I think the issue is not that anyone trashed
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Originally Posted by
tequila
Leave General Petraeus alone! :D
edit: The idea that criticizing or questioning the pronouncements of a general simply because that person is a general is quite misguided as well as being a bit hypocritical given the nature of this site. Most of the people in this particular web community are guilty of the same, if not GEN Petraeus than Generals Sanchez, Abizaid, Casey, Clark, Dunlap, or many, many others. LTC Yingling upbraided the general officer corps as a body to the general applause of many here.
the General -- it is that our 'esteemed' Congress critters trashed the General...
IMO, making themselves look pretty tawdry. YMMV.
Professor Bacevich is a smart guy
and he makes imminent sense in many things. I agree with him that both US political parties are equal elements in the problem that is the governance and the foreign policy of the US. We do not agree on some other things.
His comments in the linked article are his opinion and track totally with his history on the topic of war in general and this one in particular -- however, he's being disingenuous in the article. While I generally agree with the thrust of that article, there are some anomalies in it that merit scrutiny. At one point he says:
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"A single word suffices to answer that question: more. More time. More money. And above all, more troops."
Totally true -- but -- he elides a critical point of which he is totally aware. In 1942, then Major general George S. Patton Jr. was at Camp Irwin training a Division to go to North Africa. He was called to the War Department and told he was being elevated to command the operation. Shortly, a Plans Officer went to see General George C. Marshall and told him "General Patton said he needs more troops, more equipment and more time or it cannot be done." Marshall looked up and said "Tell General Patton to return to California and continue training, we'll give the job to someone else." Very quickly, Patton was talking to Marshall and accepting the mission -- with the Troops available.
The point, of course is that Generals have egos and that they hate to refuse missions, no matter how difficult. Sixty years later, Tommy Franks got caught in the same trap. Five years after that, so did Petraeus. Bacevich knows that...
The North Africa operation, BTW, had its problems; as in Iraq, an Army not prepared for what it would confront fumbled a lot of things.
Any military operation is constrained by a number of factors; most critical are Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available and Time (METT-T). The mission is prescribed by the civilian leadership, the enemy is wild card, the terrain is what it is and one has to live with it, troops available are always subject to many limiting factors and the time is generally short and occasionally a political construct, not a military one -- and Bacevich is aware of all that.
He also said:
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"This defies logic. It’s as if two weeks into the Wilderness Campaign, Grant had counseled Lincoln to reduce the size of the Army of the Potomac. Or as if once Allied forces had established the beachhead at Normandy, Eisenhower had started rotating divisions back stateside to ease the strain on the U.S. Army."
Supremely disingenuous; Bacevich knows there are no more troops unless the Army is totally committed to Iraq -- and he knows that is not going to happen much as he wishes that it or a rapid withdrawal be undertaken. Both parties will rebel at that either and Bacevich knows as all of us should that much of what goes on in Congress is not about the Troops or even Iraq -- it's about the 2008 elections.
Further from the Article:
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"Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli is one officer keen to confront rather than ignore that contradiction. In an article appearing in the current issue of the journal Military Review, General Chiarelli writes:
"The U.S. as a Nation—and indeed most of the U.S. Government—has not gone to war since 9/11. Instead the departments of Defense and State (as much as their modern capabilities allow) and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war while the American people and most the other institutions of national power have largely gone about their normal business.""
I'd go a step further -- the US has not been at war since 1945. General Chiarelli's (one of the really good guys, BTW) statement applies just as well to Korea and Viet Nam with only the caveat that due to the draft that existed on both those wars there was very slightly more Mr. & Mrs. America involvement -- but not one ounce more involvement by the US Government (to include the Pentagon...) or the nation as an entity. Bacevich knows that as well.
In short, it's not a bad article but it's beautifully tailored to make his long standing points on governance and the use of force -- and this war. I think his conclusion is overly pejorative and unproven -- and I'm not a Petraeus fan.