Generals

Before getting to the meat of this post I should make two statements. First, is that I neither like nor dislike General Petraeus. I do not think he was as successful and great as many say he was nor do I think he was merely a PR expert who fooled us all into thinking he did something. I think the right answer is somewhere in between. He didn't win the Iraq War, but he did some things that allowed to take advantage of the situation (principally enforcing unity of effort and command that had been sorely lacking under previous commanders). The second caveat is that I have not read Tom Ricks' new book The Generals. While I have read Tom's articles on the book, I have not and will not read the book for the simple reason that I do not think that I could give it a fair review. I did write this after all. So any comments after this that talk about Ricks are made exclusively on his blogging and articles on the topic, not on his book, which I hope contains a lot more detail than its shorter versions.

Now that that is out of the way, let us turn to Dexter Filkins' new New Yorker piece, "General Principles: How good was David Petraeus?"  This is an unserious piece that plants Filkins firmly on Team Petraeus in the way that Stephen Colbert asks "Is he the best or is he the best ever?"  To set up the answer to that question, Filkins spends some time on modern generals:

In wars without front lines, American generals tend to stay inside fortified bases, where they plan missions and brief political leaders via secure video teleconferences. Their credentials are measured as much by their graduate degrees as by the medals on their dress uniforms. They are, for the most part, deeply conventional men, who rose to the top of the military hierarchy by following orders and suppressing subversive thoughts.

Emphasis mine. The first couple of sentences very clearly show that Filkins does not actually understand the general officer corps in any way. Have we had generals who never left their compounds? I am sure there have been a few, but they are the exception not the rule. Filkins portrays them as out of touch by misstating what most generals, and almost all general officer commanders, do: battlefield circulation. This is not the same as living in a patrol base with host nation security forces, but that is not what generals get paid to do. Similarly, general officer credentials are not measured by medals (this is, frankly, stupid - most generals have almost the exact same medals) or graduate degrees. They are measured by the commands they had (and essential staff positions) and how well they did in those commands (the bar for "how well" may be disputed), but certainly not by medals. Graduate degrees are part of the calculus, but like everything else takes a back seat to command performance.

Now let us turn to the sentence I italicized. Filkins state quite clearly that generals become such because they are sheep. I ask: where is your support for this statement? As evidence, Filkins provides the data point that in "recent years, eighty-four per cent of the Army's majors have been promoted to lieutenant colonel -- hardly a fine filter."  I know, you're all wondering what that has to do with general officer accessions. In short: nothing. While it is hard to find accurate numbers, it seems that there are about 20,000 active duty majors and about 10,000 active duty lieutenant colonels in the Army. The Department of Defense requires, by regulation, that at least 70% of majors eligible for promotion are selected for lieutenant colonel. Because the Army needs that many lieutenant colonels. And that has nothing to do with promotion to general officer, of whom the Army has 230 authorized (for reference, active duty combat arms branch promote more officers to lieutenant colonel in one year than the total number of generals). This data point is only useful in order to say that this alleged great purging of talent and brilliance is not happening at the 15-17 year mark of officer careers.

So that is not evidence (obviously). Like Ricks, Filkins trots out General Tommy Franks and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez as examples of the GO corps' mediocrity. (He also hits on General J.D. Thurman for not pronouncing Prime Minister Maliki's name correctly in 2006 - a data point so asinine to not warrant much rebuttal. If we promoted generals based on their linguistic skills we would have a smaller bench than we do now.) The problem with this approach is that neither writer has shown that officers more capable from these two retirees' cohorts were not selected for general in spite of this non-selected officers' superior capabilities. This is quite simple: if you want to say the generals we have (or have had) are mediocre, then you need to show how the not-mediocre officers were passed over for promotion and why. There is not, of course, much data to support that kind of analysis, but it is the logical discussion that needs to be had.

We can lament the fact that Franks and Sanchez were both promoted to general officers. But who were they competing with? Where are all of these brilliant go-getters who were passed over? What Ricks (again, in shorter form) and Filkins fail to address is the dearth of quality officer candidates from the early- to mid-1970s. Matriculation to ROTC and West Point from the late 1960s into the mid-1970s was not the best crop of candidate officers this nation has seen. There were years where West Point nearly did not fill all of its slots. West Point also suffered the worst ethics scandal in its history in 1976. What year groups were Franks and Sanchez? 1971 and 1973 respectively. General George Casey, another favorite beating horse of the general officer corps, was from the 1970 cohort. While there were some very fine officers commissioned in this era, I would suggest that these gentlemen were actually representative of the some of the best officers eligible for general rank. Smart guys did generally did not want to go to Vietnam. Or to an organization as broken as the U.S. Army after Vietnam.

