Analyst's note: Absolutely must read. Don't miss this article ... you are paying for this "war" in blood and treasure. An article certain to spur debate. Here’s an excerpt:
[....] STRATEGIC INCOHERENCE
There is no coherent strategy for reducing Middle Eastern support for radical Islam, for promoting U.S.-friendly regimes, and for fostering human rights and consensual government. Iraq is no longer the bad war and Afghanistan the good one we took our eye off; instead, we exited the former and will the latter regardless of the situation on the ground — on the rough premise that Bush started them, and Obama finished them, and that is all ye need to know.
To this day, no one in the administration can define “lead from behind” in the Libyan context. No one can explain what happened in Benghazi. And no one can summarize what is going on at present in Libya — or whether such an interventionist model is a blueprint for any future action elsewhere. When in 2009 Iranians hit the streets in protest against the mullahs’ theocracy, the administration went mum. Bashar Assad was first a “reformer” who might help to unlock the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, then a psychopath who was on the eve of getting the same just deserts from NATO as did Moammar Qaddafi, then someone who should be left alone to kill 60,000 of his own, then a run-of-the-mill thug not much worse, or better, than the motley groups seeking to dethrone him.
[....] Yet in the first four years of the Obama administration, the program was vastly expanded, as the kill tally soared to between 2,500 and 3,000 from some 300 or so strikes. Indeed, although the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq were supposedly winding down, the Obama administration probably killed more suspects by drone in its first year than had the Bush administration in its entire eight-year tenure. Even more important than the vastly greater frequency, Obama brought some new dimensions to the drone attacks : 1) The targeted killings were used far distant from ongoing warfronts and well apart from support for ground troops, as the U.S. now blew apart suspects — including American citizens — as far away as Yemen and the Horn of Africa. A Predator was no longer analogous to a pilotless F-16 used against enemy forces in the field, but more a sort of super-telescopic assassination rifle aimed, in Cold War–era style, against suspected individual enemy agents. 2) The program was institutionalized, on the theory that the Left would not dare object and thereby endanger the Obama domestic agenda. (The Right, it was assumed, would keep quiet, content at least that the judge, jury, and executioner Predators were putting some fear into jihadists as we withdrew from the Middle East.)
As pointed out by a U.S. Marine friend of mine.
From his perspective, the issue is one of failing to understand the fundamentals. George Bush declared war on a tactic, then ignored one third of the Clausewitzian trinity as he sent his army to war and his people to the mall, then further confused the issue by demanding Bin Laden dead or alive – is this war or a sheriff’s posse; a military or a police issue? The difference in the protocols for the employment of lethal force means we need to know the difference, and shame on us if we don’t.
Given this kettle of fish was handed to the current Obama Administration means the President had a decision to make – either stay true to his campaign pledges and throw out the entire strategy, such as it was, or embrace it.
Please read the entire article and let Victor David Hanson explain the fallacy of doing neither. You will also want to see Avoiding the Wars That Never End.
Semper Fidelis
