismissal of him after he said what he thought to Congress. We need more of that...:)

Best

Tom

[SWJED]

Here is another key change coming:

LTG Clapper was my DIA Director when I was a Defense Attache--and he actually tracked how those of us in the hotspots were doing. More importantly he supported and listened to us. He was kind enough to review my memoirs in Military Review last year.I see him as fresh wind in the DoD intel arena--he replaces the guy who had much to do with the former SecDef's dismissal of him after he said what he thought to Congress. We need more of that...:)

Best

Tom

I helped him prepare to sit on an urban operations discussion panel several years ago - found him very knowledgeable, professional and sincere. Good man. BTW - when he was in USAF ROTC he had the smartest marching unit in the entire system. He owes it to his summer stint in USMC PLC OCS....

[JKM4767]

I really expected Mattis to take Iraq and Patreaus at Centcom. But, Patreaus will definetely work at MNFI. Who is Fallon? Never heard of him.

[Eddie Beaver]

I hope the replacement for PACOM can come close to matching Adm. Fallon's contributions to our long-term interests in Asia and the scope of his strategic vision:

1. Regardless of it being a realistic endeavor or the folly of a dreamer, it was worth the effort to establish a solid "give & take" with China on mil to mil relations; given the incertainity of what lies in the future for both nations in dealing with N. Korea & Burma, or even Indonesia.

2. America's interests in Asia will be more important in the mid to long term than the MENA, a process that could be accelerated by alternative energy technology and battery advances and/or national and corporate leadership. We also retain a far greater capacity to shape our role in PACOM for the future than the limited role we will have in CENTCOM.

3. Diplomatic advances made by Adm. Fallon could be squandered if not followed up on by his replacement. Consider the importance of deeper India-US ties, Japan-US relations, trust-building exercises with Indonesia, Vietnam & Malaysia and the ongoing attempted rehabilitation of South Korea-US relations.

[SWJED]

I hope the replacement for PACOM can come close to matching Adm. Fallon's contributions to our long-term interests in Asia and the scope of his strategic vision:

1. Regardless of it being a realistic endeavor or the folly of a dreamer, it was worth the effort to establish a solid "give & take" with China on mil to mil relations; given the incertainity of what lies in the future for both nations in dealing with N. Korea & Burma, or even Indonesia.

2. America's interests in Asia will be more important in the mid to long term than the MENA, a process that could be accelerated by alternative energy technology and battery advances and/or national and corporate leadership. We also retain a far greater capacity to shape our role in PACOM for the future than the limited role we will have in CENTCOM.

3. Diplomatic advances made by Adm. Fallon could be squandered if not followed up on by his replacement. Consider the importance of deeper India-US ties, Japan-US relations, trust-building exercises with Indonesia, Vietnam & Malaysia and the ongoing attempted rehabilitation of South Korea-US relations.

After initially scratching my head on this appointment I did some (1-inch deep but enough to get a greater appreciation of Fallon) research on the Internet. There are knowledgeable opinions out there that echo your post.

[SWJED]

7 January NY Times - Iraq Will Be Petraeus's Knot to Untie (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/06/AR2007010601185.html) by Rick Atkinson.


Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is President Bush's choice to become the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, posed a riddle during the initial march to Baghdad four years ago that now becomes his own conundrum to solve: "Tell me how this ends."

That query, uttered repeatedly to a reporter then embedded in Petraeus's 101st Airborne Division, revealed a flinty skepticism about prospects in Iraq -- and the man now asked to forestall a military debacle

Long recognized as one of the Army's premier intellectuals, with a PhD from Princeton to complement his West Point education, Petraeus, 54, will inherit one of the toughest assignments handed any senior officer since the Vietnam War. He takes command of 132,000 U.S. troops in a country shattered by insurgency and sectarian bloodletting, with a home front that is divided and disheartened after 3,000 American combat deaths. If his riddle of 2003 remains apt, so does the headline on a Newsweek cover story about Petraeus in July 2004: "Can This Man Save Iraq?"...

[max161]

Thought this might interest you.

