Them Pentagon Blues

Mackubin Thomas Owens, a professor at the Naval War College, has a must-read piece in the Wall Street Journal on civil-military planning for counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. He demonstrates the painful reality of frequent institutional failure at the highest levels of military command. Bush, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, was forced to second-guess, ignore or replace many of the top military planners until he found his U.S. Grant in David Petraeus. The anti-Bush hysteria of the MSM has lionized many of the incompetents at the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department. After all, to the military illiterates at The Old Gray Whore and her sickly ilk, to oppose Bush is to be in the right.

Owens not only debunks this absurd fantasy, but he does so in the context of a superlative understanding of strategic planning at the civil-military level. The key section:

"The plausibility of the narrative rests on two questionable principles. The first is that soldiers have the right to a voice in making policy regarding the use of the military instrument -- that indeed they have the right to insist that their views be adopted. The second is that the judgment of soldiers is inherently superior to that of civilians when it comes to military affairs. Both of these principles are at odds with the American practice of civil-military relations, and with the historical record.

In our republic the uniformed military advises the civilian authorities, but has no right to insist that its views be adopted. Of course, uniformed officers have an obligation to stand up to civilian leaders if they think a policy is flawed. They must convey their concerns to civilian policy-makers forcefully and truthfully. But once a policy decision is made, soldiers are obligated to carry it out to the best of their ability, whether their advice is heeded or not.

Moreover, even when it comes to strictly military affairs, soldiers are not necessarily more prescient than civilian policy makers. This is confirmed by the historical record."

Read and learn, mes enfants.