TomDispatch
Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Words Not to Die For
By Andrew Bacevich
Posted on March 21, 2017, Printed on March 21, 2017
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176256/ ;
U.S. Marines are, for the first time, deploying to Syria (with more to
come). Theres talk of an enduring U.S. military presence in Iraq, while
additional U.S. troops are being dispatched to neighboring Kuwait with an
eye to the wars in both Iraq and Syria. Yemen has been battered by a
veritable blitz of drone strikes and other air attacks. Afghanistan seems
to be in line for an increase in American forces. The new president has
just restored to the CIA the power to use drones to strike more or less
anywhere on the world battlefield, recently a Pentagon prerogative, and is
evidently easing restrictions on the Pentagons use of drones as well. U.S.
military commanders are slated to get more leeway to make decisions locally
and the very definition of what qualifies as a battlefield looks like its
about to change (which will mean even less attention to collateral damage
or civilian casualties). President Trump may soon designate various areas
outside more or less official American war zones -- since the U.S. Congress
no longer declares war, they cant truly be official -- as temporary areas
of active hostility. That will grant U.S. commanders greater leeway in
launching attacks on terror groups in places like Somalia. In fact, this
already seems to have happened in Yemen, according to the New York Times,
opening the way for a disastrous Special Operations Forces raid there that
caused the death of a Navy SEAL and possibly nine Yemeni children (the
youngest three months old), while evidently accomplishing next to nothing.
In other words, in the early months of the Trump era, U.S. wars and
conflicts across the Greater Middle East are being expanded and escalated.
This isnt exactly a new process, and isnt yet at the level of either the
failed Iraqi Surge of 2007 or the failed Afghan one of 2010. Still, you
might think that the almost instant failure of that Yemen raid would have
rung a few familiar warning bells in Washington when it comes to escalating
Americas wars in the region. If so, you would evidently be oh-so-wrong.
The history of the last 15 years tells us that in Washington such setbacks
couldnt matter less. At the moment, the generals who have headed down these
very paths before are evidently recommending to an eager new president that
its the height of wisdom to head down them again.
As TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author of Americas War for the
Greater Middle East, points out today, this is now business as usual in
militarized Washington in the twenty-first century. Its so much the law of
the land that the Pentagon has developed the perfect language for masking,
perhaps to itself as much as others, just how dismally familiar this process
actually is. Tom
Prepare, Pursue, Prevail!
Onward and Upward with U.S. Central Command
By Andrew J. Bacevich
By way of explaining his eight failed marriages, the American bandleader
Artie Shaw once remarked, I am an incurable optimist. In reality, Artie
was an incurable narcissist. Utterly devoid of self-awareness, he never
looked back, only forward.
So, too, with the incurable optimists who manage present-day American wars.
What matters is not past mistakes but future opportunities. This describes
the view of General Joseph Votel, current head of U.S. Central Command
(CENTCOM). Since its creation in 1983, CENTCOM has emerged as the ne plus
ultra of the Pentagons several regional commands, the place where the
action is always hot and heavy. Votel is the latest in a long train of
four-star generals to preside over that action.
The title of this essay (exclamation point included) captures in a single
phrase the strategic approach that Votel has devised for CENTCOM. That
approach, according to the commands website, is proactive in nature and
endeavors to set in motion tangible actions in a purposeful, consistent, and
continuous manner.
This strategic approach forms but one element in General Votels
multifaceted (if murky) command narrative, which he promulgated last year
upon taking the helm at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Other
components include a culture, a vision, a mission, and priorities.
CENTCOMs culture emphasizes persistent excellence, as the command
strives to understand and help others to comprehend, with granularity and
clarity, the complexities of our region. The vision, indistinguishable
from the mission except perhaps for those possessing advanced degrees in
hermeneutics, seeks to provide a more stable and prosperous region with
increasingly effective governance, improved security, and trans-regional
cooperation. Toward that estimable end, CENTCOMs priorities include
forging partnerships with other nations based upon shared values,
actively counter[ing] the malign influence of hostile regimes, and
degrading and defeating violent extremist organizations and their
networks.
At present, CENTCOM is busily implementing the several components of Votels
command narrative across an area of responsibility (AOR) consisting of 20
nations, among them Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As the
CENTCOM website puts it, without batting a digital eyelash, that AOR spans
more than 4 million square miles and is populated by more than 550 million
people from 22 ethnic groups, speaking 18 languages with hundreds of
dialects and confessing multiple religions which transect national borders.
According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated
Terms, an AOR is the geographical area associated with a combatant command
within which a geographic combatant commander has authority to plan and
conduct operations. Yet this anodyne definition fails to capture the spirit
of the enterprise in which General Votel is engaged.
One imagines that there must be another Department of Defense Dictionary,
kept under lock-and-key in the Pentagon, that dispenses with the bland
language and penchant for deceptive euphemisms. That dictionary would define
an AOR as a vast expanse within which the United States seeks to impose
order without exercising sovereignty. An AOR combines aspects of colony,
protectorate, and contested imperial frontier. In that sense, the term
represents the latest incarnation of the informal empire that American
elites have pursued in various forms ever since U.S. forces liberated Cuba
in 1898.