But the most glaring hole in this discussion is Petraeus himself. If he is as good as Ricks and Filkins like to think, how did he become such a high-ranking general? There are two logical answers: 1) Petraeus is a sheep like every other general or 2) Ricks' and Filkins' thesis is incorrect. There is a third possibility that an exception was made for him, but that there might be exceptions runs against the "mediocre generals" meme and cause us to wonder why there are not more exceptions. If we look at Petraeus, we see a man who earned a PhD at Princeton University and who helped codify population-centric counterinsurgency into Army doctrine. But we also see a man who served as an aide to four generals (talk about back-slapping to get ahead...) and who tried to implement his counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan and failed. I suspect if we put our personal biases aside, we would see that Petraeus, while quite smart, is really about as good his cohort (and certainly better than Franks and Sanchez who were unequivocal duds). Which are probably the best the Army could provide based on when these men joined.

Filkins' piece is full of bad history and illogical statements in order to puff up his hero. And while he is wrong about Petraeus, he is also wrong about generals in, well, general. Petraeus made it to the top by being as good as he could while also doing all the networking he could, like anyone with ambition in an organization. But it is false logic and intellectually dishonest to parade Franks and Sanchez as the model general officer before giving us Petraeus as the savior of the Army. The quality of officers should be distributed normally. Petraeus, Franks and Sanchez may very well be in the tails, but I doubt they are so distinct from the bulk of the quality of their cohorts, such as Generals Ray Odierno, Lloyd Austin, and Martin Dempsey (also from this generation of officers). Odierno is an especially applicable example of my point here. In 2003 and 2004 he reflected the Army he served and yet was able to adapt to the changing situation in Iraq as the operational commander during the Surge. Possibly a more impressive feat than what Petraeus', but it remains that the line between "good" and "bad" generals is a very fine line indeed.

Our generals are by no means perfect, but it is a lie to say they got where they are because they purposefully did not rock the boat. Competition to succeed is very intense. And yet we must remember that, particularly at the highest levels, generals are ultimately selected by the civilian leaders of DoD and the White House. Don't like Tommy Franks? Then ask Secretary Rumsfeld why he did not fire him - only he and the President had the power to do so. I also do not worry about the future of the Army generals. I think that the generals we have had and have today are just fine and reflect the Army they have grown up in. And that includes having studs and duds where delineating between the two is often difficult. Like every organization. I also firmly believe that Petraeus' fall is not the death-knell for a quality general officer corps. I think that the generals from cohorts of the 1970s have been below average from other cohorts (even if the individual generals are probably as high of quality compared to the cohorts who were not selected for general), we will see a significant increase in quality from cohorts of the 1980s and 1990s. Officers who served as battalion and brigade commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the officers who understand the nuances and challenges of modern warfare. I assure you that mediocrity is not something that can be attributed to this group of fine officers.

Honor, ethics, and the UCMJ

I've been waiting for things to calm down a bit before commenting on GEN Petraeus's resignation. We're not quite there yet, but I think there is an important element of this discussion not being had. I don't necessarily see his affair as the catalyst to review his record as a commander in Iraq and Afghanistan (mixed results), debate the legitimacy and wisdom of counterinsurgency as propagated by him (a very complicated answer), or the demise of the general officer corps in general (we'll be okay). The first will be debated by historians for decade to come, the second is an on-going discussion that has nothing to do with extra-marital affairs, and the latter is yet to be seen once the officers commissioned in the 1970s are retired (I'll save my different-generations-of-generals lecture for another time).

There are a couple of issues directly related to the affair itself.  There have been some who have suggested that GEN Petraeus should not have resigned as the Director of Central Intelligence over his affair. Tom Ricks has been among the most vocal of this group, arguing that GEN Petraeus's actions had nothing to do with competency and that his decisions were about personal ethics. This has been countered in the main with the argument that cleared officials who have affairs are prime targets for blackmail, therefore becoming a risk to national security. There is a lot of merit to this, but it doesn't exact scratch Tom's itch and frankly, I don't find this plausible (in the specific case of GEN Petraeus). Yet, I feel strongly that resigning was exactly what GEN Petraeus should have done and for the reason he said he did: it was the honorable thing to do.

After graduating from West Point in 1974, GEN Petraeus served in the Army for over 37 years. All of those years he was subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in which adultery is a crime under Article 134. For many of those years, GEN Petraeus served as a commander, including almost every year as a general from 1999 until his retirement in 2011. As such, GEN Petraeus not only was required to uphold military law, he was an enforcer of those laws as a courts martial convening authority. I wonder how many courts martial he convened, or discharges he signed, that included adultery charges. After 37 years of living by the standards set in UCMJ, continuing to serve in high office after having violated one of the articles himself would be hypocrisy of the first order. He violated the ethics of the institution he spent nearly all of his life serving, ethics which he was a standard-bearer and enforcer. In military service, ethics are a significant part professional competency and you cannot dissociate the two. The only honorable thing left for him to do was to resign.

