I am knee deep in Thomas Ricks book, The Gamble. So far I am only into it for about 100 pages. I’m trying to read carefully and since I have enjoyed his previous works, I’m wondering if he has been swallowed up by the hype that permeates everything written about Gen David Petreaus.
It would appear, at early look anyway, that Ricks has been drawn into the cult of this particular four star’s deification. Sad. I thought Ricks was more objective than that.
I’ll have to read more to see what conclusions he draws about our long term presence in that Godforsaken country.
Setting aside arguments about the rightness or wrongness of the surge for the time being ( I’ll come to my opinions about Iraq when I have finished the book), I find myself incredibly troubled at how the surge came to be.
If Ricks is correct, then one has to face the possibility that the flag officer leadership within the US military is/was so dysfunctional, that a retired, almost Army Chief of Staff, had to do an end around the entire uniformed leadership to convince the President of the United States to place one of his proteges in charge.
And that being the case-the blame for the early conduct of the war has been successfully laid at the feet of some men who have given many years of service to their country, thought they were doing their best and in the process-the political leadership that put them in that impossible position is to be given a free pass on its share of the blame.
Anyone who has a professional military background should be deeply troubled by all of the implications of that idea. So Keane got it right-what if he had not? And more importantly, what if it had been him, not Gen Casey in the shoes of the active duty officer-would he have wanted the same thing end around to happen?
I’m going to be curious to see what his conclusions are for the future-does he really want to embrace, as Andrew Bacevich has called it, “an open-ended war aimed at asserting some form of benevolent hegemony across the Greater Middle East”?
The goal in Iraq has to be about getting out of the country and letting it develop on its own. Ricks’ books, if the past is prologue, can help shape opinions. I hope he’s not leading up to the idea that we have to be in Iraq for 10-20 years. That might be good for the Iraqis-but its an utter disaster for the United States.
More to follow.
I have also finished another of my January purchases, The Culture of War by Martin Creveld. Chapter 20 should be required reading for the heads of all the service academies and my Alma mater. Its devoted to a ripping critique of feminism:
Some military schools try to cope with the problem by concealing these discrepancies-for example by issuing men and women training {aids} that look similar but are made of different materials and have different weights, or else by making women run separate courses but with a common starting point and a common finish point. All such measures rest on the belief that the men are stupid-and will therefore tend to make them even more cynical and bitter. As long as the number of women does not exceed token levels….these and other problems may be handled by men…….
Put in more, however, and once again the inevitable outcome will be demoralization.
If you like Creveld you will like the book.