To say that a military officer presiding over an AOR plans and conducts
operations is a bit like saying that Jeff Bezos sells books. Its a small
truth that evades a larger one. To command CENTCOM is to function as a
proconsul, to inhabit as a co-equal the rarified realm of kings, presidents,
and prime ministers. CENTCOM commanders shape the future of their AOR -- or
at least fancy that they do.
Sustaining expectations of shaping the future requires a suitably
accommodating version of the past. For CENTCOM, history is a record of
events selected and arranged to demonstrate progress. By testifying to the
achievements of previous CENTCOM commanders, history thereby validates
Votels own efforts to carry on their work. Not for nothing, therefore,
does the commands website include this highly sanitized account of its
recent past:
In the wake of 9-11, the international community found Saddam Hussein's
continued lack of cooperation with United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
Resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction unacceptable. Hussein's
continued recalcitrance led the UNSC to authorize the use of force by a
U.S.-led coalition. Operation Iraqi Freedom began 19 March 2003.
Following the defeat of both the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (9 November
2001) and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq (8 April 2003), CENTCOM has
continued to provide security to the new freely-elected governments in those
countries, conducting counterinsurgency operations and assisting host nation
security forces to provide for their own defense.
Setbacks, disappointments, miscalculations, humiliations: you wont hear
about them from CENTCOM. Like Broadways Annie, down at headquarters in
Tampa theyre just thinkin' about tomorrow, which clears away the
cobwebs, and the sorrow, till there's none!
(Give the Vietnam War the CENTCOM treatment and you would end up with
something like this: Responding to unprovoked North Vietnamese attacks and
acting at the behest of the international community, a U.S.-led coalition
arrived to provide security to the freely-elected South Vietnamese
government, conducting counterinsurgency operations and assisting host
nation security forces to provide for their own defense.)
In fact, the U.N. Security Council did not authorize the 2003 invasion of
Iraq. Indeed, efforts by George W. Bushs administration to secure such an
authorization failed abysmally, collapsing in a welter of half-truths and
outright falsehoods. What much of the international community found
unacceptable, more so even than Saddams obstreperousness, was Bushs
insistence that he was going to have his war regardless of what others might
think. As for celebrating the defeat of the Taliban and of Saddam, thats
the equivalent of declaring game over when the whistle sounds ending the
first quarter of a football game.
More to the point, to claim that, in the years since, CENTCOM has continued
to provide security to the new freely-elected governments of Afghanistan
and Iraq whitewashes history in ways that would cause the most shameless
purveyor of alt-facts on Fox News to blush. The incontestable truth is that
Afghans and Iraqis have not known security since U.S. forces, under the
direction of General Votels various predecessors, arrived on the scene.
Rather than providing security, CENTCOM has undermined it.
CENTCOM Headquarters (Where Its Always Groundhog Day)
Even so, as the current steward of CENTCOMs culture, vision, mission,
strategic approach, and priorities, General Votel remains undaunted. In his
view, everything that happened prior to his assuming ownership of the
CENTCOM AOR is irrelevant. What matters is what will happen from now on --
in Washington-speak, going forward. As with Artie Shaw, serial
disappointments leave intact the conviction that persistence will ultimately
produce a happy ending.
Earlier this month, Votel provided a progress report to the Senate Armed
Services Committee and outlined his expectations for future success. In a
city that now competes for the title of Comedy Central, few paid serious
attention to what the CENTCOM commander had to say. Yet his presentation
was, in its own way, emblematic of how, in the Age of Trump, U.S. national
security policy has become fully divorced from reality.
General Votel began by inventorying the various drivers of instability
afflicting his AOR. That list, unsurprisingly enough, turned out to be a
long one, including ethnic and sectarian divisions, economic
underdevelopment, an absence of opportunity for young people susceptible to
unrest [and] radical ideologies, civil wars, humanitarian crises, large
refugee populations, and competition among outside actors, including Russia
and China, seeking to promote their interests and supplant U.S. influence in
the region. Not qualifying for mention as destabilizing factors, however,
were the presence and activities of U.S. military forces, their footprint
dwarfing that of Russia and China.
Indeed, the balance of Votels 64-page written statement argued, in effect,
that U.S. military activities are the key to fixing all that ails the
CENTCOM AOR. After making a brief but obligatory bow to the fact that a
solely military response is not sufficient to address the regions
problems, he proceeded to describe at length the military response (and only
the military response) that will do just that.
Unfortunately for General Votel, length does not necessarily correlate with
substance. Once upon a time, American military professionals prized brevity
and directness in their writing. Not so the present generation of generals
who are given to logorrhea. Consider just this bit of cliché-ridden drivel
-- I could quote vast passages of it -- that Votel inflicted on members of
the United States Senate. In a region beset by myriad challenges, he
reported,
we must always be on the look-out for opportunities to seize the initiative
to support our objectives and goals. Pursuing opportunities means that we
are proactive -- we dont wait for problems to be presented; we look for
ways to get ahead of them. It also means that we have to become comfortable
with transparency and flat communications -- our ability to understand our
AOR better than anyone else gives us the advantage of knowing where
opportunities exist. Pursuing opportunities also means we have to take risk
-- by delegating authority and responsibility to the right level, by
trusting our partners, and being willing to trust our best instincts in
order to move faster than our adversaries.
