By Dave Anderson:
Dave Schuler makes a very good point in response to Steve's recent post concerning the McChystal leak; the policy options being discussed in the leak should not be surprising as this is where the policy debate has been ambling along for a while:
the Gen. McChrystal would advocate a counter-insurgency strategy in
Afghanistan, and given conventional counter-insurgency doctrine, I
think it will be difficult for President Obama to deny him more troops....
As I and others noted two months ago, the writing was on the wall as to what McChystal would recommend just be examining his advisory group. Everyone of his advisers either are full fledged COINistas or advocates for the Iraqi Surge who conveniently forget that the Iraqi Surge while tamping down violence through a combination of factors, failed in its grand strategic intent of creating a peaceful window for a comprehensive political settlement agreeable to all parties to be hashed out. The range of acceptable discourse within that advisory group was small, and mainly limited to means and not ends; much like the range of discourse in our foreign policy in general.
discussion is very narrow. And getting the argument that an open-ended
system and society transforming effort that optimistically will take a
decade or more and cost several trillion dollars may not be a good idea
has been damn difficult because there is no "credentialled" and
"legitimate" figure who will make that argument.
And we have been seeing the steady drum-beat of officially unofficial leaks from that advisory group. First Anthony Cordesman wrote that he thought the US needed to deploy another 40,000 to 45,000 more troops in addition to the current (and newly ratcheted-up) baseline of 68,000 US soldiers. Now we have the Kagan family mentioning the same number, despite the fact that the US Army and Marines do not have a spare brigade available for another six months unless someone takes a sledgehammer to the deployment schedule.
These trial balloons have been filled with hydrogen, and besides bloggers asking pertinent questions without answers, none of them have burst into flames.
And again, none of this should have been a surprise, for the second most important thing a leader can do besides promulgate a clear vision and objective set for an organization is ensuring that his subordinates are on the same page and working towards the same objective set. I know if I interviewed for a major position with significant discretion, the individual with ultimate hire/fire authority over me would want to know whom I would be seeking advise from in order to judge whether or not my vision coincided with the greater strategic vision. If the person holding the hire/fire authority sees the advisory group built for a strategic review and does not object to its composition as well as the highly probable outputs given past history, then I have to assume that the advisory group and its probable conclusions are acceptable to the organization's leadership.
So while the Sunday leak timing is a bit odd, the policy conclusions are not particularly surprising given the signals that have been telegraphed for the past eighteen months.