Admiral Fallon and CENTCOM (Page 9)
American Thinker; Douglas Hanson
When it was announced by the President last week that Navy Admiral William J. Fallon, current commander of Pacific Command (PACOM), will replace Central Command (CENTCOM) boss Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the reaction was nearly universal: why a Navy man to lead what are predominately Army and Marine forces in the Central Region? The blogs and the New York Times suggested that if we are to deal with Iran, we need a commander who has experience with naval forces and airpower.

While that is certainly a factor in his favor, the real reason for his selection as I see it is much simpler: PACOM has been showing steady progress towards victory in the War on Terror, while CENTCOM has not.

The key reason for CENTCOM's inability to prosecute the war in full is that it has been hamstrung by its own inherent weaknesses. The command was established based on the desire for both civilian and military leaders of the time to show the world that we "were doing something" to defend the oil-rich Central Region. What resulted was a major warfighting command that was an artificial construct, dependent on the good graces of oil oligarchs for its ability to even minimally function as an effective force in the area.

The command was an outgrowth of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), which was hastily thrown together by the Carter administration. The RDJTF concept was to use light, airborne forces to rapidly deploy to secure terrain (likely in open desert - not exactly the first choice of paratroopers) for follow-on forces, and with the aid of massive amounts of airpower, hold out until stateside heavy forces could arrive to save the day. It was an extremely risky plan and was logistically unsupportable especially in the era of Carter's hollow military.

In 1983, USCENTCOM was formally established and was assigned the most volatile territory on the planet. The key word is assigned. Unlike EUCOM and PACOM, CENTCOM was neither descended from a victorious WW II supreme headquarters nor did it command forces which had actually conquered its home-base territory. From the very beginning, CENTCOM was expected to launch major combat operations from ground that was under control of "allies" of dubious and ever-changing loyalties.

Since there were no large combat formations permanently stationed in CENTCOM's area *, circumstances and the ill will of Islamic fanatics could potentially force the commander and the US into two choices if a major war with the USSR erupted: mount a massive forcible entry operation or attempt to cordon off the crisis area and hope for the best. After all, what could have been realistically expected given that the command had been invented out of whole cloth and its sphere consisted of the most radicalized nations in the world?

Just as important in CENTCOM's string of incomplete victories and stalemates is the history of the command's leaders who had to rely on so-called "engagement" exercises with the rulers of the area, in some cases out of necessity. But to whom much is given in stationing rights and intelligence, much is expected in return, especially in deference to regional issues important to those same extremist rulers.

There were, and are strong incentives for a few former CENTCOM leaders to criticize GW and the Iraq War, and to reflect the anti-Israel stance and subtle anti-Semitic complaints of our supposed "partners" in the Global War on Terror. Even the previous CENTCOM commander, who prosecuted one of the most successful offensives in modern history, couldn't resist expounding on the necessity of solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the most important task to promote regional peace. Meanwhile, fighting Sunni Baathists seemed to take second place in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The continual carping on the Palestinian- Israeli conflict not only distracted from the fight against Saddam's irregulars and Syrian and Iranian operations in the Central Region, but put undue pressure on the western cornerstone of our global strategy in the war against Axis of Evil nations. For this reason, Israel should definitely remain under EUCOM's umbrella, free from what passes for strategic thinking in CENTCOM headquarters.

It's clear that decades-old political and military restrictions and downright wishful thinking have resulted in a command that seems to have trouble grasping the larger regional fight, even taking into account the recent operations in Somalia, which frankly, have been long overdue. Neither the President nor the new SecDef can rearrange global geographic responsibilities in the middle of a war, but they can reinvigorate the command by shaking up the leadership and showing their radical sponsors that business as usual is now over.

This is where Admiral Fallon comes in.

Acting without the restraints imposed by nominal allies, Admiral Fallon and PACOM have been closing the gate on Iran from the east **. India's strategic partnership with the US should be recognized as PACOM's singular achievement to date in the War on Terror. By the use of solid statesmanship, military exchanges and defense cooperation, the US has taken away the largest potential market for Persia's vast energy resources. Not only that, but a sea change of geo-political alignments has taken place that will be effective in countering any new alliances composed of both old and new enemies with access to Central Asia and the Pacific Rim.