In third-tier business schools, bromides of this sort might pass for best
practices. But my guess is that George C. Marshall or Dwight D. Eisenhower
would award the author of that paragraph an F and return him to staff
college for further instruction.
Frothy verbiage aside, what exactly does General Votel propose? The answer
-- for those with sufficient patience to wade through the entire 64 pages --
reduces to this: persist. In concrete terms, that means keeping on killing
and enabling our allies to do the same until the other side is finally
exhausted and gives up. In other words, its the movie Groundhog Day
transposed from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to Tampa and then to
Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the bodies continue to pile up.
True, the document Votel presented to Congress is superficially
comprehensive, with sections touting everything from Building Partner
Capacity (we must be forward-leaning and empower our partners to meet
internal security challenges) to creating a Global Engagement Center
(The best way to defeat an idea is to present a better, more appealing
idea). Strip away the fluff, however, and whats left is nothing more than
a call to keep doing what CENTCOM has been doing for years now.
To see what all this really means, practically speaking, just check out
CENTCOM press releases for the week of March 5th through 10th. The titles
alone suffice to describe a situation where every day is like the one that
preceded it:
March 5: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and
Iraq
March 6: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and
Iraq
March 7: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and
Iraq
March 8: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and
Iraq
March 9: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and
Iraq
March 10: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and
Iraq
As the good nuns used to tell me back in parochial school, actions speak
louder than words. What the CENTCOM commander says matters less than what
CENTCOM forces do. What they are doing is waging an endless war of
attrition.
Ludendorff Would Have Approved
Punch a hole and let the rest follow.
During the First World War, that aphorism, attributed to General Erich
Ludendorff, captured the essence of the German armys understanding of
strategy, rooted in the conviction that violence perpetrated on a sufficient
scale over a sufficient period of time will ultimately render a politically
purposeless war purposeful. The formula didnt work for Germany in
Ludendorffs day and yielded even more disastrous results when Hitler
revived it two decades later.
Of course, U.S. military commanders today dont make crude references to
punching holes. They employ language that suggests discrimination,
deliberation, precision, and control as the qualities that define the
American way of war. They steer clear of using terms like attrition. Yet
differences in vocabulary notwithstanding, the U.S. militarys present-day
MO bears a considerable resemblance to the approach that Ludendorff took
fully a century ago. And for the last decade and a half, U.S. forces
operating in the CENTCOM AOR have been no more successful than were German
forces on the Western Front in achieving the purposes that ostensibly made
war necessary.
To divert attention from this disturbing fact, General Votel offers Congress
and by extension the American people a 64-page piece of propaganda. Whether
he himself is deluded or dishonest is difficult to say, just as it remains
difficult to say whether General William Westmoreland was deluded or
dishonest when he assured Congress in November 1967 that victory in Vietnam
was in sight. With 1968, Westmoreland promised, a new phase is now
starting. We have reached an important point when the end begins now to
come into view.
Westmoreland was dead wrong, as the enemys 1968 Tet Offensive soon
demonstrated. That a comparable disaster, no doubt different in form, will
expose Votels own light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel assessment as equally
fraudulent is a possibility, even if one to which American political and
military leaders appear to be oblivious. This much is certain: in the
CENTCOM AOR the end is not even remotely in view.
What are we to make of this charade of proconsuls parading through
Washington to render false or misleading reports on the status of the
American empires outer precincts?
Perhaps the time has come to look elsewhere for advice and counsel. Whether
generals like Votel are deluded or dishonest is ultimately beside the point.
More relevant is the fact that the views they express -- and that
inexplicably continue to carry weight in Washington -- are essentially of no
value. So many years later, no reason exists to believe that they know what
they are doing.
To reground U.S. national security policy in something that approximates
reality would require listening to new voices, offering views long deemed
heretical.
Let me nonetheless offer you an example:
Fifteen years after launching a worldwide effort to defeat and destroy
terrorist organizations, the United States finds itself locked in a
pathologically recursive loop; we fight to prevent attacks and defend our
values, only to incite further violence against ourselves and allies while
destabilizing already chaotic regions..."
That is not the judgment of some lefty from Cambridge or San Francisco, but
of Major John Q. Bolton, a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghan Wars. Within
that brief passage is more wisdom than in all of General Votels 64 pages of
blather.
I submit that Boltons grasp of our predicament is infinitely superior to
Votels. The contrast between the two is striking. The officer who wears
no stars dares to say what is true; the officer wearing four stars
obfuscates. If the four-stars abandon obfuscation for truth, then and only
then will they deserve our respectful attention. In the meantime, its like
looking to Artie Shaw for marriage counseling.
Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author most recently of
Americas War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick
Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's
latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global
Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2017 Andrew J. Bacevich
© 2017 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
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