AOL News has a new home! The Huffington Post.

Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!

Hot on HuffPost:

See More Stories
Politics Daily

Happy Talk About War Doesn't Fly With Troops on the Ground

2 years ago
  0 Comments Say Something  »
Text Size
David Wood
David Wood
Columnist
Author Bio »
Contact Author »
Subscribe :
In Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines last year, I tried to argue against the grunts' growing conviction that their deployment would be extended at the last minute, that their families' plans for a joyful homecoming in September would be dashed. The secretary of defense and even the Marine Corps commandant, I pointed out, had promised: No extension. The Marines scoffed at these assurances from Official Washington. One company first sergeant glumly decorated his sweltering hooch for Christmas.
Sure enough: The operational plan didn't go as Washington predicted. The enemy was a little more cunning than expected; things took longer than intended. At the last minute and despite previous promises, the Marines were told to stay on another couple of months.
Did anyone else have a grunt's reaction when President Obama talked about the war in Afghanistan this week?
"Increasingly,'' the president said, "the Afghan army, Afghan police, Afghan courts, Afghan government are taking more responsibility for their own security'' and so we're getting closer to an "exit strategy.''
In brief remarks in the Oval Office Tuesday, Obama explained that " . . . if we can get through a successful election in September and we continue to apply the training approach to the Afghan security forces and we combine that with a much more effective approach to economic development inside Afghanistan, then my hope is, is that we will be able to begin transitioning into a different phase in -- in Afghanistan.'
Ahem. If we learned anything from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is that war is uncontrollable. That it does not march to the drumbeats of rhetoric or the PowerPoint plans coming from Washington. That to some extent it is unpredictable – except for the seldom-heard prediction that war will take longer, cost more and resolve less than hoped for.
Obama's comments brought to mind an off-the-cuff remark by President Bush in October 2006, when bloodshed in Iraq had gone off the charts and the Pentagon was desperately casting about for a new strategy.
Asked if "we're winning'' in Iraq, Bush blurted: "Absolutely, we're winning!''
Should presidents and their administrations be relentless cheerleaders after they send young Americans into combat? Or should they risk losing public support by passing on the bad news from their commanders?
"All political leaders understand that you can get in trouble if your rhetoric is too rosy compared to what is happening on the ground,'' said Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who served from 2005 to 2007 as Bush's White House adviser on managing public opinion on the war. Presidential rhetoric, he said, "has to correspond to facts on the ground.''
It is also true, Feaver said, that "political leaders are not likely to start wars they think they are going to lose, and not likely to advocate military operations they think will fail. So yes, leaders are likely to believe that they can win and prevail in the military contest in which they find themselves.''
And that inevitably leads to expressed optimism.
It was six years ago that the secretary of defense appeared before a solemn Senate committee to talk about the future of the Iraq war. Ten weeks earlier, U.S. forces had swept into Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein had escaped in the chaos of celebration and looting. The cavalry squadron I was with in east Baghdad had had its first casualties -- and with rising violence against Americans, there was a spooky sense (among the grunts) that hard times lay ahead.
"The problem is real, but it's being dealt with in an orderly and forceful fashion by coalition forces,'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9, 2003. "We are dealing with those remnants of the regime'' and "pockets of resistance.''
"Large portions of Iraq are stable,'' he declared, seven months before the brutal slaying of four American civilians in Fallujah ignited years of bloody street fighting across Anbar Province.
"With each passing week, more services come online, power and water are restored in more of the country, gas lines disappear, and more Iraqi police are on the street,'' Rumsfeld reported.
Completely missing the gathering tsunami of sectarian bitterness that would engulf Iraq for the next five years, Rumsfeld explained that the violence was being caused by a "small elite'' that was "unhappy'' at being turned out of power.
Not to be outdone, the top Iraq war commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, assured the senators that not only was the Iraq war wrapped up, but so was the conflict in Afghanistan.
American troops, he declared, "continue to move forward to the complete achievement of all of our objectives in Operation Iraqi Freedom as well as Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) . . . [and] to bring terrorists to justice, to dismantle their networks.''
That jaunty "can-do, have-done'' isn't heard much out on the battlefield, where there is seldom a "complete achievement of all our objectives.''
Combat commanders like Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, who leads the 4,000-man Marine initiative in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, freely acknowledge that this fight will last a very long time and that they don't have the resources they need.
"What we've said is . . . where we go, we stay; and where we stay, we hold; and where we hold, we build . . . ' Nicholson told reporters this week in a video teleconference from Afghanistan.
"I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it,'' the Marine commander added. "The fact of the matter is, we don't have enough Afghan forces and I'd like more. Right now I've got 4,000 Marines in Helmand with about 600 . . . 650 Afghan forces. Imagine if I had 4,000 Marines with 4,000 Afghan forces!''
Such candor seemed to be missing from Obama's comments this week – and was certainly AWOL when senior officials addressed the prospects in Iraq six years ago.
Rumsfeld, for instance, fumed when Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked why there was no plan to help rebuild Iraq, and no estimate of what that would cost.
"I think it's a little heady and arrogant to think you can rebuild another peoples' country,'' Rumsfeld lectured, shortly before American proconsul L. Paul Bremer launched an attempted American-style remake of Iraq's economy and government.
Rumsfeld warned Kennedy "not to think that we're going to go in there and send the American taxpayers' dollars, and billions of them, trying to rebuild a country . . . ''
According to the latest estimate, the United States has spent more than $50 billion on reconstruction in Iraq.
It was Republican Sen. John McCain who lectured Rumsfeld right back, urging him and the president to level with the public.
"Americans are unsure about the future of our involvement in Iraq,'' McCain said that July day in 2003, as 4,000 American combat deaths loomed in the future.
"I am convinced without a doubt that when Americans are told what the plan (is) for postwar Iraq, then I think you will receive overwhelming support on the part of the American people,'' McCain said, adding, "I hope you take that as a constructive comment.''
"I do," Rumsfeld responded curtly.
It was not to be. Even as early as July 2003, criticism of the war and its conduct was virulent, and the Bush administration felt it had to speak positively in order to counterbalance the criticism.
"There was no conscious effort to emphasize the positive, but on the other hand, if we don't note positive developments, no one will,'' Feaver said. By the time he arrived at the White House in 2005 to help out, the decision was made to try to avoid saying anything that sounded like "light at the end of the tunnel.''
"The idea was that if we said something positive, to make sure there was qualifying language about this being 'a long, hard slog' or words to that effect. That was a deliberate effort to make sure we did not fuel the critique that the Bush administration was all happy talk,'' Feaver said.
Irony: Bush got the "happy talk" tag anyway.
Today's White House doesn't have to fend off a rabid antiwar movement, and there are plenty of other diversions (Sotomayor, cap 'n' trade, General Motors). But the time may come when war reclaims public attention.
Lesson for Obama? Avoid categorical war claims ("Absolutely, we're winning!'') Balance positive news with sober and realistic assessments from the battlefield.
And expect some skepticism from the grunts out there.
Filed Under: Iraq
Tagged: afghanistan, afghanistan war, AfghanistanWar, barack obama, BarackObama, iraq, iraq war, IraqWar
More articles from David Wood »

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

Follow Politics Daily

  • Comics
%PostTitle%
robert-and-donna-trussell
CHAOS THEORY
Featuring political comics by Robert and Donna TrussellMore>>
  • Woman UP Video
politics daily videos
Weekly Videos
Woman Up, Politics Daily's Online Sunday ShowMore»
politics daily videos
TV Appearances
Showcasing appearances by Politics Daily staff and contributors.More>>

News From Our Partners