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A Former Motivational Speaker

When I first saw the story that several GOP campaigns were contemplating Gen. Tommy Franks as a choice for VP, my first reaction was incredulity.  As we all know, he has to his credit the initial phase of the Afghan War, which was followed by a less satisfactory conclusion in eastern Afghanistan.  He was also head of Central Command […]

When I first saw the story that several GOP campaigns were contemplating Gen. Tommy Franks as a choice for VP, my first reaction was incredulity.  As we all know, he has to his credit the initial phase of the Afghan War, which was followed by a less satisfactory conclusion in eastern Afghanistan.  He was also head of Central Command during the initial, well-executed invasion of Iraq, which was followed by quite unsatisfactory post-invasion security (there seems to be a pattern here), on which more in a moment.  Certainly, a fair part of this can be laid at Rumsfeld’s door, and Franks was executing the orders he received, but it seems frankly bizarre to me that any GOP nominee would want to fight an election with a running mate who gives the other side free shots to make “Tora Bora” and “Phase IV” into shorthand for Republican incompetence in military affairs.  Why bring up all that old baggage and give the other side such an easy target?  (The short answer is that there are not all that many credible elected Republicans at the state or federal level who want to sacrifice their future political prospects in what many probably regard as a lost cause–nobody wants to be next year’s Geraldine Ferraro.)

Any reader of Fiasco will come away with a much-diminished impression of Gen. Franks, who comes across as having no grasp on what the difference between strategy and tactics is.  That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in his ability to fulfill the duties of President, should the need arise.  (On his behalf, I should say that most of the jokers who would head the ticket are probably even less qualified.)  Indeed, there is an entire subsection in Fiasco entitled “Franks flunks strategy” (p. 127-129), part of which reads:

The inside word in the U.S. military long had been that Franks didn’t think strategically.  For example, when the general held an off-the-record session with officers studying at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, in the spring of 2002, not long after the biggest battle of the Afghan war, Operation Anaconda, one student posed the classic Clausewitzian question: What is the nature of the war you are fighting in Afghanistan?  “That’s a great question for historians,” Franks side-stepped, recalled another officer who was there.  “Let me tell you what we are doing.”  Franks proceeded to discuss how U.S. troops cleared cave complexes in Afghanistan.  It was the most tactical answer possible, quite remote from what the officer had asked.  It would have been a fine reply for a sergeant to offer, but not a senior general.  “He really was comfortable at the tactical level,” this officer recalled with dismay.

Ricks then goes on to explain how this inability to think strategically led Franks to a war plan that “was built on the mistaken strategic goal of capturing Baghdad, and it confused removing Iraq’s regime with the far more difficult task of changing the entire country.”  In fairness to Franks, Rumsfeld had had no intention of sticking around long to change the entire country, which was one of the reasons why there were so few soldiers sent into Iraq and why “Phase IV” was so risibly unplanned and lacking in preparations.  Speed, flexibility,”get in, get out, a man alone” (so to speak)–this was Rumsfeld’s approach to warfighting, and it had no place for intensive, large-scale occupations.  As far as Rumsfeld and Franks were concerned, the only objective was destroying the regime.  According to the theories of Wolfowitz et al., the Iraqis should have been able to take things over almost immediately, making a prolonged presence in Iraq unnecessary.  For the Pentagon, it was in any case undesirable.  Needless to say, someone who is reputedly not good at thinking strategically and who is, as Arkin puts it, “not known as especially interesting or smart” does not strike me as the sort of man you would want as first in the line of succession to the Presidency. 

P.S. Do my eyes deceive me, or is Brent Scowcroft advising the McCain campaign?  Evidently, so is Powell.  I suppose that doesn’t surprise me all that much, but I had not heard this before today.  I really don’t want to hear very much complaining from Republican “realists” about the lack of “realists” in the GOP presidential field when some of the foremost supposedly “realist” and “moderate” figures in the party are advising one of the most die-hard militarists in the race.  These two may be advising him out of GOP establishmentarian solidarity, since McCain was supposed to be the presumptive favourite, at least until the activists and donors had something to say about it, but it is still telling that the prominent “realists” and militarists overlap and mingle so easily.

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