On Thursday the Washington Post posted an article by Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. The article was entitled, “A war the Pentagon doesn’t want.” General Scales‘ rank and the title of the article should cause all of us to read it carefully and consider what he has to say.
The General gives his impression of our professional military’s reaction to the current debate on whether or not to take military action in Syria. He points out some basic trends:
They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.
…Prospective U.S. action in Syria is not about threats to American security. The U.S. military’s civilian masters privately are proud that they are motivated by guilt over slaughters in Rwanda, Sudan and Kosovo and not by any systemic threat to our country.
They are outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red lines.”
If the Obama Administration is truly concerned about the slaughter of innocents in the Middle East, why have they not come to the aid of the Coptic Christians in Egypt? The Coptic Christians have been under attack since the fall of Mubarak–their churches have been burned, their daughters kidnapped, and their pastors killed. America has remained silent.
What has happened in Syria is horrible, but it is folly to get involved in anyone’s civil war. We see the results of toppling a ruthless dictator as we watch the carnage in Egypt. Unless we are willing to make a long term, expensive commitment to establish a better government in Syria, we need to stay out of their civil war. Even if we were willing to pay the price to establish a democracy, it is very possible that other countries in the area would do everything in their power to undermine that effort. Bombing Syria will accomplish nothing, and it will not do anything to deter Iran’s nuclear program (as President Obama recently claimed).
The article in the Washington Post reminds us:
Civilian control of the armed services doesn’t mean that civilians shouldn’t listen to those who have seen war. Our most respected soldier president, Dwight Eisenhower, possessed the gravitas and courage to say no to war eight times during his presidency. He ended the Korean War and refused to aid the French in Indochina; he said no to his former wartime friends Britain and France when they demanded U.S. participation in the capture of the Suez Canal. And he resisted liberal democrats who wanted to aid the newly formed nation of South Vietnam. We all know what happened after his successor ignored Eisenhower’s advice. My generation got to go to war.
One of the problems with the President’s desire to go to war in Syria is the way that the Democrat party handled the war in Iraq. Democrats in Congress voted to approve the war, then did everything they could to use the war as a political issue against George Bush. The rules of engagement were set up in such a way that our military was not allowed to fight the war to win. The American people and the military don’t want to see our men and women put in harm’s way and not allowed to defend themselves. Our servicemen and servicewomen volunteered to defend America, they did not sign up to cover for an unfortunate slip of the tongue by America’s President.
