Petraeus dissertation--fast as lightning
Thanks to my ever-growing army of faithfuls, I got my hands on the Petraeus Ph.D. dissertation and it's...long. It also frankly seems like a fantastic exercise in saying nothing. I've obviously not read the whole thing yet, but I have thoroughly poured over both the conclusion and the section about the lessons the military learned from Vietnam, and it seems that, to a great extent, Petraeus stopped short at describing the various ways the military reacted to Vietnam instead of making any substantive arguments about how the military should have responded to Vietnam. It's very meta. So meta, in fact, that one could in theory use his dissertation to argue for either side of the Iraq debate and to impute just about any school of Vietnam-thinking to Petraeus himself. Great, I suppose, for propaganda purposes, but not so great if your goal is to better understand the mind of the man supposedly (though not actually) in charge of our Iraq policy.
I'll excerpt a few key passages below, keep reading the manuscript, and then maybe say more later. One real, important takeaway, though, comes from this segment:
Vietnam showed the military that there are finite limits to how long the American public will support a protracted conflict--at least a conflict that is not viewed as a crusade. This awareness was not, of coure, a complete revelation to all in the military. Among 20th century wars that the United States entered, only World War II enjoyed overwhelming support....For the military, therefore, Vietnam was an extremely painful reminder that when it comes to intervention, time and patience are not American virtues in abundant supply. "If Americans do not win their wars in a weekend," Colonel Peter Dunn wrote after Vietnam, "they tire of them." In the end, the "essential domino," as Leslie Gelb termed it, was public opinion.
It goes on like this, and may even be correct. But, if anything, what this shows is that the political apparatus responds to the public's sense of futility of mission and not the other way around. So when conservatives decry anti-war calls from liberal politicians or accuse liberals of breaking the will of the American people, what they're really decrying is the liberal unwillingness to cynically manipulate the public into backing an effort they either disapprove of, know to be doomed, or both.
Key passages:
The military also took from Vietnam a new recognition of the limits of American military power in solving certain types of problems in world affairs. In particular, Vietnam planted in the minds of many in the military doubts about the ability of U.S. forces to conduct successful large-scale counter insurgencies....[W]hile recognizing that military force cannot solve all problems, particularly some of those traditionally associated with the low intensity end of the spectrum of conflict, there is continued faith among military leaders in the importance of military capabilities in support of America's commitments in Europe, Northeast Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere....
[M]any in the military believe that the United States armed forces can win small wars if allowed to do so. Those who hold this view tend to believe that Vietnam was less an illustration of the limitations of American military power than an example of what happens if that power is limited and not used to best advantage. This feeling springs from a conviction that the U.S. military in Vietnam were so hemmed in by restrictions that they could not accomplish their mission. The lesson for those of this persuasion, therefore, is that the military must be given a freer hand in future military operations. Even among the most fervent believers in this logic, however, there is a new recognition that the world is more intractable, and intervention with U.S. troops more problematic. Even those who remain confident that the U.S. could win a protracted small war, if allowed to do so, are acutely sensitive to what General Maxwell Taylor has described as the
great diffiiculty in rallying this country behind a foreign issue involving the use of armed force, which does not provide an identified enemy posing a clear threat to our homeland or the vital interests of long time friends....[W]e should beware of literal application of lessons extracted from Vietnam, or any other past event, to present or future problems without due regard for the specific circumstances that surround those problems. Study of Vietnam--and of other historical occurrences--should endeavor to gain perspective and understanding, rather than hard and fast lessons that might be applied too easily without proper reflection and sufficiently rigorous analysis.
Whether any of this means that Petraeus thinks Iraq is hopeless, or that Petraeus thinks himself uniquely suited to overcome the hopelessness, and whether any of this means that Petraeus thinks George Bush wrong or right to bludgeon liberals with historical misreadings of Vietnam is, it seems, still anyone's guess.
Comments
Great, I suppose, for propaganda purposes, but not so great if your goal is to better understand the mind of the man supposedly (though not actually) in charge of our Iraq policy.
Maybe "propaganda purposes" is an insight into the mind of the man in charge of our Iraq policy. Perhaps, there's not as much 'there' there as we've been led to believe.
I suggest you change the wording of the link from Petraeus Report to Petrseus Ph.D. dissertation. It confused me, thinking you had the advance copy of the "Sept. Report on Iraq Surge", but even more troublesome is that Google will index you on Petraes Report and you'll get lots of unhapppy hits from people looking for the 2007 report instead of the 1987 disseration.
I haven't read it yet, so I'll withhold comment on it.
Thanks for noticing that Jim. Whoopsies.
"not so great if your goal is to better understand the mind of the man"
Really? Maybe what you see is what you get.
In the Army, a capable, intelligent, analytical and articulate individual, who expresses definite opinions, ends his career as a Colonel. Case in point: H.R. McMaster, whose Ph.D. thesis is readable book.
Funny, Petraeus (along with Odierno) are considered to be among the few Army senior flag officers who really get small war doctrine - if Petraeus is that big of a dope, I guess all the other officers must be *really* stupid.
There are two reasonable explanations. One is that Petraeus and most military thinkers are morons. The other is that the nature of warmaking apparently obscures truths that seem self evident once they are articulated, and that a gifted military leader's real gift is for making the complex sound quite simple, even prosaic. Having seen what a modern corps or division maneuver plan looks like - especially the way that the tangle of a logistics tail is sorted out - I tend toward the latter view. I would also point out that Clausewitz's rule of the schwerpunkt is "Three to one ratio at the point of attack, and the attack will succeed." You or Yglesias would probably say, "Duh, if you have more troops in the fight, you'll win." Clausewitz' principle is so simple and stupid and self-evident, but for some reason nobody articulated it that simply in the space of roughly 4,000 years of written history. (It's been updated post WWI, BTW, to take into account ratio of firepower).
