If All You Ask Is a Hammer...

by Eric Martin

One of the maladies plaguing US foreign policy creation is the over-reliance on, and undue deference shown to, the military when shaping that policy.  A simple glance at the respective budgets of the Departments of Defense and State is, at least, an indication of the clout wielded by each (not a perfect apples to apples comparison, as DoD expenditures would naturally be higher due to equipment/personnel needs, but the vast disparity in funding has allowed DoD to encroach on many traditional non-military roles related to aid disbursement and nation building).

However, the affliction has spread beyond mere budgeting priorities between those two government organs: increasingly, our leaders (up to and including the President) defer to the judgment of top military brass to the extent that conventional wisdom tells that to disagree with what the leading generals say is near-sacrilege, while claims that one is simply "listening" to the generals on the ground is taken as a shield of immunity for that decision (you can't blame me, I was merely listening to the all-knowing generals). 

This partial abdication of responsibility creates a convenient means to deflect blame for decisions, yet still provides for the reflected glory if things work out well - everything a politician would like.

However, one of the problems associated with the increasingly out of balance dynamic prevailing between civilian leaders and military leaders is the paucity of strategic vision that results.  To put it simply, military leaders, especially the good ones, tend to be "can-do" people.  That is, they are presented with an objective, they are tasked with coming up with a way to achieve that objective and they are inclined to maintain an optimistic, self-assured belief that they can reach the desired end.  This is not a bad thing in itself.  Quite the opposite: better that our soldiers maintain high levels of morale, and push forward against what will inevitably be daunting resistance.

Yet the "can-do" people are unduly dominating the foreign policy debate, crowding out the strategic thinkers, the "should we do" people, who are being marginalized and undermined through well-timed leaks by an increasingly dismissivesenior officer corps.  The "should we do" people - the ones that calculate the cost-benefit ratios, that assess the broad panoply of strategic interests outside of a given theater (and the relative importance of each), the ones that can place a given conflict in a wider context - in other words the people that really should be running the show - are treated as unserious civilians that just don't have the same grasp of the way the world works as those in uniform. 

This is, of course, absurd: the strategic thinkers often have far more expertise in various regions, peoples and larger trends.  Just as I wouldn't trust a civilian expert in South Asian energy issues to diagram a plan to storm a machine gun nest, so too would it be foolhardy to assume that, even a general, has a solid grasp of the wider regional implications of pursuing a war. 

The imbalance described above manifests in various detrimental ways. For one, there is a tendency to use military means to address far too wide a range of problems regardless of suitability.  See, ie, Yemen and counterterrorism in general, even though study after study reveals the basic truth that the military is a particularly ill-suited and blunt instrument for counterterrorism purposes.

Another product of the inverted relationship between strategic thinkers and military personnel are long, drawn out, quagmire-like conflicts, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, during which dug-in military leaders repeatedly ask for more resources, more troops, more time to achieve the desired objective which, to them, is always of paramount importance because to withdraw absent achieving the goal is to be denied victory - to have fought, and died, in vain.  The rest of the world be damned.

Given the ascendancy of the military, it should come as no surprise the extent to which conventional wisdom has hardened around the preferred narrative of the "can-do" crowd - as we are treated to optimistic assessments of what the military can achieve in a given setting, tales of turned corners, new hope, "the next six months," deus ex machina like doctrine, mythically endowed "surges" etc. 

Thus, it is refreshing to come across a piece like this one from Gilles Dorronsoro which punctures myths, tempers irrational exuberance and, at least attempts, to bring the discussion back to reality where the "should we do" set at least stands a chance of being heard. 

Comments

[jrudkis]

Just as I wouldn't trust a civilian expert in South Asian energy issues to diagram a plan to storm a machine gun nest, so too would it be foolhardy to assume that, even a general, has a solid grasp of the wider regional implications of pursuing a war.

I think this is unfair, but the rest of the post is right. Afghanistan is not a place that can be "fixed," and never has been. It is a shame it was ever labeled "the good war."

[bobbyp]

Much like when the rich get too much of the pie they tend to gamble, too rich nations tend toward militarism. Because you can is a feature, not a bug.

[sekaijin]

Since we have a culture of control and domination, it is inevitable that the military has gotten to play a role in the shaping of policy that is out of proportion to its true mandate, for the military is good at controlling and dominating things like territory and people.