What makes a good CJCS?

If all goes according to plan, GEN Martin Dempsey will be was announced this morning as the president's nominee to become the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The commentary and analysis surrounding his surprising and contentious selection (and suggestions of a nefarious whisper campaign against Hoss Cartwright, the current Vice Chairman) provide a window into the priorities of various constituencies when it comes to the military and its senior leadership. The CJCS debate is an important one not for the third-hand speculation about personal character and management styles, but for the way it distills many of the major national security debates into concentrate: what should our military look like in the future? Against what threats should we be oriented? What doctrinal concepts should dominate the bulk of training time and force transformation efforts? And beyond that, what do this one man's biography and personal priorities tell us about what's important to the president?

But the conversation is often limited by unfamiliarity with the structure of senior military leadership and the way each power base -- the Joint Chiefs, the Combatant Commanders, and the Service Chiefs -- have different equities and priorities. I had a number of brief Twitter exchanges on this subject late last week and realized that a lot of people really just don't understand what each guy's job is and how it differs from the others. I figured a post was in order to lay out what each of the very most senior U.S. military officers is responsible for, and thus what ought to be most important when selecting them.

First, let's talk for a second about Goldwater-Nichols and the organization of the U.S. Armed Forces. The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 made a number of very significant changes to the way the DOD does business, changes that were fundamental and foundational and still widely misunderstood by the broader public. Here's the most important one: since 1986, the department has been organized in a way that is meant to facilitate jointness and the most effective use of all military tools in an integrated, rational way.* One set of organizations -- the military services -- is responsible for generating and sustaining combat power, while the other set -- the combatant commanders -- is responsible for using that combat power to win wars and meet national objectives. The individual services and their chiefs have no operational responsibility or authority -- they are merely the force provider to the combatant command "customer," who is responsible for requesting and employing appropriate forces to accomplish warfighting missions. Remember this, because it's really important.

The Department of Defense, as you know, is headed by a civilian Secretary of Defense. His or her job is to be "the principal assistant to the President on all matters relating to the Department of Defense." It's as simple as that. He's tasked with a number of statutory responsibilities, many of which he executes "with the advice and assistance of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Here's what it all comes down to: the SECDEF is responsible to help out the president as needed; to report up to Congress on what the DOD is doing and planning; and to report down to the service secretaries (more on them in a minute) and the Chairman on what's expected of them, i.e. the way DOD and national plans influence their job responsibilities. The SECDEF is also the only individual other than the president invested with command authority over the armed forces.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is identified by law as "the principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council [now National Security Staff], the Homeland Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense." Interestingly, early versions of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation included in their title "to Strengthen the Position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" alongside "to Provide for More Efficient and Effective Operation of the Armed Forces." But President Reagan's 1986 letter to Congress on the subject of defense reorganization expressly stated that "the strengthening of other offices or components of the defense establishment should never be, nor appear to be, at the expense of the authority of the Secretary of Defense." While the Chairman was now invested with the responsibility to represent the interests of the entire uniformed military in providing advice to senior political leaders, he is not the SECDEF's military equivalent or peer.

Just like the Secretary, the Chairman has responsibilities to those below him as well as to his superiors: it's his job to take the warfighting requirements articulated by the combatant commanders and pass them to his higher -- that is, to the SECDEF. He serves as the synthesizer and integrator of joint warfighting functions, which is really just a jargony way of saying he's the guy who looks at the range of possible mission requirements, lines them up against the combined capabilities of the joint force, and sees if there are any gaps in what the U.S. military can do. He's a bit like a service chief for the joint force, which will make more sense in just a second.

So now we've got the service chiefs, whose fundamental responsibility is support the individual service secretaries in their mission to organize, train, and equip forces in order to provide capabilities to joint force/combatant commanders. That means, according to the law, recruiting, organizing, supplying, equipping (including R&D), training, servicing, mobilizing, demobilizing, administering, maintaining, construction of facilities and equipment... everything that goes into providing trained and ready forces. It includes everything from doctrine writing and personnel policy to capabilities development and force management. In short, service chiefs are responsible for taking whatever actions are necessary to produce readiness: to develop forces that know how to fight and are properly organized and equipped to do so.

That's where the combatant commanders come in: they're responsible for the accomplishment of missions assigned to them by either the president or the SECDEF and transmitted via the CJCS. They take the forces generated and provided for them by the military services and employ them in order to accomplish national objectives. A CCDR has authority for all U.S. military activities and operations in his AOR, whether functional (as in the case of JFCOM, STRATCOM, TRANSCOM, or SOCOM) or geographic, and he develops war plans and contingency plans that specify the way he intends to use the forces at his disposal to win wars and deal with emergent threats to American security interests.

