Joe Galloway On McNamara

Starts off with a brilliant quote:

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Gets even better from there. Read.

McNamara And Afghanistan

If any situation in the world right now shows in stark relief the failure to learn the lessons of Robert McNamara it's the escalating war in Afghanistan. Six more troops died in clashes today, and with both the increased numbers as well as a continuing offensive in Helmand Province in the south, we can expect more. This Reuters report gives a good sense of the difficulties with the current strategy:

The mullah's message was blunt. We don't trust you and if you don't earn our trust, our first meeting will be our last.

With that, he stood abruptly and walked out of his first "shura," or council meeting, with U.S. Marines.

U.S. forces who have moved deep into formerly Taliban-controlled territory in southern Afghanistan this week say they are here to stay and will not leave until they have improved the lives of ordinary people [...]

The elders listened, clicking their prayer beads. Then Mullah Zainuddin, the village's religious leader, listed their demands.

They want the provincial authorities to allocate more water for their irrigation system. They want a health clinic, and they want a school. Produce these things or leave us alone, he said.

"I do not trust you. There have been international forces that have come through the village and promised schools, promised clinics. When you are already (delivering) that, then I will trust you," he said.

"We are out of patience here. If you do not do these things and solve these problems, we will leave this village. We will fight: every man, woman and child, we do not fear death."

"This is our last speech, and if you can't solve these problems, we will not have another shura. We will not sit like this again and talk with you," he said. He then got up and walked away, leaving the Marines to finish the shura without him.

Suddenly, a Marine could be heard up the road shouting "stop!" and pointing his rifle at a man driving a motorcycle with two women hidden in burqas sitting behind him on the bike.

The Marine summoned an interpreter. Afghan police searched the driver and allowed the motorcycle to drive on. The village elders and the other Marines holding their shura watched the tense incident in quiet.

"I know you think you are here for our security. But you have come here to disturb us," said one of the elders, Hajji Baluch. "The women on the motorcycle were on their way to a clinic."

I can jut tick off the McNamara lessons and apply them here. We have exaggerated the dangers of a largely local Taliban insurgency, which cannot harm the United States if we use proper law enforcement and intelligence methods. We seem to lack an understanding of the desires of the Afghan people, weary from decades of war and distrustful of foreign presence that has brought them nothing of substance. "We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values," a direct quote from McNamara. We use high-powered military equipment to blast our way to a victory on paper but fail to recognize the limitations of that approach. We have not hashed out a debate on the merits of escalation in public and with the support of the Congress. We have changed course into a high-intensity counter-insurgency mission after explaining that the goal of the war was to deny Al Qaeda safe havens, and the two are only tangentially related. We have not yet recognized the limits of American involvement to bring peace and security to Afghanistan. And,

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

Afghanistan is maddeningly complex. Its relations internally among the ethnically diverse factions and with its neighbors across borders are not well-understood. And after seven-plus years of failed promises and millions of tons of ordnance, we must understand that our skills and abilities as a superpower cannot solve every problem. Nor does every problem want to be solved. Such is the conundrum in Afghanistan.

The Best And The Brightest

Robert McNamara died today. McNamara was a smart guy, a business type who rose up through the ranks to run the Ford Motor Company after working at the Pentagon during the firebombing of Tokyo. Kennedy pulled a reluctant McNamara out of Detroit and back to the Pentagon in 1960, and he sought to manage it with corporate precision. But this precise structure and its focus on measurements crashed against the shoals of the Vietnam War. Night after night, McNamara would stand before the press in his rimless glasses, looking very much like Don Rumsfeld would decades later, talking of body counts and targeted airstrikes and victory, disassociated almost completely from the realities of the ground and the futility of the enterprise. If you've seen "The Fog of War" you know that the pressure certainly got to McNamara, and he understood his mistakes after the fact (though he never took full responsibility for them). He directed subordinates to write the study that would eventually become The Pentagon Papers, hoping that future generations would avoid the pitfalls that he and his colleagues did in Vietnam.

