Quote Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman View Post
Finally, while I am not defending Dick Cheney at all, my main take away from his speech was that the president should stop pondering his navel and do something. For all the Bush administrations many flaws, it was decisive. I was always taught, and continue to believe, that in war the best thing you can do is the right thing. Then next best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. Put another way, it is hard to correct your course, if you aren’t moving at all.

In other words, get the lead out and make a decision, before someone else makes it for you. Indeed no decision is a decision all to itself. I don’t think that this is an unrealistic request since this is the president who was supposed to have superior judgement, be ready day one, will listen to his generals, and already issued the Afghanistan plan. I don’t buy the ‘we need more time’ thing. If time were such an issue, then perhaps we could put Health Care, Global Warming, The Olympics, Harvard Professors et al. on the back burner for a couple of weeks, and sort this out. After all, soldiers are dying now, and Commander in Chief is actually a Constitutional responsibility of the President.
Abu S,

A few points/questions:

1. If the President made a decision two weeks ago to adopt a troop increase, when would the first brigade be available to deploy? Would it be time now? Would it be the brigade that just got pulled off the hook for Iraq? Would it be a different brigade based on matching task org with the required mission in Afghanistan? I'm not looking at a specific answer as we'd then be traveling down the OPSEC path, but it's quite possible that waiting for several weeks/months doesn't change anything at all.

2. If the assessment determines that the current strategy is the way forward based on the value of the object in view, the means required to work towards the object, and the risk that the strategy takes on, then how does the timing change anything?

3. Here's a potential scenario: The administration has already made their decision, but is delaying a pro-forma decision and is instead continuing to "deliberate" so that it builds political support for the decision. Doing this ensures that GEN McChrystal will be able to prosecute the strategy without major domestical political hindrance unless the 2010 elections create a mandate for "change." Not doing so means that the heat of the 2010 elections only gives GEN McChrystal six months to demonstrate success or else we abandon a superior strategy.

All of the above scenarios lead to the conclusion that an immediately executed decision may not change anything and in fact, may even cost more lives. What we are forgetting here is that strategy is not made and executed in a vacuum, but that domestic politics plays a role (and it should, after all, war is about pursuing policy/political objectives) both in shaping the strategy and assessing the strategy.

In fact, I'd offer that calls to make an immediate decision may actually harm the process. Right or wrong, the reality is that a quick decision could appear to be the result of the administration kowtowing to the military and the GOP, which only stands to discredit Obama amongst the base and make it less likely for a strategy to have staying power as it is executed.