I hope you'll forgive me the drawn-out explanation, but I think it's absolutely essential to understand what it is that the president needs from each of his senior military leaders. Now that we have a feel for all that, how do these appointments shake out?

Dempsey's ascent to Chairman is a disappointment to a great many people, but not because he's poorly suited for the job -- rather because he was viewed as a perfect fit for the Army Chief of Staff job. He's diversely experienced in both operational and institutional roles, having headed the U.S. advisory and assistance organization in Saudi Arabia (what's called PM-SANG, or Program Manager for the Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program); commanded the 1st Armored Division in Iraq; led the training and equipping command in Baghdad (Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, or MNSTC-I); served as the interim commander of U.S. Central Command; and spearheaded the Army's efforts at intellectual and doctrinal transformation as the commanding general of TRADOC (Army Training and Doctrine Command). It's hard to think of a job for which GEN Dempsey wouldn't be a good fit. He's shown an eagerness to learn and adapt, and also to aggressively engage with both soldiers and interested outside communities in order to communicate his goals. And that's a big part of the reason Dempsey seems like such a big loss to the Army: as a big-think guy who has clearly spent a great deal of time considering the meaning of the soldiering profession, he seemed perfectly suited to help the Army reset after a decade of war and position itself to meet national needs in the future.

The CJCS needs to be a straight-shooter when advising the president and SECDEF, while also serving as an honest broker for all of the military services. Some have suggested that an Army general might not be the right man for the job in light of the need to re-balance capabilities after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, that a green-suiter might be too focused on healing and resetting the Army with big budgets and deformed concepts to help the joint force get ready for future threats. I think this is bogus. In 1958, President Eisenhower insisted that the individual "service responsibilities and activities must always be only the branches, not the central trunk of the national security tree." Shouldn't we trust that one of the most forward-thinking four-stars of our era would agree, especially when it's a part of his legal mandate?

I'm mystified by suggestions that Petraeus or Cartwright would have been better choices. Some will certainly disagree with me on this one, but I think Petraeus (health concerns and interest in the CIA job notwithstanding) would have been nearly the worst possible candidate for either CJCS or CSA. He has demonstrated a mission-focus that's admirable and desirable in a combatant commander, the sort of "damn the rules, let's just get this done" attitude that you want a wartime leader to have when lives are on the line. But that same attitude means he's shown a willingness to push his own preferences and priorities in a way that borders on the inappropriate, and one wonders if someone so strong-willed and committed to a particular operational orthodoxy is best-suited to serve as the lead advisor to the president and the voice of the entire uniformed military. When it comes to senior military leadership, lanes are important; GEN Petraeus would probably assert that he has more important things to worry about.

The tension between the priorities of service chiefs and combatant/joint force commanders is often palpable, as it was when GEN Casey elaborated a classic service chief's concern about the war in Iraq: that operational demands could be breaking the Army. "The forces are stretched. I don't think there's any question of that."** The only problem is that he articulated these concerns in 2006... when he was the operational commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Sometimes even the man in the arena seems not to be sure to what he ought to be paying attention. Which brings us to the Odierno-as-CSA pick: I think it's an interesting choice, but the timing is all wrong. As the president said, "after years on the front lines, Ray understands what the Army must do to prevail in today's wars, to prepare for the future, and to preserve the readiness of soldiers and families." GEN Odierno knows what capabilities the Army must generate to be useful to a wartime commander, but I'm afraid his understanding of this is tailored to a specific context: short-duration, decisive maneuver warfare plus manpower-intensive counterinsurgency and stability operations in irregular war. I have less confidence that he's prepared to be the reshaping visionary I feel certain GEN Dempsey would have become. Odierno would have been the perfect CSA two or three years ago, when his direct experience as a battlefield commander could have informed pre-deployment unit preparation, but I'm not sure he's the right guy for the future.

Who would I have picked, as if it matters? I think ADM Stavridis, currently at the helm of EUCOM, is an incredibly intelligent and forward-thinking officer. Galrahn has noted that some Navy folks are pleased he was  overlooked, as now they've got him around to be CNO. He's served as a CCDR in both the SOUTHCOM and EUCOM AORs, and so he has some perspective on the sort of non-traditional missions being executed by a command that is not primarily warfighting-focused as well as on the multinational coordination and preparation so essential to our operations in Afghanistan and Libya. But as I've said above, I think GEN Dempsey will do an outstanding job, and Stavridis' time may come yet.

In any event, I hope this little digression into roles and responsibilities will help to inform the discussion about the senior leadership shakeup.

* The idea here is that the commander of a joint force would be able to select among the wide range of capabilities offered by forces from the various services rather than being constrained by functional boundaries, or worse, having the services develop duplicative and overlapping capabilities in order to ensure that they could complete those missions without going outside their own organization.

