Countering Lind-dinistas - if the mission is impossible, don't blame me

[former_0302]

But is War is an extension of policy, then we rely on our politicians to lay out the policy. Democratizing the middle east with a Pollyanna view of what that was going to take, and then blaming the failure to succeed on the military, I have a problem with.

War is certainly an extension of policy, but the two are not separable IMO. It makes no sense for a nation to set as policy something which it knows is not achievable militarily, and it is incumbent upon the professional military to 1) know what is and is not militarily achievable, and 2) to explain it to the policy makers in no uncertain terms. Kim Jong Whoever is in charge of NK now could set as his policy tomorrow that it was necessary for NK to conquer China (a task similarly impossible for NK, in my view, as us democratizing Afghanistan). It's his military leaders' job to explain to him that it's a REALLY bad idea. In that country, they might get shot for saying something that the boss doesn't want to hear. Over here, they might have to take their pension a bit earlier than they had planned, and then go get a cushy job at some think tank making six figures and thinking big thoughts. My sympathy doesn't exactly overflow.

We are not trained as political scientists or sociologists. We learn the art and science of war. We depend on the politicians to get the political science right. We are not in a position to tell them they got it wrong. As I have been told many times, my only option is to resign. That does not fix the problem.

No argument as to our training. We weren't even really prepared for COIN, never mind nation-building. While you're right that the military is not in a position to tell pols they're wrong with the political science part, it is certainly within the military's purview to explain its own capabilities and limitations to them. Thereby letting them know, among their policy options, which ones they can actually expect to succeed. The distance between "overthrow the Taliban" and "make Afghanistan a functioning democracy" is so vast in scope that you could measure it on a galactic scale. One is achievable, the other...

Maybe if enough people resigned, it would send the right message... Because frankly, those who have stayed in haven't fixed the problem either. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything that indicates that the problem is getting solved. Only that we have a sexual assault epidemic, that women should be able to do any job men do in the military, and budget, budget, sequestration, budget... none of which addresses the problems we are discussing. I'm not confident that the solution can come from within the belly of the beast.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Former 302,

First off you assume that the military understood not just Nation Building but Democratization theory? Yeah, right.

I am sorry, but all this arguing that the "military should have known" only goes to let the politicians, the people who REALLY should have known, off the hook.

It would have been one thing if they would have let it go with "you guys suck cause you keep losing." It is another whey they say "not only do you guys suck cause you keep losing, but you are broke and you need to fix yourself before we give you another stupid mission." Sorry, not waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Perhaps what needs fixing is the civil-military relationship.

[former_0302]

Former 302,

First off you assume that the military understood not just Nation Building but Democratization theory? Yeah, right.

Not at all. Rather, I assume that they knew that they DIDN'T understand it, and therefore should know to stay in their lane. How successful is any large organization at coming up with a way to do something that basically no one's ever done before and no one is trained how to do under fire? You might as well try to run a tank/infantry integration range with a bunch of civilians who are picking up a rifle for the first time. The result is predictable.

I am sorry, but all this arguing that the "military should have known" only goes to let the politicians, the people who REALLY should have known, off the hook.

All I'm arguing for is that the military should have known its own capabilities and limitations, and have delivered potential COAs to the policy makers which were in line with them. If the military says that it can do something that it can't, whose fault is that? If, on the other hand, they are ordered to do something while protesting that they can't do it, that's a different situation. It seems to me the former, and not the latter, is what actually occurred though. I may be in error.

In any event, I'm not excusing the politicians; they are a breed of people permanently divorced from reality. If those advising them are equally divorced from reality, however, it's something of an exponential effect of bad.

It would have been one thing if they would have let it go with "you guys suck cause you keep losing." It is another whey they say "not only do you guys suck cause you keep losing, but you are broke and you need to fix yourself before we give you another stupid mission." Sorry, not waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Perhaps what needs fixing is the civil-military relationship.

I'd agree that the civil-military relationship is indeed what is broken. I could write a novel about why I think it is, but to keep it short, it seems to me that our instant-information age and sensationalist media have made the military's job infinitely more difficult. I never let my boys take personal cameras outside the wire, precisely so that no videos or pictures ever found their way into the interwebs. But what do you do about youtube videos of Marines pissing on TB corpses? There would have been little if any rage about such an incident in WWII. Probably would have been in VN, were it possible, but it wasn't. Nowadays, the President of the US has to be concerned about what a Lance Corporal is doing. Think FDR ever gave much thought to the political ramifications of what some E2 somewhere was doing? We have so much oversight that we pay attention to all the things we can't get caught screwing up, instead of all the things that we're actually out there to do...

I'm rambling now... but to end, I just want you to understand that I'm mainly playing devil's advocate here. As I said initially, I agree with your points in the main.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I'm rambling now... but to end, I just want you to understand that I'm mainly playing devil's advocate here. As I said initially, I agree with your points in the main.

I appreciate devil in you.

I need to see where I am lacking.