[A Conservative Teacher] Rash of Retirements of Major Military Commanders a Sign of Something?

[A Conservative Teacher]

Max Boot's well researched and insightful essay How America Lost Its Four Great Generals about the recent exodus of four-star commanders such as David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, John Allen, and James Mattis ends with his biggest point:

...We do not have such a surplus of brilliant commanders that we can afford to wave away those like Petraeus and McChrystal and Allen and Mattis, who have demonstrated a mastery of the modern battlefield. We can only hope that President Obama’s cavalier attitude toward the loss of their institutional knowledge, their leadership abilities, and their complex understanding of a dangerous world does not prove to be a tragedy for the nation.

Indeed, after reading this essay I am now much more aware of the contributions that these four generals made to our efforts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan- and now that I am more aware of their contributions I am afraid that their retirements will mean the loss of more American soldiers and a less effective foreign policy. And the worst part about these losses is that two of them stemmed from simply displeasing the Obama administration for stating the truth and the other two came from all the hoopla surrounding an extra-marital affair, none of which were performance related or broke any laws or committed any crimes (although for the record, I do think that Petraeus did wrong and was correct to resign).

Today the biggest battle that is being waged in our nation is a battle between those who believe in and learn about and study the reality of the situation- that there are facts, data, morals, values, society, results, real work, etc- and those who believe in and learn about and study the unreality of the situation- that all facts are meaningless, that data is twisted, that morality is just made up, that values are irrelevant, that society can just collapse, that results don't matter, that talking about work is just as good as really working, etc. And this battle spills over into the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan too.

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rest of the War on Terror, and the preparation for further wars to protect the United States and our interests, are important and it is meaningful to take time to learn about them and our efforts. It is important to know what actions our top generals choose, to study their methods, and to reward them for their innovative and good policy decisions. It is vital that our nation fight these wars with minimum loss of life yet maximum success in achieving our policy goals. And the American people and the world must know that our goals in these wars is and always has been the greater protection of individuals lives, liberty, and property in regions where these rights were formally not respected.

Perhaps the reason though that America does not recognize and reward and remember and treasure the successes and efforts that America has made around the world in our attempt to achieve these goals is because America is turning away from those very goals here at home. It is tough to reward and celebrate generals who protect people's lives and increase their liberties and work to promote property rights when at home, here in America, we have democratically elected a regime that is encouraging taxpayer money to be used to increase abortions, that is restricting choices that free citizens can make in healthcare and banking, and that is increasingly taking more of the property from its citizens in a steadily increasing number of ways.

The reality of our efforts in the War on Terror increasingly doesn't match the reality of America. Read some of these passages and try to compare them with the actions of our leaders at the national level- Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, cabinet members, and bureaucrats:

...This was only one of many “lines of operation” that Petraeus pursued in contrast with the less ambitious and less successful approach of his predecessors. He and General Ray Odierno, then the day-to-day commander in Iraq, pushed U.S. troops off the massive “forward operating bases” on which they had secured and isolated themselves. Troops were directed instead to live in population centers so they could provide security to the Iraqis around the clock, seven days a week. Petraeus also pressured Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (a Shiite) to approach the Sunnis, and to remove the most notorious anti-Sunni ethno-sectarians from his government. Petraeus oversaw the detention and killing of more insurgents than ever before without causing a backlash among the Sunni population, because his troops acted on precisely targeted intelligence. He instituted “counterinsurgency behind the wire” in detention facilities, to make sure that hard-core detainees in coalition custody were not able to cultivate new recruits behind bars. He targeted Iranian intelligence operatives who were supporting insurgent groups (among them the notorious Mahdi Army) fighting coalition forces. He also communicated clearly and without spin to the American public and Congress about the extent of the success he was achieving and the problems that still remained. And on and on. The scale and scope of Petraeus’s activities as commander of Multi-National Force–Iraq were exhaustive and exhausting....

...McChrystal has been credited with four innovations. First, he invited other intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and NSA, to send liaison officers to his headquarters, where he shared information generously with them—a radical change for the secretive culture of the special-operations forces. Those agencies, in turn, reciprocated by sharing more intelligence with JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) than in the past. Second, he improved JSOC’s interrogation facilities and trained interrogators to extract useful information without the use of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that became so controversial and notorious. Third, he emphasized “sensitive site exploitation,” ordering his men to take the time to gather up all the hard drives, papers, and other information they could grab at a target site. Fourth, McChrystal wrangled more manned and unmanned aircraft and more Internet bandwidth for JSOC, vastly increasing its ability to monitor potential targets. All this made it possible for JSOC to ramp up its operations, often launching a dozen missions a night in Iraq and Afghanistan similar to the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In some instances, new missions would be planned and executed within minutes to take advantage of intelligence generated at a target site...

...Allen is a courtly, cerebral Southerner who graduated from the Naval Academy and later became a professor and commandant of midshipmen there—the first Marine to fill that position. He made a name for himself as the deputy commander of Multi-National Forces in Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2007–2008, when he undertook the delicate negotiations that helped to wean the Sunni sheikhs from Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He later served as Petraeus’s deputy at Centcom before becoming his successor in Afghanistan, which made him (again) the first Marine to command an entire theater of war. Although this was his first major battlefield command, Allen performed more than capably in dealing with difficult challenges such as “Green on Blue” attacks by Afghan troops on their coalition counterparts. He oversaw the withdrawal of 33,000 surge forces while maintaining momentum in the south and expanding the size and capacity of the Afghan Security Forces. Just as important, Allen managed to get along with two prickly presidents whose support was essential for progress, Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama...

...Mattis first gained public attention as the one-star commander of a Marine task force that entered Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 to help Special Operations Forces mop up the remnants of the Taliban. His ability to push his Marines far inland, to the maximum extent of their helicopter range, was impressive. Even more impressive was his ability, as a two-star general, to lead the First Marine Division from Kuwait to Baghdad in a matter of weeks in the spring of 2003. So determined was Mattis to maintain this rate of advance that he fired a colonel whose regiment had been slowed by irregular attacks in the town of Nasiriya. The Marines’ assault helped make mincemeat out of Saddam Hussein’s defenses and allowed the American forces to reach Baghdad faster and with fewer losses than anticipated. As soon as Saddam fell, Mattis moved from conventional combat to conducting counterinsurgency and stabilization operations in southern Iraq with a minimum of firepower. “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,” he told his men, and he warned Iraqis that the Marines would be “no better friend, no worse enemy.”...

The entire article is great and reading it made me proud to be an American. I suggest you check it out.

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Posted By A Conservative Teacher to A Conservative Teacher at 4/30/2013 01:00:00 AM