The man has a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history, and the immediate thought that comes to my mind is how that country spent and shot its way into oblivion during the 1980s. Trying to keep up with US military spending and a
hard-headed refusal to give up on their occupation of Afghanistan both played a major role in the Soviet Union’s collapse. A fear of being perceived as weak to a world that largely didn’t care drove the delusional concepts of escalation, stay the course, spend more on defense (aka offense), and all the while Reagan and subsequently Bush Sr. used our military to bite off small mouthfulls in Central America, culminating in Desert Storm, a war that allowed US interests in the Middle East to grow, along with the perception around the world that our country wasn’t the type to engage in widespread marauding on a whim. History being what it is, for the United States to have done just the opposite for most of our history, to have rebounded from the disgrace of Vietnam to arrive at Desert Storm and leave with a high level of prestige was a blessing.
Frederick Kagan and his fellow “thinkers” at Project for a New American Century thought otherwise and produced the now infamous ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses‘. Being a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history, I think he was an ideal member for this neoconservative cult, as the obvious falacy of what they advocated could be conveniently explained away by such credentials. Questions about how their worldview could be legitimate with the collapse of the USSR still fresh in our minds could be directed towards the “expert” on that subject. Now that Iraq has been “done”, and has resulted in the exact opposite of what Kagan and his Project for a New American Century collegues predicted, he’s out in front advocating on CSPAN’s Washington Journal for escalation. To the casual observer let me point out that the numbers to make an escalation of the war possible will be met by keeping troops already in Iraq there longer (extend a year-long rotation into a year and a half), while pushing up the deployment dates of units scheduled to go. As a soldier I queried a few months ago pointed out, many of these units are “new”, having been populated by cherry-picking units recovering and equiping them with old, broken down vehicles.
This aspect of our military’s readiness is crucial to their operational effectiveness, and constitutes a dire truth that hasn’t escaped the actual military leaders who have been running our campaign there for the past several years. Generals have testified before Congress on the broken state of our military, and repeatedly have advised that doing what escalation advocates are insisting upon has the potential of causing long-term harm to the military as a whole. Again, a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history, Frederick Kagan has nothing to say about these aspects of our Iraq policy going forward in spite of his pedigree. He advocates in Foreign Affairs during the summer of 2006 for an increase in permanent size for the Army and Marines, so his position is consistent in terms of our needing more to accomplish missions like the one in Iraq, but under no circumstances would he ever say that the military is too worn-out. I’d expect a military scholar teaching at West Point to be able to put two and two together here, but clearly Kagan has too much of his own credibility invested in Iraq already to be objective at this point.
For proof of this look no further than the title of his most recent contribution to Bush’s Iraq policy, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq“. Indeed, in war all a nation must do is “choose victory” over defeat. Imagine if Napoleon had only been privy to Kagan’s insights when he decided to invade Russia during the winter of 1812, he could have disregarded all the frostbite and starvation afflicting his army, resisted the urge to choose defeat. The irony of all this is military history is built on the failures of leaders like Napoleon who in fact did subscribe to a Kagan worldview of simply deciding that an enemy’s ability to fight effectively with a home field advantage doesn’t matter as long as everyone decides to “choose victory”. So this is it. Kagan hasn’t got examples to cite or comparisons to make in regards to Iraq and prior military history, but rather politics and politics and politics and some fairy dust. His father and brother are both in the game as well, providing credentials for the “informed” advocacy of spending more and more tax dollars on defense industry products and services. They’re the people who used to make the shills look legitimate, pumping up the level of street-cred, supposedly thinking ten feet above all of our heads all the time.
Results are in, and Frederick Kagan, William Kristol, the rest of the worst are living up to their reputations, that I’ve described for a while now as to military and foreign policy what Drew Bledsoe is to football. The credentials are solid, bodies and minds seemingly up to the challenge, though when the game is on the line they can’t help but throw that interception that changes everything for the worse. Over time the best you can say about all three is that they can take a hit and always make it back to their feet. Too bad 3,000+ troops already dead won’t have any chances as opposed to these hacks! Though the reality of all this is that neither of them are anything more than publicists at this point in their careers. Kagan especially - - - that man’s credibility was long gone well before his latest fairy tale (Choosing Victory) came to be.
Posted by Al Swearengen in History, Military