Given as well that our priority in so many places we have invaded is security and the creation of a power apparatus that serves our interests, before the ensuring of aid or other humanitarian needs, it is inevitable as well that priority to the functions that ensure control and domination will be given greater weight. There's a reason why the Army no longer has civil affairs units - we no longer have a society that sees the role of the military as an adjunct to the rebuilding of civil societies. And thanks to the fact that the military reflects the values of the greater society at-large much more than it will admit, this becomes a corollary way of seeing that the vectors of American power, despite the lip service it pays to the importance of civil cohesion, really doesn't see a responsibility to it.

American society, by and large, got out of the nurturing and mentoring business long ago. There is no reason to believe the power structure of the military would reflect any better, even given that there are numerous examples of individual selflessness and caring among many military people. But that never seems to make its way up the echelon, where careerism and an ethos more akin to corporate America rather than the traditional military characterizes the upper end of the officer corps at present.

I wish none of this were true. I served in the U.S. Navy for five years in the 1980s and my nephew was a Navy corpsman with a Marine unit in Iraq. But having been in the service, I know how the military reflects the society at large, for better and for worse.

[Hartmut]

My standing prediction is that one day the US executive branch will restructure in the following way:
1. There are 2 super-secretaries, one of the exterior, one of the interior
2. The Department of the Exterior is divided into a military and a non-military branch (maybe/possibly with the latter being inferior to the former and/or the Secretary of the Exterior being also the head of the military branch. Intelligence services would be under the control of the military.
3. The Department of the Interior is also divided into a security and a non-security related branch. The latter would have to constantly fight for its budget against the small government crowd because it would contain all the departments on the GOP/Blue Canine hit list.
4. The military/security budget would receive eternate status (with or without changing the constitution that explicitly forbids that), i.e. it would effectively not be under control of congress anymore (except for additional funds).
All this will be sold as making government more efficient in its main (if not only) role of providing security and preventing the DFHs from meddling with national security for nefarious political purposes.

[Eric Martin]

jrudkis: I'm not saying that a general can't have that knowledge, but it would be foolish to "assume" that he/she does.

Better to have a cadre of regional experts, preferrably out of uniform, to provide depth, balance and a variety of informed perspective.

If the applicable general has, by happenstance, a nuanced, in-depth knowledge of the region in question as well, that's all to the good. But we can't and shouldn't act as if all generals come pre-wired that way.

[sekaijin]

But given the hilarity of the Bush II administration, when it was appointing people like Karen Hughes to the key positions it was, it's pretty clear we don't value "regional experts" given that they might be fluent in the languages of the region (Hebrew excepted) and therefore empathetic to the cultures and histories of the countries in question.

What experts we are more likely to favor would be Orientalists who instead bring their pre-made templates of what the Middle East is historically "supposed" to be, based on the dusty molds of the Richard Burtons and T.E. Lawrences of yore, and impose them on tribal leaders and government apparatuses (apparati?) who will confirm our prejudices and rectify them as insights.

So generals are perfect for such a role because they wield power at arm's length while being there, deal with tribal leaders, flunkeys and lackeys on a routine basis without ever getting to know what really makes them the way they are, and are in no danger of straying from the line because at bottom they do, when it comes down to it, follow orders just enough while having a pyramid of people underneath them following theirs.

[Tom M]

The planning for post-war Iraq was an internecine battle for turf in the Bush II cabinet. DoD won and State which had drawn up contingency plans for Iraq as far back as pre Gulf War I lost.
As a result, per the SIGIR (go here and look at the reportHuman Capital Management, almost half of the post war civilian billets went unfilled. Nobody in State would volunteer to serve either under Jay Garner or Paul Bremer.
DoD had drawn up virtually no plans for post war Iraq, Garner says that he was asked in January 2003 to come up with a plan by February for a March invasion.
It's not that we shoot ourselves in the foot, it's the speed with which we reload.

[jrudkis]

Eric,

Sure, but what I was objecting to is the example of asking someone who has no reason to know something (energy expert and machine gun nests) and someone who has most likely studied war in depth for decades: a General would almost ceertainly be informed on "the wider regional implications of pursuing a war." Analyzing the implications of various courses of action and the the impact on regional players has been part of his wargaming education as an officer forever.

Is that a nuanced understanding of the region? Probably not. Would experts in the region likely be better informed on what impact actions would likely have? Yes.