This is only the most visible example of PACOM's successes. Steady progress has also been made on the direct action front against terror groups such as Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, where it was reported last month that Filipino forces had killed the group's leader, Khadaffy Janjalani, in a firefight in September. US Special Forces advisors, and civilian support to Filipino law enforcement agencies and the court system are gradually paying off.

In short, Admiral Fallon has been masterful in executing both our long-range strategic goals and in conducting the close fight by rolling up terror groups in the Pacific.

Whether the Coalition does in fact, embark on extensive naval and air campaigns against Iran or another rogue state is a matter of conjecture. We can be reasonably sure however, that Admiral Fallon will bring a singular focus and vision to achieving victory in the Central Region, free of CENTCOM's institutional inertia and bias.

* In contrast, PACOM has roughly 100,000 US troops permanently stationed within the command's area, with the ability to quickly reinforce with another 200,000.

** EUCOM has been tightening the noose around Iran from the north and west by establishing political and military ties with the Republic of Georgia and Azerbaijan. Also, a major realignment of US forces in Europe will place training and deployment bases in the Black Sea countries of Bulgaria and Rumania to support units on six-month forward deployments to Southeastern Europe.

Douglas Hanson is the national security correspondent for American Thinker

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/admiral_fallon_and_centcom.html

[Tom Odom]

The continual carping on the Palestinian- Israeli conflict not only distracted from the fight against Saddam's irregulars and Syrian and Iranian operations in the Central Region, but put undue pressure on the western cornerstone of our global strategy in the war against Axis of Evil nations. For this reason, Israel should definitely remain under EUCOM's umbrella, free from what passes for strategic thinking in CENTCOM headquarters.

It's clear that decades-old political and military restrictions and downright wishful thinking have resulted in a command that seems to have trouble grasping the larger regional fight, even taking into account the recent operations in Somalia, which frankly, have been long overdue. Neither the President nor the new SecDef can rearrange global geographic responsibilities in the middle of a war, but they can reinvigorate the command by shaking up the leadership and showing their radical sponsors that business as usual is now over.

More purported "thinking" that is all about limiting thinking and analysis through hyped illogic. What is this really about centers in the idea that if Israel is placed under EUCOM; it will NOT be looked at as part of a regional equation--something the Israelis have pushed themselves for years.


The command was an outgrowth of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), which was hastily thrown together by the Carter administration. The RDJTF concept was to use light, airborne forces to rapidly deploy to secure terrain (likely in open desert - not exactly the first choice of paratroopers) for follow-on forces, and with the aid of massive amounts of airpower, hold out until stateside heavy forces could arrive to save the day. It was an extremely risky plan and was logistically unsupportable especially in the era of Carter's hollow military.

Incorrect AGAIN. The RDJTF was in itself a recreation of USSTRICOM/MEAFSA established in the 1960s.

Best

Tom

[Eddie Beaver]

I've thought about it the past few days, and can find no admiral who comes close to the experience and strategic understanding of Lt. Gen Mattis.

Short Story:
He has what it takes to be bold and visionary, something Admiral Fallon was to great success. His COIN and stabilization operations ideas and experience are very useful in a region that has a number of failed/failing states and a high risk factor for destructive, destablizing natural disasters. His "no best friend, no worse enemy" motto works for both enemies and friends but military personnel as well, far too many of whom continue to get into trouble in places like the PI, Thailand & Japan. He has war experience at a time when the danger of Kim Jong Il's tottering regime going to war has never been higher.

Long Story:
Lt. Gen Mattis for PACOM (http://hiddenunities.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/lt-gen-mattis-for-pacom/)

[jcustis]

I was wading through a quiz in The Patriot of Northern Virginia, which is a military-centric publication, when I read an interesting fact about the General.

It seems he was shot in the chest in 1991 when a soldier tripped and negligently discharged his M-16, striking Petraeus in the chest. Frist was the one who operated on him, purportedly saving his life.