** The great paradox of the service chief's job: there is nothing that is more destructive to readiness than actual war. If your priority is to have fully-manned, well-trained, appropriately-rested, maximally lethal combat units on the shelf for employment by combatant commanders, then having a significant portion of your force dedicated to one particular fight will clearly get in the way of that. If your whole job is to make sure a race-car is in tip-top driving shape, the last thing you want anybody to do with it is to actually race.

The suckiest DoD job that's not in The Suck

As we've discussed in the past, Geoff Morrell's job sucks. Now he has to put up with this (though admittedly it's coming from known anonymous-quoter and wild speculator-of-professional-motives-and-personal-feelings Michael Hastings):

No one knew whether McChrystal would keep his job; NATO officials had prepared two press releases — one for if he stayed, another for if he was fired. Even the military's top brass was kept out of the loop: Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, viewed as particularly untrustworthy by the Obama administration, was frantically calling NATO headquarters in Brussels to find out what was happening across the Potomac at the White House.

The emphasis, of course, is mine.

So now I've got to ask: WTF did Morrell ever do to you, White House? He's loyal to his boss, he tap-dances like crazy to pitch the administration's line to an adversarial press corps, he traded in a pretty good gig on the outside for this thankless bitch of a job, and he's "viewed as particularly untrustworthy"? If by "the Obama administration" you mean Tom Donilon and Mark Lippert, then I can buy this, but it seems like a pretty unfair and unsupportable characterization. Of course, Hastings won't support it -- anonymous sources, you see. Ethics and whatnot.

Snort.

The rest of the piece is about how Petraeus has been boxing in the president and vice versa, etc etc, a whole bunch of stuff that seems basically true to me, and that there's already generally pretty broad (if speculative) consensus about. But I guess it's flashier stuff when you run it under this byline, so there you are.

ISAF's fingers are crossed. That should do the trick.

Michael Cohen highlights today an interview Kimberly Dozier did with General Petraeus and as Michael says, it is incredibly eye-opening. There are a couple of points that I think warrant some further inspection.

First is the excerpt about Petraeus' staff being "hunkered down" in "fingers-crossed" mode. While this was used to specifically describe the U.S.'s plan for decreasing corruption in Afghanistan, I would suggest that seems to be the overall strategy in Afghanistan. Much like the surge plan for Iraq (which we'll get to in a bit), we seem to be using what I've referred to previously as planning on the enemy's Least Dangerous Course of Action, or LDCOA. (Enemy representing here any challenge to mission success.) When we find ourselves in these "hard but not hopeless" situations, we seem to use hope as a major line of operation. I don't think I need to expound upon the serious issues with doing that. We need to either figure some way of effectively addressing the big issues in Afghanistan or if we can't figure it out and it actually is too hard, then we need to start heading for the door. Hope is not strategy.

The second topic is the Petraeus' reference to Iraq. COMISAF is way too experienced and smart to make such an absurd correlation between Iraq and Afghanistan. Having been part of the Iraq surge, I still firmly believe that those plans were based on the LDCOA. But we were lucky - things ended up even rosier than our unencumbered hope had anticipated. While the increased troop presence was an integral part of the surge's successes, it was by no means the most important. Think The Awakening, Sadrist stand-down, and internal changes to the Government of Iraq. The surge helped support those things, but it wasn't the deciding factor. And Petraeus should know that and also know that because of that fact, saying that COIN worked in Iraq and therefore will work in Afghanistan is just plain wrong thinking.

It's also lazy thinking. Iraq, while similar to Afghanistan in some ways, is and was a very unique situation in the history of U.S. interventions. Just like the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan is unique. Inflating the similarities shows torpid analysis - Petraeus should be talking about how the two conflicts are different and why we're doing things differently in Afghanistan because of those differences. Cut and paste does not work at the strategic level. I'm sure I've mentioned this book before, but I suggest Neustadt and May's Thinking in Time to anyone who tries to use historical reference to suggest current policy. If Petraeus' staff hasn't pored through this work yet, I'm willing to buy it and send it to them. Then maybe we won't have this terribly lazy thinking and maybe stop using hope as a plan. We were lucky that Iraq was somewhat successful in spite of the fact that we did, but it doesn't seem that Afghanistan will work out the same way.

Filling the Void and Re-balancing Civ-Mil Relations

Bernard Finel has a very good post on civil-military relations - a topic he's written very often on. His main points are concern over the politicization of generals driving policy, that blame doesn't really matter, that presidents can fire generals but doing so is tricky, and that presidents often use the uniforms to see wars. I have to say that I find Bernard's arguments compelling and on the mark.