But it is also not total ignorance.

[observer]

"Better to have a cadre of regional experts, preferrably out of uniform, to provide depth, balance and a variety of informed perspective.

If the applicable general has, by happenstance, a nuanced, in-depth knowledge of the region in question as well, that's all to the good. But we can't and shouldn't act as if all generals come pre-wired that way." Eric

This is an extremely misleading (the same with your post) portrayal of the current US military structure. For one, generals do not make decisions on their own, inside some vacuum, while the rest of the military blindly following his choices. They strongly rely on the expertise of not just the massive ranks of civilian military experts, but also the rest of the IC. The State Department is included, here, but the fact of the matter, is that the DOS doesn't have near the analytical capacity of other agencies. Nor do they have the requisite access to intelligence. Nor do they care. The DOS is not an analytical agency. They are not constructed that way. Seriously, have you ever even read their idea of goal assessment?
It looks like this, and it is a joke: http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/perfrpt/

The military is so involved in non-military goals, because the agencies that should be in charge of those goals, DOS, USAID, are ineffective and do not see the need for properly assessing their own performance. The DOD doesn't involve itself because it wants to (If you've ever talked to military personal involved, you would know that they constantly ask themselves "why is this MY job? Shouldn't someone else be doing this?"). It involves itself because it fully understands the necessity of non-military components of fighting terrorists, and feels that at least somebody should try doing those things in a semi-competent manner. Even if they realize how impossible/foolish their assigned task is (trying to combat, through any means, an "idea" like terrorism/Wahhabism/however you wish to style it).

"so too would it be foolhardy to assume that, even a general, has a solid grasp of the wider regional implications of pursuing a war."

High ranking generals are not stupid people. They normally carry PhD's from Princeton and other elite schools. They are also briefed, daily on global situations, and the implications of their actions. I would easily bet any of the existing cocom heads have a much clearer understanding of what is going on around them than you do.

[Tom M]

The military is so involved in non-military goals...

Not in Iraq. from p.18 SIGIR Report Lessons Learned:
Eventually, CPA Baghdad prepared a more detailed JMD and
provided it to CPA Washington. This document contained a civilian
segment that constituted the most detailed civilian planning document
created for Iraq reconstruction. Military officials in Washington,
however, removed the civilian section because their offices were
not structured to deal with civilian appointments.

From p.25:
Relatively few agencies responded effectively to the call for volunteer
detailees for CPA. One ORHA official pointed to DoD’s initial “go it
alone” attitude as a factor.

You know, it's like the people who claim tax cuts boost employment when there's 8 years of empirical evidence that it's not the case. When DoD had to function in post war Iraq, they didn't and they didn't because of who they are.

[nous]

Tom M - When DoD had to function in post war Iraq, they didn't and they didn't because of who they are.

Think this gets at something important. I can understand why 'observer' would want to defend the competence of the brass, but I don't think what is at issue here is their competence, but rather the ways in which the history and doctrines of their institutions -- their culture -- shapes how their competence is channeled and expressed. They are enculturated to look for the solutions that are most in line with what they see as the core of their institutional values. For the Army this is warfighting, for the Marines this is small wars, for the Navy, force projection, etc.. Those values will shape their approaches and they will resist approaches that run counter to or subvert these defining identities, seeing in them the diminishment of the institution that defines them as people and as their primary culture.

[envy]

@sekaijin:
There's a reason why the Army no longer has civil affairs units - we no longer have a society that sees the role of the military as an adjunct to the rebuilding of civil societies.

If I may nitpick, your reports of the demise of Army Civil Affairs units were greatly exaggerated.

[sekaijin]

@envy,

While I stand corrected on the point of Army civil affairs units, I found it interesting, after checking the link, that the particular unit in question has such a function bundled in with psychops, as though civil affairs and psychological warfare were part and parcel of the same thing. It's interesting as well that what disinterested civil affairs functions there are center around servicepeople's families, as though they are the only civilians that can be trusted.

From a security standpoint, I suppose merging civil relations and psychological countermeasures makes good sense. It's hard to gainsay as well the necessary work they do in crafting relations with the families and seeing to it that their needs are taken care of while their loved ones are deployed. But I still find it interesting that we approach relations with civilian populations in other countries with an undercurrent of suspicion, which underscores again our emphasis on security before crafting of relations or delivery of aid.