Part of the framing of "The Fog of War" as well as one of McNamara's later books was the 11 causes and lessons that he listed coming out of Vietnam. It's worth listing them here again.

We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for – and a determination to fight for — freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values….

Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders….No Southeast Asian [experts] existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam.

We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people’s movements. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to …winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did….We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced…confront[ing] uncharted seas and an alien environment. A nation’s deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, bur rather in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action — other than in response to direct threats to our own national security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

…We thus failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia - our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them, and the necessity of changing course when failure was clear….

If this isn't an accusatory note toward the practitioners of American foreign policy during the entire post-war period up through today, I don't know what is. And although I'd like to think that some statesman could learn from these lessons and take America off such a self-destructive course, given the nature of the people who rise to power in this country I don't know if that's possible. Certainly McNamara's lessons represent the experience of a man who lived in the crucible and at least appears to have judged his actions against some moral set of precepts. But the peculiar dynamics of the political world, the need to act tough in foreign policy, the seeming inability for leaders to step outside themselves and view things through the lens of others, the narrow and incomplete renderings of history often at work, and of course the lure of money and power and the industry of war, resist politicians coming to any of these conclusions in the moment. We have so frequently bungled into conflicts, presuming our role in them when the other participants see it differently, making shortcuts while rationalizing ourselves as heroic, changing the rules if found to violate them, and controlling the message of moral rectitude rather than the actions. I find these cautions from McNamara to be crucially important, but even in my most optimistic moments I don't believe America is even wired to live up to them.

This is from The Fog of War, with McNamara talking about the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II:

Curtis LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.... But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

...Just to respond to this point about The Fog of War, which Robert Farley thinks "Morris let McNamara get away with far too much at too low of a price." Right near the beginning of the film, Morris inserts a line from McNamara about how you should always answer the question you hoped to be asked, not the question you were asked. This line colors the entire reading of the film. McNamara, for all his confessions in later life, was never a reliable narrator, and he tried valiantly to color his reading of history, leaving him blameless. It didn't work, and Morris knew it, so he presented the folly instead of attacking it. McNamara's lessons of war are important and can stand alone, but that doesn't mean I sympathize with him in any way. He spun until the bitter end. He earned his legacy of failure, and all the rationalizing and compartmentalizing in the world won't make a difference.

Good Progress

Six more soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb yesterday west of Baghdad, adding to a bloody weekend. This in a week when we learn that al Qaeda is raking in the dough thanks to our continued presence in Iraq.

A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of al-Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said al-Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash from Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

And when we learn that Iraq is likely to become a failed state:

There is not 'one' civil war, nor 'one' insurgency, but several civil wars and insurgencies between different communities in today's Iraq. Within this warring society, the Iraqi government is only one among many 'state-like' actors, and is largely irrelevant in terms of ordering social, economic, and political life. It is now possible to argue that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation. These are some of the key findings of Accepting Realities in Iraq a new Briefing Paper written by Dr Gareth Stansfield and published today by Chatham House.

The paper also assesses Al-Qaeda activity within Iraq, especially in the major cities in the centre and north of the country. Dr Stansfield argues that, although Al-Qaeda is challenged by local groups, there is momentum behind its activity. Iraq's neighbors too have a greater capacity to affect the situation on the ground than either the UK or the US. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all have different reasons for seeing the instability in Iraq continue, and each uses different methods to influence developments.