Sure, generals are often over-political and too often drive policy and therefore there is an imbalance in what we should consider "normal" civ-mil relations. And he's right that everyone is to blame: the generals should know better and the politicians should have tighter reins. But I think he's leaving one point out: the nature of military leadership. U.S. military doctrine demands that leaders act based on their best interpretation of their commander's intent. If that intent is nebulous enough, subordinate leaders have wide flexibility of action. And that's where we've come to in Afghanistan.

Our Afghan strategy, if you could call it such, is horribly vague to the point of uselessness, which I see has a failure in leadership at the highest levels here in DC. Any general, with 30-plus years of leadership experience, will naturally fill that void with how he best interprets his commander's intent. In this case it seems to simply means: win in Afghanistan. So I think that is what Generals McChrystal and Petraeus were and are attempting to do. I don't see this as a power grab by the generals and I don't necessarily see the President as trying to use them to sell the war. Nor do I see it as a crisis - yet. But the civilians aren't providing the leadership they should and the generals are filling that void as their nature dictates they should. The only solution to this particular imbalance, in my mind, is not to fire generals, but instead create a viable strategy and policy and provide the generals the leadership they need and deserve.

UPDATE: Adam Elkus, via Twitter (@Simlaughter): "To some degree I think the scope of contemporary doctrine often reflects this strategic uncertainty" - This is quite likely. And if he's right, I think the probability of a civ-mil disaster is looming.

Update on the purported political brilliance of the Petraeus pick

Here's a couple of U.S. Senators speaking yesterday about the selection:

Meanwhile, with Petraeus' confirmation hearing set to be held this week, [Sen. Lindsey] Graham said he wants the administration to clarify how hard-and-fast the withdrawal deadline is.

[Sen. Dianne] Feinstein said that if Petraeus asks for more time, "I would say give it to him."

That's one prominent senator from either side of the aisle suggesting that the timeline should be flexible, an opinion that in Feinstein's case, at least, seems to be predicated almost entirely on the fact that Petraeus is running the show now.

So if the president decides he wants to "finesse the 2011 deadline," he's got Petraeus' cred on the Hill to work with. If he decides he doesn't, then he's got Petraeus (and Gates, and Mullen) on the record in Johnathan Alter's book saying that he's not going to come back later and ask for more troops, that he's not going to try to flex the deadline, that he thinks significant progress can be made in 18 (now 12) months.

Politics is about options, and now the president's got all he wants.

Why the unexpected Petraeus pick is incredibly savvy (UPDATED)

UPDATE: I have no idea why comments were disabled up until this point, but they're not anymore. We're trying out a new system, so let us know how you like it.

The news is in: McChrystal out, Petraeus in. There's tons of analysis out there already, so I'm not going to waste your time and mine by parroting the same sorts of things everyone's writing. But here's my brief take on why this is an inspired pick, from both the political and practical perspectives.

Politics:

1. If King David can't do it, no one can. The president tapped the one guy more tightly associated with our chosen operational approach than GEN McChrystal was. If Afghanistan goes bad, it will look like it was because of an impossible mission... not a bad plan. The White House can complain that the COINdinistas sold them a bill of goods, an they didn't know any better. The president has put himself under GEN Petraeus' flag; as afpakchannel noted on Twitter, P4 "would probably have to punch Joe Biden in the face before Obama would fire him." Daddy's home from work, and he's gonna take care of everything.
2. The right has to shut the hell up. Republicans trip over themselves to compliment Petraeus, and none of them have the nads to publically question whether his success in Iraq is transferrable to other theaters. If the president sticks to his guns and his withdrawal timeline, or even reverses course and speeds up the drawdown, the right won't be able to suggest that he's sabotaging the effort or failing to support the troops. After all, he sent the number one guy!
3. GEN Petraeus is already on the record with his commitment to the drawdown timeline. Jonathan Alter reported on a conversation where P4, Secretary Gates, and Admiral Mullen all agree to the president's plan, and pledge not to come back for more troops in 18 months. GEN McChrystal did, too, but you'd expect the theater commander to say just about whatever he needed to to get his resources. GEN Petraeus has said he thinks it can be done, which insulates the president when it comes time to make the drawdown happen.