I suppose my notion of civil affairs as a rolling goodwill wagon is a naive one derived from truckloads of Hershey bars tossed around by GIs and EFL classes by well-meaning NCOs. Yet I still sense something odd about the merging of civil affairs and psychological warfare.

[Eric Martin]

Observer,

The military is so involved in non-military goals, because the agencies that should be in charge of those goals, DOS, USAID, are ineffective and do not see the need for properly assessing their own performance. The DOD doesn't involve itself because it wants to (If you've ever talked to military personal involved, you would know that they constantly ask themselves "why is this MY job? Shouldn't someone else be doing this?"). It involves itself because it fully understands the necessity of non-military components of fighting terrorists, and feels that at least somebody should try doing those things in a semi-competent manner. Even if they realize how impossible/foolish their assigned task is (trying to combat, through any means, an "idea" like terrorism/Wahhabism/however you wish to style it).

I have, in fact, talked to many senior military leaders, and the turf wars between DoD and State are very real. Some resent that they have to take on extra roles, but that is what DoD won vis-a-vis State when Rummy was running the show.

Congrats to the dog that caught the car.

This is an extremely misleading (the same with your post) portrayal of the current US military structure. For one, generals do not make decisions on their own, inside some vacuum, while the rest of the military blindly following his choices.

No, but the military culture is such that even the people pulled in to the decision making process tend to be of a certain intellectual affinity - a congruity of worldviews.

Thus, to no surprise, the Pentagon brass has, repeatedly, preferred to continue fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan long after they have passed the strategic rubicon, while the US foreign policy apparatus ignores, underfunds and undermans myriad other, more vital foreign policy imperatives.

They are so invested in the can-do, that they aren't asking, seriously, whether we should-do. Period.

Even if they realize how impossible/foolish their assigned task is (trying to combat, through any means, an "idea" like terrorism/Wahhabism/however you wish to style it).

And yet, military brass does not recommend any other means. Yemen? Send in military aid, SOF and missile strikes. Afghanistan? Petraeus says we should keep fighting for the rest of our lives, and our children's lives. So, yeah.

The State Department is included, here, but the fact of the matter, is that the DOS doesn't have near the analytical capacity of other agencies. Nor do they have the requisite access to intelligence. Nor do they care. The DOS is not an analytical agency. They are not constructed that way. Seriously, have you ever even read their idea of goal assessment?

While this is true to some extent, it is also besides the point I was making.

Incidentally, State's intel shop, the INR, vastly outperformed the DIA, CIA and others in terms of assessing Iraq's WMD capacity and ties to al-Qaeda.

So, yeah.

High ranking generals are not stupid people.

Wow. Really? Because in this post, I clearly said they were stupid people, right? Actually, come to think of it, I didn't say that, or even implay it.

They normally carry PhD's from Princeton and other elite schools.

Again, so what?

They are also briefed, daily on global situations, and the implications of their actions. I would easily bet any of the existing cocom heads have a much clearer understanding of what is going on around them than you do.

And yet, they develop mission-proscribed tunnel vision.

If Petraeus thinks that Afghanistan is worth fighting over for the next 100-plus years, then it doesn't matter how many degrees he has on the wall, or what kind of briefings he's getting.

He's missing the point, and we need strategic thinkers to step in.

[liberal japonicus]

Not to put the fox in with the hens, I wonder if Robert Mackey might want to comment on your post.

[Thoreau]

Humans, in general, have a tendency to want and desire control. Nations are really no different yet some seem to take it to a much higher level. It seems we Americans feel that if we don’t show off that we have a very large and powerful military, other countries will take advantage of us. This, of course, is incredible unfair.

[jrudkis]

He's missing the point, and we need strategic thinkers to step in.

So Petraeus is not a strategic thinker?

Who would you suggest instead?

[Eric Martin]

jrudkis,

He's not a large view strategic thinker, and if he is, he has his Af/Pak/Iraq blinkers on.

To suggest that we, strategically, should dedicate the vast expanse of resources needed to keep fighting in Af/Pak for the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, is daft.

Period.

The US has many strategic interests around the globe, and to pretend that Af/Pak is massively more important than the rest does not indicate to me that the speaker is thinking strategically, but rather tactically, narrowly and, perhaps, with a bit of his/her ego/career goals wrapped up in the enterprise.