Wilder, good point. Ralph Peters (LTC(R)) was known as a brilliant officer, usually brilliantly right, sometimes brilliantly wrong. WWII rescued a whole pack of similar unorthodox but brilliant officers from a quiet retirement at low rank.
"Maybe "propaganda purposes" is an insight into the mind of the man in charge of our Iraq policy. Perhaps, there's not as much 'there' there as we've been led to believe."
Posted by: Mike the Mad Biologist
Think of it this way - Petraeus is at the level where the White House/Secretary of Defense do the appointing (he's not Major Joe Schmoe, down in the bowels of the system). If there's one thing that this administration has insisted on in its appointees, it's high levels of dishonesty. Those who weren't got squeezed out early, and the administation learned from those 'mistakes'.
Therefore, Petraeus *is* stone dishonest, and *will* give a report which supports the administration - oh, the White House is writing the report. Which is to be delivered on Sep 11. After lots of advance talk about not being able to measure the surge so early, along with other advance talk about the successes.
Same old same old, with different names and faces. We've been hearing that success is around the corner for just under five years now.
Al Mavina: "Funny, Petraeus (along with Odierno) are considered to be among the few Army senior flag officers who really get small war doctrine - if Petraeus is that big of a dope, I guess all the other officers must be *really* stupid. "
Read 'Fiasco' about Odierno. His tour in command of the 4th ID started with a relatively quiet area, which disintigrated. Not surprising given the overall Iraq situation, but it's certainly no record of success. Of course, in the Bush administration, no record of success is no success of record, or something like that.
As for "the few Army senior flag officers who really get small war doctrine", before Petraeus we had Gen. Abizaid in charge of Centcom - an Arab-American who spoke Arabic! and Gen. William Casey in charge of Iraq, who brought a !!brain trust!! of officers with real, live Ph.D.'s!
I'm reiterating, but because it bears keeping in mind - we've seen these bright promises before.
It's not the banality, it's the dishonesty that strikes me:
"For the military, therefore, Vietnam was an extremely painful reminder that when it comes to intervention, time and patience are not American virtues in abundant supply. "If Americans do not win their wars in a weekend," Colonel Peter Dunn wrote after Vietnam, "they tire of them." In the end, the "essential domino," as Leslie Gelb termed it, was public opinion."
As I understand it, public opinion supported the Vietnam War, until after Tet, in 1968. This would have been after ~3 years of serious combat - not a 'weekend'. Also, the big problem was that three years of happy happy talk was proven wrong, which, surprisingly, lost the US government much popular support (the American people must Hate America).
Ph.D. theses aren't written for the general public. Usually a reader without an academic background in the area of the thesis will not be able to comment knowledgeably on its content. A reader without this background who hasn't actually read the thesis... well, that sounds particularly useless.
A Ph.D. thesis or dissertation is supposed to be an intellectual discourse that can be validly argued for or against by anyone with related background or experience. They are the qualifing document for professional degrees. They are also supposed to be fairly presented so that any layman in college can read them and understand the principles and facts making up the thesis.
For one, I have the background and I know Petraeus is not an idiot. He does, however, continue to regurgitate what war college teaches people - since war is only reality to the people fighting, people back home must be coddled and told what the "truth" is. If it means withholding facts or using falsehoods, then military leadership should do so to keep the civilians back home from growing restless.
The problem with military leadership today is that they underestimate the power of independent reporting on the battlefield. They can no longer hide facts or distort truth as easily as in the past. Petraeus hopes to bend truth to regain support, and shore up the fledging morale. His thesis supports that kind of behavior.
However, with even the Army Secretary telling the Administration that the Army is nearing its breaking point and senior politicans returning from visits to Iraq painting a bleak picture, Petraeus will lose whether he tells the truth or flat-out lies. I'm guessing he'll be replaced soon either because he quits or the Administration quits him.
General Petraeus needs to read some political history. LBJ knew that if he went too far on the ground in Vietnam China would send ground troops to fight U.S. troops. Its that simple. So LBJ knew FROM THE BEGINNING that he was fighting a limited war. Why didn't so many of the military at that time understand this? Were they so out of touch that they could not remember Chinese intervention in Korea? Read the studies by Dallek and Kaiser and the taped White House conversations in Beschloss and it is crystal clear that LBJ understood that he was not a total free agent in Vietnam. I find it very disturbing that Petraeus either did not consult (can you check his bibliography?) or did not absorb these undisputed facts. Or does Petraeus have a McArthur complex?
Petraeus seems to buy into the stabbed in the back notion so widely held by some military people. In this version the knife is wielded by politicians who constricted engagement and the American public at large for impatience.
Writing about these notions without complete condemnation reveals Petraeus as no more than an average thinker.
If Petraeus represents the intellectual elite of our military then we are witness to another important institution in decline.
Is that the same Petraeus who in 2004, just 6 weeks before the presidential election, penned an Op-Ed that lied about the situation in Iraq?
Six weeks before the 2004 election, Petraeus wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he lied and said that there had been “tangible progress” in Iraq, and that “Momentum has gathered in recent months.”
How many times have we heard that there has been “tangible progress”?
A quick search of the DoD’s site also yields many quotes from Petraeus where he painted a rosy picture in Iraq over the years. A picture we now know was not true, or the surge would not have been the latest gamble needed.
"at least a conflict that is not viewed as a crusade."
Key word "crusade".
Which the Cheneybots have exhaustively tried to make this war into...
thnx.very good admin.. Perfect !
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