Beware Of Generals Bearing "Gifts"

Commemorating 9/11 - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, President Barack Obama and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, render honors as the national anthem plays during a ceremony to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2012. DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley

America’s Strategic Stupidity -- Andrew J. Bacevich, The Spectator

Obama’s new foreign policy team must beware of generals bearing predictions

Every few months, America’s four-star admirals and generals gather at a military base not far from Washington to participate in what General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, calls his ‘strategic seminar’. The aim is to foresee the future, anticipating security challenges that the United States will face in the coming years, thereby enabling the Pentagon to prepare itself accordingly. With that end in mind, Dempsey and his colleagues engage in what the New York Times has styled ‘a lethally earnest game of Risk’, participants striding across ‘a giant map of the world, larger than a basketball court’ as they posit various crises and speculate on the response each might entail.

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My Comment: In an ideal world it is the political leadership who makes the decision .... and they tell the military leadership to implement it .... and if they cannot, they better have a good reason on why. Has Washington reversed these roles .... generals dictating threats, course of actions, strategies, and policies .... and our political leaders complying .... or .... is this one big distraction?

Andrew Bacevich's best paragraph is the last ....

.... The one thing that the US actually could do to secure its future is the one thing that it refuses to do: demonstrate a capacity to manage its own affairs; live within its means; set its own house in order. In Washington, talk about global strategy provides an excuse to avoid doing what needs to be done.

Indeed.