Eaton fires broadside at Cheney

[Shek]

Nonetheless, all military excursions are ones where we exchange blood and treasure for ... something. If we already know that we are not going to get what we want with the current strategy, we should immediately change direction. While we may not be able to get to the correct strategy directly, we should at least be exchanging our blood and treasure for the information of what might work eventually.

A few more comments

1. "Immediately" in the context of national decisions takes a long time. It's like trying to turn a zodiac (tactical) vs. a supertanker (strategy). Furthermore, to be logical, you should change direction based on comparing the new vs. the old, not simply drawing up a new and then go charging after it. I don't know exactly how long GEN McChrystal had to draw up his assessment, but given that it was a few months, how long is sufficient for the NSC to digest it?

2. We have an assessment from an operational commander. Resourcing him means that those resources aren't available to other operational/theater commanders. What are the unintended consequences? North Korean adventurism? Chinese adventurism? Shia or Sunni adventurism in Iraq? It's simply not a matter of just rubberstamping GEN McChrystal's report, but looking at the second and third order effects.

3. Strategy isn't a binary approach - either you can achieve your OBJs or not. Instead, it's along a probabilistic continuum and the question is do we accept the risk. So it's not a question as you state that "we are not going to get what we want," but rather, what is the risk that "we are not going to get what we want" and is that acceptable or not based on the means spent. We should be careful in making absolute statements when assessing strategy.