This whole idea of Al Qaeda is significant. I truly believe that what the Administration is peddling about Al Anbar, where Sunni tribal leaders have turned on Al Qaeda (Marc Lynch independently confirms this in Harper's), proves that they would not in any way be able to take over the country if we leave. There's no political organ to Al Qaeda the way there was in Afghanistan with the Taliban. In fact, the only thing that appears to keep AQ in Iraq in the game is our presence. They can raise money off of our presence, they can gain local support by attacking us. If we left, their target would have to turn to the Iraqis, and there is simply no support for radical Wahhabism in a majority Shiite country, not even from Sunnis in Al Anbar. They would not have a safe haven at all, and it would be far smarter to go after Al Qaeda around the world than claiming dishonestly that we're fighting them in Iraq when they would be expelled much faster if we left. Here's Marc Lynch on that point:

The insurgents are very critical of Al Qaeda, its treatment of Sunnis and its extreme interpretation of Islam, but at the same time they are deeply committed to continued resistance to the American occupation. They want a less divided and more effective resistance, not an end to resistance. But there’s also a real divide in strategy that goes beyond the local grievances, which Americans really need to understand. Al Qaeda wants the United States to stay in Iraq as long as possible. It gets tremendous benefits from having American troops close at hand to kill – Iraq is the primary source of its propaganda and recruitment, and an integral part of its global strategy. They really want to turn Iraq into a base for exporting global jihad. But these major insurgency factions are focused on driving Americans out of Iraq and creating a political system that gives Sunnis a reasonable stake in politics [...]

If you listen to what these insurgency factions are saying, what Hareth al-Dhari of the Association of Muslim Scholars is saying, they couldn’t be making it more clear: make a credible commitment to withdrawing and the insurgency will dampen down and we’ll take care of the Al Qaeda groups out of our own self-interest.

Indeed, if we would deny Al Qaeda this constant barrage of self-described victories by killing American troops, the world would be rightly repulsed by them as they were in the immediate aftermath of September 11. That doesn't mean you do nothing to stop them, you vigorously go after them, instead of giving Pakistan a billion a year to stop patrolling the areas where the command operations are quartered. But it means you be smarter about how you go about this fight instead of wildly swinging like a drunk in a bar.

neither Al Qaeda as an organization nor bin Laden as an individual is commanding a great deal of respect or support. When you get these attacks in Algeria and Morocco, it repels people rather than attracting them. But the paradox is that even as Al Qaeda repels people with its actions, its core ideas are becoming more widely accepted, and that’s really troubling, and a real indictment of American public diplomacy. That’s also why the situation in Iraq is so devastating at the wider regional and global level. Killing people in Morocco and Algeria triggers a negative reaction, but fighting Americans in Iraq resonates with a much wider part of the Arab population. The Project on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a survey of Muslim public opinion a few months ago. 91 percent of Egyptians disapproved of attacks against civilians in the United States and only 7 percent disagreed with the statement that “groups that use violence against civilians, such as Al Qaeda, are violating the principles of Islam.” But 91 percent said that attacks on American troops in Iraq were legitimate, and 92 percent agreed with the goal of “getting the U.S. to withdraw forces from Islamic countries”. That gives you a sense of why jihad in Iraq is so vital to Al Qaeda – it’s a place where their violence is popular.

It's the only place where their violence is popular. And the sooner we allow Al Qaeda to collapse under its own weight by being a real beacon of freedom in the world, through global anti-poverty programs and restored moral leadership, the better. Incoming British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is announcing that he'll pull all troops out of Iraq within two years, before the next national elections. I think the number "two years" is significant, as it puts the withdrawal outside the end of Bush's second term, in an amount of time when a successor can implement an American withdrawal program. Brown is banking on sanity in the next American election. So am I, Prime Minister-in-waiting, so am I.

UPDATE: This tremendous post by Mona at Unqualified Offerings lists the 11 causes and lessons Robert McNamara learned in the aftermath of Vietnam, and how closely they relate to today.

We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for – and a determination to fight for — freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values….
Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders….No Southeast Asian [experts] existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam.

We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people’s movements. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to …winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did….We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced…confront[ing] uncharted seas and an alien environment. A nation’s deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, bur rather in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action — other than in response to direct threats to our own national security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

…We thus failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia - our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them, and the necessity of changing course when failure was clear….

These should be nailed above the cubicle of every foreign policy expert in Washington.