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| Home Front: WoT |
| Fallon didn't get it |
| 2008-03-12 |
| Another opinion The departing head of Central Command was wrong about the surge. By Max Boot To see why Tuesday's "retirement" of Navy Adm. William "Fox" Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command is good news, all you have to do is look at the Esquire profile that brought about his downfall. Its author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, presents a fawning portrait of the admiral -- a service he previously performed for Donald Rumsfeld. But evidence of Fallon's supposed "strategic brilliance" is notably lacking. For example, Barnett notes Fallon's attempt to banish the phrase "the Long War" (created by his predecessor) because it "signaled a long haul that Fallon simply finds unacceptable," without offering any hint of how Fallon intends to defeat our enemies overnight. The ideas Fallon proposes -- "He wants troop levels in Iraq down now, and he wants the Afghan National Army running the show throughout most of Afghanistan by the end of this year" -- would most likely result in security setbacks that would lengthen, not shorten, the struggle. The picture that emerges of the admiral -- "The Man Between War and Peace," as the overwrought headline has it -- is not as flattering as intended. "He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war [with Iran]," Barnett writes. And:"While Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III ... it's left to Fallon -- and apparently Fallon alone -- to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: 'This constant drumbeat of conflict ... is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.' " What Fallon (and Barnett) don't seem to understand is that Fallon's very public assurances that America has no plans to use force against Iran embolden the mullahs to continue developing nuclear weapons and supporting terrorist groups that are killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is highly improbable that, as the profile implies, the president had any secret plans to bomb Iran that Fallon put a stop to. But there is no doubt that the president wants to maintain pressure on Iran, and that's what Fallon has been undermining. By irresponsibly taking the option of force off the table, Fallon makes it more likely, not less, that there will ultimately be an armed confrontation with Iran. Barnett writes further: "Smart guy that he is, Robert Gates, the incoming secretary of Defense, finagled Fallon out of Pacific Command, where he'd been radically making peace with the Chinese, so that he could, among other things, provide a check on the eager-to-please General David Petraeus in Iraq." It's doubtful that this was why Bush and Gates appointed Fallon. Why would they want to "check" the general charged with winning the Iraq war? But it's telling that Barnett would write this; it may be a reflection of Fallon's own thinking. Even if he wasn't appointed for this reason, Fallon has certainly seen his job as being to "check" Petraeus. The problem is that Fallon is a newcomer to the Middle East and Iraq, while Petraeus has served there for years and is the architect of a strategy that has rescued the United States from the brink of defeat. This is not, however, a strategy that Fallon favored. Not only was Fallon "quietly opposed to a long-term surge in Iraq," as Barnett notes, but he doesn't seem to have changed his mind in the past year. He has tried to undermine the surge by pushing for faster troop drawdowns than Petraeus thought prudent. ("He wants troop levels in Iraq down now.") The president wisely deferred to the man on the spot -- Petraeus -- thus no doubt leaving Fallon simmering with the sort of anger that came through all too clearly in Esquire. Like a lot of smart guys (or, at any rate, guys who think they're smart), Fallon seems to have outsmarted himself. He thinks the war in Iraq is a distraction from formulating "a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East," according to the profile. The reality is that the only strategy worth a dinar is to win the war in Iraq. If we fail there, all other objectives in the region will be much harder to attain; if we succeed, they will be much easier. That's something that Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno -- the architects of the surge -- understood, but that Fallon never seemed to get. Let's hope that his successor will have a better grasp of the region and of his role. This president, any president, deserves a Centcom commander who carries out his policies rather than undermines them. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #4 McClellan and Halleck led to Grant and Sherman. Sounds like a theme. |
| Posted by: Harcourt Jush7795 2008-03-12 23:05 |
| #3 Compare wid STRATEGYPAGE > Al QAEDA'S FADING VICTORY: THE MADRID PRECEDENT. Alludes to OBAMA appeaking to left-wing voetrs steeped in DEFEATISM, the 2008 POTUS elex, + the so-called "IRAQ PRECENDENT". |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-03-12 21:29 |
| #2 Fallon and Petraeus replaced Casey and Abazaid at a time when the war was not going well. Bush appointed Petraeus because he had a strategy for winning the war in Iraq that Bush bought. Part of the cost for getting Petraeus approved and the defence appropriation approved was appointing Fallon to give peace a chance with Iran as well as to appease Pelosi and Reid while Petraeus pacified Iraq. Well, Petraeus pacified Iraq as he said he would. Fallon, State, and the CIA had their opportunity to give peace a chance and they got Mookie in a Tehran sanatorium instead. Now that the carrots didn't work with the Mullahs, it's time to show some stick, and that's why Fallon was terminated. Just another signal to Nutjob that he's now in the crosshairs. Another misunderestimated strategery. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-03-12 20:59 |
| #1 Fallon was a China dove at the Pacific Command. The most embarrassing statement he made there was about helping the Chinese build aircraft carriers if they behaved. (Shades of the British helping the Japanese build the Imperial Japanese Navy prior to WWII - something that helped the Japanese overrun British possessions in the Far East during WWII). I think he was booted sideways to a figurehead position at the Central Command. Fallon wasn't content to be a figurehead, so here he is today. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-03-12 20:16 |