And, again, that is one of the problems with deferring to the judgment of generals involved in ongoing wars: they tend to develop strategic tunnel vision, where all they're thinking of is winning the war, without applying cost/benefit analysis to the resources required, and other challenges that go unaddressed in the process.

[sekaijin]

I would add to Eric's post above that such strategic tunnel vision may be yet more residue from the Cold War, when an entire generation set itself to permanent ideological war with a Communist monolith, with occasional regional hot wars here and there, with another kind of ideology as an unintended spin-off: the sense that permanent conflict of one variety or another was normal, and that we had to raise of crop of military leaders inured to it. Hence the need for a large permanently-standing military, with or without conscription, deferential to a civilian executive yet with a line to it to influence policy, and with a distinctive culture to surround it.

As a result, American military leaders since World War II, budgetary threats notwithstanding, have really had a blank check to do what they see fit within the bounds of a civilian executive. Since Petraeus isn't under threat to produce a complete victory or be fired, then he's going to go for the means to continue the war indefinitely. And since Congress has made it pretty clear that it will permanently demur its authority to declare war, then we're in a limbo where without the declaration of a war but with the legal means to wage it anyway, there won't be real pressure on him to produce results resembling a victory; so many know that there can be no victory in a place like Afghanistan and no real trust that can be invested in a country like Pakistan.

The only "victory" is the ability to continue and confirm the ideology of permanent warfare. Whether it was Vietnam 40 years ago or Iraq (almost) 10 years ago or Afghanistan/Pakistan now makes no difference. That where we're doing it in is a decadent hole that does not deserve so much as piss in a bucket for fire control is even less of a difference.

[jrudkis]

To suggest that we, strategically, should dedicate the vast expanse of resources needed to keep fighting in Af/Pak for the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, is daft.

I missed this. What did he say? I can't find it on Google.

[Eric Martin]

Petraeus was quoted by Woodward, in reference to Afghanistan, and to those advocating withdrawal:

"I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. ... This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

http://yhoo.it/aIBRXc

[Eric Martin]

Fuller quote:

"You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

[nous]

Petraeus may not mean that we will be in Afghanistan for the rest of our lives, just that it represents the kind of fight (COIN) thatwe will be in for the rest of our lives -- a point Creveld makes as well.

Which mostly means that someone needs to press him on what is to be achieved by staying in a war that can't be won. What political/policy goal can fighting this unwinnable war achieve such that we need to keep fighting?

[jrudkis]

Nous,

I think you are correct: FM 3.0 (Army Operations) says we are in an era of persistent conflict. This is the type of conflict the army expects for the foreseeable future.

[Eric Martin]

But Nous/jrudkis, I would argue that even conceding that shows a lack of strategic vision.

The US cannot afford to be in miscellaneous COIN operations for the next 100 years.

They are troop intensive. They cost trillions (that's with a "t" and with an "s" at the end). And they yield dubious results at best.

We must do better with our limited resources or we will really begin to decline, and fast.

[Eric Martin]

To add to my point re: strategic myopia, Matt Yglesias makes a good argument in response to a Spencer Ackerman piece on the importance of the Pac Rim region/relations with China (that this region/those relations are far more important to our long term interests than the Middle East/Af-Pak):

The United States does face some material resource constraints, but when you look at the mightiest empire the world has ever known I think you’ll find that our scarcest strategic resource is time and attention at the highest levels. Barack Obama can’t freeze time à la Zack Morris and figure out what to do. There are 24 hours in the day, human beings need to sleep, and that’s all she wrote. Delegation is possible, of course, but the US government is a complicated entity and delicate issues require some level of coordination across silos. Consequently, the more deeply engaged we are with places like Afghanistan and Iraq the more crowded off the Presidential agenda issues related to China and India become.

Again, we need strategic thinkers, not personally-invested officers that view the missions under their purview as all-important, the rest of the country's interests be damned.

[Turbulence]

Yet the "can-do" people are unduly dominating the foreign policy debate, crowding out the strategic thinkers, the "should we do" people

I agree with the overall thrust of this post, but I worry that you might be overgeneralizing from very recent history here. If you look back at the State Dept's efforts to get any DOD intervention in Rwanda during the Clinton years, the "can-do" military people suddenly became "can't do"; all of a sudden, there were no viable options since the DOD insisted it couldn't do anything at all that might endanger a single soldier or piece of hardware. Meanwhile, the State Dept was scrambling to find some way, any way to save Rwandans.

