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Paging through Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars," I should not have been surprised that the index lacks any entry for "intelligence." The excerpts that dribbled out earlier this week had made unavoidably clear that there was, in fact, no entry for intelligence in the disorderly process last fall that got the Obama administration neck-deep in the Big Muddy--to borrow from Pete Seeger's song from the Vietnam era.
Before reading through Woodward's book, the excerpts already published had left doubts in my mind that the Obama White House could be host to such an amateurish decision-process-without-real-process. I had seen a lot of White House fecklessness in my 30 years in intelligence analysis, but it was, frankly, hard to believe that it could be so bad this time.
Could it be true that, after going from knee-deep to waist-deep in the Big Muddy by his early 2009 decision to insert 21,000 additional troops, the President would decide to plunge neck-deep without a comprehensive intelligence review of the impact of the earlier reinforcement and a formal estimate of the likely impact of further escalation.
As it turns out, it was I who was being naïve. I can no longer avoid concluding that a hubris-hewed presidential mix of innocence abroad and raw politics at home slid Barack Obama into a decision that will cost thousands more lives and, in the end, be his political undoing. Add to the mix a heaping tablespoon of, let's say it, cowardice--and stir.
The procedure (or lack thereof) followed last fall virtually ensured that President Barack Obama would be forced, against what were clearly his better instincts, to be diddled by the four-stars into an escalated March of Folly deeper and deeper into Afghanistan. His intelligence and security advisers, themselves naïve and inexperienced, failed the President miserably.
Intelligence? Who Needs it?
Those familiar with late-20th Century history of foreign policy decision-making in the White House know that rarely was a key decision made without formal input from the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Whether the President chose to heed the insights provided by National Intelligence Estimates or not, it was de rigueur to commission an NIE in advance of important decisions.
Obama's national security adviser, former Marine four-star James Jones, could not have been unaware of this. Indeed, former three-star-now-U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, was begging for such an assessment as the White House deliberations went on. The ambassador had more ground-truth knowledge of Afghanistan than all the other President's men, and women, put together.
Before retiring from the Army, Lt. Gen. Eikenberry had done two tours in the thick of things there. During 2002-2003 he had the unenviable task of trying to rebuild the Afghan National Army and police forces. He then served 18 months (2005-2007) as commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
In a cable from Kabul on November 9, 2009, Eikenberry took strong issue with "a proposed counterinsurgency strategy that relies on a large, all-or-nothing increase in U.S. troops." He noted that there were "unaddressed variables" in the Pentagon plan for further escalation, like "Pakistan sanctuaries and weak Afghan leadership," that could "block us from achieving our strategic goals, regardless of the number of additional troops we may send." Eikenberry specifically warned that there could be "no way to extricate ourselves."
He insisted on the need to bring "all the real-world variables to bear in testing the proposed counterinsurgency plan." Confident that an honest intelligence estimate would issue similar cautions, he pleaded for a "comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis of all our strategic options."
Eikenberry could hardly have been more blunt in warning against a premature decision for a troop increase, arguing, "there is no option but to widen the scope of our analysis and to consider alternatives beyond a strictly military counterinsurgency effort within Afghanistan."
Petraeus: We've Got It Covered
According to Woodward, Gen. David Petraeus dismissed Eikenberry's proposal as "laughably late in the game." Though the ambassador had "reasonable concerns," Petraeus felt they had all been asked and answered.
Eikenberry had already incurred the wrath of Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen in a cable of November 6, in which he wrote, " I cannot support [the Defense Department's] recommendation for an immediate Presidential decision to deploy another 40,000 here." Eikenberry went on to adduce six game-changing facts. Taking into account any one of them, much less all combined, showed such escalation to be a fool's errand.
Mullen reportedly reacted very strongly, saying, "This is a betrayal of our system." In Mullen's world, if you dare cross what the top brass has already decided, you are a betrayer! No comment could point up better the pitfalls of ceding determining roles in strategic decision making to four-stars officers with died-in-the-wool notions of the requirements of military discipline--even in what should have been free brainstorming of possible alternative courses.
