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As Opposed To All Those Commanders In The Ether

“Congress voted yesterday to provide our troops with the funding and flexibility they need to protect our country,” Bush said in a statement Friday. “Rather than mandate arbitrary timetables for troop withdrawals or micromanage our military commanders, this legislation enables our servicemen and women to follow the judgment of commanders on the ground,” he added. […]

“Congress voted yesterday to provide our troops with the funding and flexibility they need to protect our country,” Bush said in a statement Friday.

“Rather than mandate arbitrary timetables for troop withdrawals or micromanage our military commanders, this legislation enables our servicemen and women to follow the judgment of commanders on the ground,” he added. ~AFP

Once again, a mutant strain of Vietnam Syndrome has come to dominate the debate over the war.  Disillusioned Vietnam hawks have told a story about Vietnam that suits the interests of many groups, so it has become something of a consensus view.  According to this story, it was terrible micromanagers from Washington who doomed an otherwise “winnable” conflict to ultimate failure.  Because, you see, it was the White House selecting bombing targets, and not the collapse of ARVN, that led to the collapse of South Vietnam.  Mr. Bush decided long ago that no one would confuse him for a President who was extremely familiar with the details of his own war, and has made a fetish of his own hands-off approach to the war.  He is the Decider who prefers to defer to those under his command. 

Ever since 1975, it has been the mantra of most politicians, especially Republican politicians, that they will follow the judgements of military commanders during wartime and will essentially cede most decisionmaking to these commanders (all the better to wash their hands of whatever comes out of the conflict, I suppose).  Critics of the President, particularly Democratic members of Congress, have decided that their best course of action is to get into a contest with Mr. Bush to see who can follow the “commanders on the ground” more assiduously.  Mr. Bush’s failure, as Obama will tell us, is that he does not pay attention to the situation “on the ground,” while Mr. Bush will retort that he will not tolerate politicians (which apparently does not include himself) meddling in these affairs.  When it comes to a choice between Congress and the “commanders,” as Mr. Bush memorably told us not long ago, he is “the commander guy.” 

Obama has a point, as far as it goes, since Mr. Bush’s obliviousness is now proverbial, but speaking about “the ground” in Iraq has moved beyond an appeal to realism and a desire to measure results in the real world to a convenient trope that allows antiwar Democrats the room to claim that they are actually more hard-headed and tough-minded than Mr. Bush with respect to winning the war.  This approach may be quite appealing to some presidential candidates, since it seems to make it possible to be antiwar and in favour of a more vigorous, “effective” war at the same time.  It is understandable why everyone now wants to fixate on the reality “on the ground,” since so many of the tactical and administrative errors of the first four years have been a product of the administration’s old hostility to empirical evidence, history and any expertise that might contradict received ideological maxims, but the phrase itself has become a cliche–so much so that Mr. Bush has embraced it–and it has ceased to mean very much.  Indeed, “commanders on the ground” and “situation on the ground” are fast approaching the meaninglessness of such stock phrases as “support the troops,” “cut and run” and, everyone’s favourite, “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” 

These phrases no longer refer to any actual coherent policy position, nor do they really refer back to anything in reality.  They are slogans used to say something in a less direct, but even more effective way.  When you want to say, “The administration is incompetent,” you say, “The President is ignoring the situation on the ground.”  Charges of incompetence are a dime a dozen in government, but this other accusation conveys the special quality of Mr. Bush’s incompetence–he is ignoring the situation on the ground.  That sounds much worse for Bush, which is why Democrats prefer to say this. 

Likewise, when you want to say, “We’re going to keep fighting this war forever,” you say, “We are following the advice of the commanders on the ground.”  It doesn’t matter what the advice of the commanders might actually be.  It doesn’t even matter whether the politicians actually follow that advice.  The commanders might unanimously call for withdrawal, but what matters is the attitude of the politician who expresses his respect and support for the decisions of the “commanders on the ground.”  This shows that he has the requisite hawkishness to be taken seriously on national security by people in the establishment. 

When you want to say, “Bow before the President,” you say, “Support the troops.”  We can tell this is the case because the phrase is quite often invoked at those moments when critics say something against the President.  Since virtually no one is saying anything against the troops, calls to “support the troops” might seem redundant, except that the phrase has next to nothing to do with the troops any longer.  There are uses of the phrase that may refer to actual troops, but very often this is almost incidental.  When you want to say, “I want to continue this war forever and ever,” you say, “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”  Fighting forever is what this phrase logically entails, because it implies that “they” will attack us “here” if we stop fighting “over there,” which means that we can never be safe unless we keep fighting “over there” against “them.”  Instead of saying something as crazy as that, it is much better to cast the entire conflict in strictly defensive terms.    

So there is an obsession with this “ground” on which the commanders are operating and with which Mr. Bush has virtually no acquaintance.  Since Mr. Bush was once a National Guard aviator, perhaps his lack of attachment to “the ground” is understandable.  It seems to me that all the other commanders–those on the sea, for instance–must be feeling terribly hedged in and micromanaged, since it is only the “commanders on the ground” who are given this much flexibility and leeway.

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