Monday, August 21, 2017

Mark Perry — How Generals Talked Another President into Losing Strategy

Another Pentagon observer had a much different take. “This is Joe Biden’s plan, all the way,” he said, referring to the then-Vice President’s recommendation to Obama back in 2009. “Biden said that we should increase counterterrorism operations, draw down U.S. forces in the provinces, increase pressure on Pakistan and make a deal with India. Obama said ‘no’ to the idea, but you can bet Mattis was listening. This is his plan all the way.”
Almost everyone at the Pentagon agrees, though key senior military officers who have been privy to James Mattis’s thinking over the last weeks (but who remain unconvinced by it) provide a cautionary, and nearly fatalistic, note. “This Trump plan, at least so far as I understand it, sounds a lot like the kind of plan we’ve come up with again and again since the end of World War Two,” a senior Pentagon officer says. “We’re going to surge troops, reform the government we support and put pressure on our allies. In this building [the Pentagon] there’s a hell of a lot of skepticism. And that’s because we all know what this new strategy really means – and what it means that the only way we can get out of Afghanistan is to get further in. You know, it seems to me that if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that that doesn’t work.”
The American Conservative
How Generals Talked Another President into Losing Strategy
Mark Perry

9 comments:

MRW said...

You're a troll.

Matt Franko said...

MRW it's a bot....

Matt Franko said...

There are financial differences in Trumps plan...

Looks like he is going to start to extract some form of tribute from Afghanistan to at least start to get some of the munnie back...

Matt Franko said...

"In case of alliances, lesser parties may pay tribute to more powerful parties as a sign of allegiance and often in order to finance projects that benefited both parties. To be called "tribute" a recognition by the payer of political submission to the payee is normally required;"

"Payments by a superior political entity to an inferior one, made for various purposes, are described by terms including "subsidy".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute

Moving away from subsidy closer towards "empire!" that you guys keep saying we have meanwhile we do not have...

Add "empire!" to the list along with "militarization of police!", "wealth to the top!", "war deaths!" others..., those things may come about but not yet....

Matt Franko said...

MRW:

https://goo.gl/images/kaHU95


They will do anything that might lead to acquiring more USD over there... it's the name of the game for the ROW...

Tom Hickey said...

Looks like he is going to start to extract some form of tribute from Afghanistan to at least start to get some of the munnie back...

According to the post Trump has not thought this through. Perry claims that there's no economical way to do profit from extraction in Afghanistan, not to mention the challenging environment in which it would have to be done with a war going on.

Tom Hickey said...

They will do anything that might lead to acquiring more USD over there... it's the name of the game for the ROW...

The US government has created this situation by weaponizing the USD to ensure US financial control globally.

Matt Franko said...

They're USD zombies Tom.... some form of mental illness..

Tom Hickey said...

Method in "madness."