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Home Front: WoT
Chuck Hagel's Astonishing Admission on Syria
2015-12-21
Follow-up on posts earlier in the week.
[THEATLANTIC] Last week, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave his first extended interview since resigning as Pentagon chief in November 2014. The curated interview with Foreign Policy is worth reading in its entirety, if for nothing else than the insights into how White House officials and staffers micromanaged Department of Defense decisions; Hagel claims that staffers would call generals "asking fifth-level questions that the White House should not be involved in." (This would not be the first or last White House charged with this degree of oversight.)

However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
 the most revealing moment of the interview was not an instance of White House micromanagement, but rather indecisiveness. In September 2014, in reaction to the horrific videos of U.S. citizen beheadings released by the self-declared Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
, Congress passed legislation mandating that the Pentagon "provide assistance, including training, equipment, supplies, and sustainment, to appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition." The most critical question regarding this policy decision was not whether the program would be effective--almost immediately nobody inside or outside of the Pentagon thought it would be--but what direct military support the United States would provide to the Pentagon-trained rebels in Syria. As I later wrote, initial, limited support to Syrian rebels could escalate to a Bay of Pigs situation, where the U.S.-backed rebels were easily killed or captured, and subsequently U.S. credibility further eroded.
Posted by:Fred

#11  Yes, we've tried nation building and it's not worked well, so instead let's try nation destroying. If we have to intervene, go in and leave nothing but smoking, repeatedly bounced rubble.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2015-12-21 20:27  

#10  They're only hitting outside their box because our feckless leaders allow them to do so. That's the other part of what I'm saying: Keep them out of here. You don't accomplish that by getting bogged down in Syria. The way to do that is by stopping Muslim immigration and denying visas, rounding up the people who are here with visa from those countries and deporting them.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2015-12-21 17:52  

#9  AU, they're hitting outside their box now, you are aware. Also, remaining engaged in theater, even remaining in theater, is not the same as nation building.
Posted by: Rex Mundi   2015-12-21 15:09  

#8  If they somehow manage to make it out of their little box and strike us in our own homeland then by all means put the hurt on them. But no more nation building.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2015-12-21 14:55  

#7  We need to get the hell outta there and keep those people out of here.

Alternatively, if there's a compelling reason for us to intervene we should do so with a commitment of nothing less than complete domination of the enemy until completion of the task (to include cessation of the enemy's will to fight).
Posted by: Crusader   2015-12-21 12:41  

#6  The fact that we have staring us in the face, whether by design or mismanagement or Bush or Obama, is that US meddling in the Middle East only makes matters worse. We need to get the hell outta there and keep those people out of here.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2015-12-21 12:14  

#5  "And" satisfies "or" but point taken.
Posted by: Sven the pelter   2015-12-21 09:15  

#4  You left out the 'and/' between 'design or by incompetence'.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2015-12-21 08:43  

#3  If this is actually what happened, it is an extraordinary case of strategic negligence by the White House.

Most likely is what happened. Anyone watching this train wreck (Obama administration) would not be surprised. It is either negligence by design or by incompetence. Is it time to talk about the "I" word?
Posted by: JohnQC   2015-12-21 08:41  

#2  ...how White House officials and staffers micromanaged Department of Defense decisions

Those who have no history are bound to repeat the mistakes of real history - On Strategy. Micromanagement from the White House, Part Deux.

A big institutional problem of the Left is their fantasy that war is 'unnatural'. Therefore, they don't study it or understand it and when the time comes 'war is interested in you', they fumble so often and keep repeating lessons unlearned.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2015-12-21 07:30  

#1  "Nothing sleeps as well as a clear conscience."
Posted by: Besoeker   2015-12-21 06:19  

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