Practical:

1. We already know how GEN Petraeus does business. Look, there's always going to be a little bit of lag time while a new CG gets up to speed, especially in a coalition command the size and complexity of ISAF. Not too many people have ever done a job like that. P4 has. He's got a system, he's got a routine, he's got a way of doing business... and there are dozens, even hundreds of people who saw it up close.
2. CENTCOM's regional responsibility will help keep Afghanistan in perspective. GEN Petraeus has spent his time in Tampa looking at how Afghanistan fits into a broader regional picture, both with regard to Pakistan and to wider central and south Asian security. This perspective will hopefully help mitigate against the theater commander's natural tendency to think that his war and his command is the only thing that matters, and to ignore the consequences of his efforts on the bigger picture. Petraeus is going to do his damnedest to succeed in Afghanistan, but we can reasonably hope that his definition of success will be bigger than just that country.
3. There's no doubt about P4's COIN credentials. Whether you think it's good or bad, GEN Petraeus is the leading light of the COINdinista movement in today's American military. McChrystal could always be criticized as a door kicker, a special operator, a guy who "got it" because he had to, but didn't really get it. (Some have fairly criticized the outgoing COMISAF for trying to slap on the COIN template without really understanding the whys and wherefores. I don't know if this is true or not, but I do suspect that McChrystal's ideas about what was rhetorically necessary and what is tactically required were probably a touch out of synch.) You can't say that about Petraeus. If the execution of this COIN enterprise in Afghanistan fails, you can't say it's because of user error. So it's a win-win for critics and proponents: if we're successful, then great! If we're not, then it will demand a critical look at the failings of our doctrine and operational methods.

Like I wrote before, this is just a quick take. I know it's not exactly novel to say "Petraeus is a good pick!," but hopefully this helps illuminate why this is precisely so.

Do you agree?

Putting time on the Washington clock (UPDATED)

Today's New York Times brings us the not-so-new revelation that Afghanistan contains bountiful untapped mineral resources. You've no doubt seen this story by now, but I'm going to go ahead and excerpt at length just the same:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists.

The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

Others have already reflected on the fact that this news doesn't exactly qualify as an unvarnished good: for one, it takes a lot of money and time to extract these resources, perhaps more money than you'd get from the sale of them. And on top of that, it's not like resource-rich and politically-poor countries have a really good track record with stability and nonviolence.

But the Pollyanna-ish suggestion that speculative, hypothetical mineral wealth will (/could) solve all of Afghanistan's problems isn't really what bothers me about all of this. What's most annoying is that this is exactly the sort of story we should've predicted back in the winter, not long after the President made the silly but politically essential decision to sell his "Afghan surge" decision to a reluctant majority by promising a totally unrealistic departure deadline.

Mark Ambinder and Blake Hounshell each speak to this point (to a greater and lesser degree, respectively): Hounshell says he's "skeptical of the timing of this story, given the bad news cycle," while Ambinder writes that "[t]he way in which the story was presented... suggest[s] a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war." I'm inclined to agree with this latter characterization.

There's not a single serious person who thought that the July 2011 deadline to begin bringing troops home from Afghanistan was anything but a political determination; the administration can make noises about how it was essential to convince the Afghan government that it could not rely on American benificence forever and must take the lead in providing security for its own country, but no one buys it. (Check out the video from this panel at last week's CNAS Conference: from Barno to Crocker to Pillar to Tellis to Fontaine, not a single one of the speakers thinks that the deadline is realistic or operationally useful.)

And so the timing of all of this seems, as Ambinder wrote, to "engender some fairly acute skepticism." After all, Amb. Ryan Crocker's entire presentation at CNAS revolved around the assumption, the prerequisite, that for the next president to begin his term facing anything but certain disaster in Afghanistan, this administration will have to find a way to "finesse that July 2011 deadline." While progress in Afghan governance and security is obviously important to anyone's definition of "success" in that campaign, the one absolutely essential front in this war is the domestic political one. As Crocker said, the president needs to find a way to put more time on the DC clock, because the Afghanistan one ain't speeding up.

Which, when it comes right down to it, is some serious bullshit.

We all knew this war wouldn't be won in 18 months, even back in December. We all knew that to begin withdrawing troops at that point would imperil the entire effort, whatever we think about the necessity of the war or our broader chances of success. We all knew the president was bullshitting us then because Generals Petraeus and McChrystal convinced him that they could get enough done to change the optics of the war in that 18-month period, just like a gambler looking for one more bet on credit, certain he can't lose this cash that he doesn't have.

So now we're finessing that deadline, putting time on that DC clock, pushing stories that make another two or three or eight or 15 years in Afghanistan seem like steps towards the pot of lithium gold rather than a tragic extension of what has become a senseless waste of lives and money.

Almost makes you embarrassed for your government, if only for being so ham-handed.

EDIT: I should also note at least one small technical mistake in Ambinder's post that makes him sound a little more conspiracist than I feel comfortable with. Here's the entire sentence that I reproduced above in ellipsesed form:

The way in which the story was presented -- the on-the-record quotations from the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM, no less -- and the weird promotion of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense to Undersecretary of Defense suggests a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war.

First of all, there's only one Commander in Chief, and it's the president. GEN Petraeus is the commander of CENTCOM, or alternatively, the commanding general. But that's not really the thing I wanted to draw attention to.