My point is: the military has certain institutional values and policy preferences, and those end up guiding what problems the military is willing to adopt a "can do" attitude toward. Saving a bunch of black people from genocide in order to fulfill our obligations under the Convention against Genocide? Meh, can't do. Blowing up Hussein's army? Dude, that lets us have tank battles with the Republican Guard and bomb the country for days on end; AWESOME! CAN DO!

[jrudkis]

But Nous/jrudkis, I would argue that even conceding that shows a lack of strategic vision.

I think it shows what he thinks the future will be like: he is not saying an era of perpetual conflict is his preferred policy. He is saying that is what we face.

[sekaijin]

But jrudkis (nous too): it still begs the question - has there ever been a general that can truly live at the end of the day with the idea that perpetual warfare without the prospect of victory is still fulfilling a goal? Especially in a military such as ours, which is shaped towards victories, Vietnam notwithstanding?

Even in the Cold War, as perpetual as it felt, the notion of victory was fostered. It might've manifested itself in some bizarre ways, but it was there. There were just enough countries under a Communist yoke (such as in Eastern Europe) that we really wanted to see unshackled. But there is no sense I get that any of the countries that are producing the most terrorists right now (Saudi Arabia, Pak, Yemen, etc.), and that we happen to be bending ass over backwards to please and/or aid, are those likely to become world-beating economies, tomorrow's Tigers that will make an affirmative difference. SA may have reached peak oil, and if it hasn't, it's on it's way; without oil, it's a banana republic without the bananas. Pakistan? They could've been another India. They've so spectacularly blown it, its real development has been put off another generation at least, with no small help from us given how much money and aid we've sunk into its treacherous and hopeless government. Yemen? Not even a blip on the radar.

So while I agree that Petraeus was speaking metaphorically, I'm not getting a sense of vision as to what all this military effort is being directed towards. A guise, in other words, for the point Eric made earlier - our urge to militarize COIN, which might in itself be a guise for the fact that we don't know how else to respond to it because we're too geared to quick fixes, easy answers, and shifting and shadowy enemies that sheer might will take care of - in short, a geopolitical ROI that also makes us feel good about ourselves.

[Eric Martin]

I think it shows what he thinks the future will be like: he is not saying an era of perpetual conflict is his preferred policy. He is saying that is what we face.

Oh, but I think he is saying that is his preferred policy. Even if he couches it in terms of "we have no choice" - we obviously do have a choice.

That, in itself, is a strategic decision (claiming that we must stay in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades, and other wars as well, because we have no choice).

Every time Obama has pushed to get out of Af/Pak, Petraeus has dug in his heels and leaked memos and done what he could to box Obama in.

Those, again, are affirmative actions of someone pushing for a preferred policy.

Not a passive, fatalistic resignation to the will of the world.

Turbulence: I willingly concede that this post is based on broad strokes and generalizations. It is meta for sure, based on a conversation I had with a high ranking military officer (oft quoted on COIN matters - more from the skeptics angle) and some think tank denizens with expertise in military affairs that I respect.

[nous]

Eric -- Every time Obama has pushed to get out of Af/Pak, Petraeus has dug in his heels and leaked memos and done what he could to box Obama in.

Yes, and I think this is more a product of the way he has internalized the culture of the military and the needs of his people than of a failure of strategic thinking.

He's in a bind. If we pull out it's going to look like Vietnam unless they can find some result they can declare victory over. Without this there is going to be a lot more resentment and anger in the military directed at the civilian leadership -- all those lives and friends gone to no purpose.

So he tries to be the loyal soldier at the same time that he mitigates public opinion damage to the military institutions. He tries to achieve some limited goal to show to the troops in order to give their service meaning. And he tries to move up the chain by being the guy who did this when so many others made things worse or missed opportunities.

I think a lot of these decisions are bad for our political goals in the long term and that they end up costing more lives in the long term for little gain in terms of international security, but I can understand why he wants to do it this way for morale reasons.

He's thinking strategically, just not necessarily with the same set of priorities, and some of those priorities may run counter to civilian priorities.

[Eric Martin]

Well, yeah. Narrowly strategically. With a dash of ego thrown in for good measure.

[nous]

Yeah, I think that's accurate.