The second half of that bit -- "weird promotion" -- refers to a place in the article where Paul Brinkley is quoted. He's correctly identified in the article as a deputy undersecretary of defense, though it's sort of confusing, because they call him the "DUSD for Business," which doesn't really exist. Brinkley IS a deputy undersecretary of defense, though, and is the director of the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. Ambinder seems to be under the impression that Brinkley is a deputy assistant secretary of defense, which is a lower-tier role in the bureaucracy, and that the article is promoting him to sort of increase his gravitas or something. But no, there's no shady journalistic promotion going on here.

UPDATE: Let me just tell you, I am shocked, SHOCKED!, to learn that there are people in the U.S. government who think that the July 2011 timeline is unrealistic.

Six months after President Obama decided to send more forces to Afghanistan, the halting progress in the war has crystallized longstanding tensions within the government over the viability of his plan to turn around the country and begin pulling out by July 2011.

Within the administration, the troubles in clearing out the Taliban from a second-tier region and the elusive loyalties of the Afghan president have prompted anxious discussions about whether the policy can work on the timetable the president has set. Even before the recent setbacks, the military was highly skeptical of setting a date to start withdrawing, but Mr. Obama insisted on it as a way to bring to conclusion a war now in its ninth year.

For now, the White House has decided to wait until a review, already scheduled for December, to assess whether the target date can still work. But officials are emphasizing that the July 2011 withdrawal start will be based on conditions in the country, and that the president has yet to decide how quickly troops will be pulled out.

Even if some troops do begin coming home then, the officials said that it may be a small number at first. Given that he has tripled the overall force since taking office, Mr. Obama could still end his term with more forces in Afghanistan than when he began it.

Don't worry, though -- they've been saying "contingent on conditions on the ground" all along!

UPDATE 2: And just for shits, here's the DoD press conference transcript with DUSD Brinkley and one of the fellas from the U.S. Geological Survey, in which they basically admit that there's no new data here.

Mark Bowden needs a geography lesson

The author of Blackhawn Down and Guests of the Ayatollah, among other books, has a much-ballyhooed and pretty mediocre profile of GEN Petraeus in the newest Vanity Fair. In describing his first meeting with the CENTCOM commander, Bowden writes this:

Petraeus has kept a low profile since taking over at CentCom, one of the U.S. military’s six combatant regional commands, and by far the most active of them. Its responsibilities include Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, and its domain stretches from Sudan east to Pakistan, and from Kazakhstan south to Kenya.

This strikes me as a really unusual way to describe the CENTCOM AOR, which does not include either Sudan or Kenya... or Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, or Somalia, the countries in between Kenya and Sudan, all of which (along with those latter two) are in AFRICOM's AOR.

The only explanation that I can imagine is that Bowden actually wrote this piece in 2008, pre-AFRICOM. Oh, no, wait, there's another alternative: sloppy research, an old copy of the Unified Command Plan, and a lack of fact-checkers.

"If nominated, I will run to Mexico. If elected, I will fight extradition."

Ok, so Dave Petraeus' "Shermanesque statement" wasn't nearly so entertaining as Mo Udall's in 1980, but the general was pretty clear that he's not interested in being president.

"I thought I’d said no about as many ways as I could. I really do mean no. We have all these artful ways of doing it. I’ve tried Shermanesque responses, which everybody goes and finds out what Sherman said was pretty unequivocally no. I’ve done several different ways. I’ve tried quoting the country song, ‘What Part of No Don’t You Understand?’ I mean, I really do mean that. I feel very privileged to be able to serve our country. I’m honored to continue to do that as long as I can contribute, but I will not, ever, run for political office, I can assure you. And again, we have said that repeatedly and I’m hoping that people realize at a certain point you say it so many times that you could never flip, and start your career by flip-flopping into it."

(Now if only we could get Condi Rice to do the same thing!)

By way of comparison, here's what Sherman said when pressured to run in 1871:

"I hereby state, and mean all that I say, that I never have been and never will be a candidate for president; that if nominated by either party I should peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should decline to serve."

This is more often rendered, somewhat more poetically, as "if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve."

Some people just can't take no for an answer, though. In 1884, the folks at the Republican convention sent Sherman a telegram that basically said dude, we don't care, we're nominating you. According to this book,

Sherman's son Tom later recalled his father's response to this telegram: "Without taking his cigar from his mouth, without changing his expression, while I stood there trembling by his side, my father wrote the answer, 'I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.'"

A touch more unequivocal, I suppose. Anyway, seems to me Petraeus might do a little better in the South.

I don't understand why people continually rally behind certain non-political individuals like Petraeus and Rice when their views on a broad range of issues relevant to the presidency are completely obscure (or, in the latter case, apparently flexible). Maybe it's a reflection of our deep dissatisfaction with with the political class and with the status quo that we're so eager to elect people without having a damned clue what they believe.