Topic: Ash Carter
Ash Carter’s Happy Talk
It’s hardly surprising that the new secretary of defense, Ash Carter, emerged from a long meeting in Kuwait with American generals and diplomats to pronounce himself satisfied with the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS). Imagine the headlines if the new Pentagon chief had said that the campaign was unsatisfactory! But what counts is not what Carter says for public consumption. The real question is whether he has swallowed the Kool-Aid or not–and whether his generals have too.
It’s hardly surprising that the new secretary of defense, Ash Carter, emerged from a long meeting in Kuwait with American generals and diplomats to pronounce himself satisfied with the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS). Imagine the headlines if the new Pentagon chief had said that the campaign was unsatisfactory! But what counts is not what Carter says for public consumption. The real question is whether he has swallowed the Kool-Aid or not–and whether his generals have too.
It’s not easy to tell from his public comments, which amount to saying that the Islamic State is “hardly invincible” and that its “lasting defeat … can and will be accomplished.” That may be true, but he left unclear exactly how and when its defeat will be accomplished.
Certainly in the case of Syria–where the U.S. has all but given up training the Free Syrian Army–it is hard to see any ground force on the horizon capable of beating ISIS unless it belongs to Hezbollah, whose victory would hardly be much of an improvement. In Iraq, there is slightly more reason for hope but only if the U.S. relies on Iranian-backed Shiite militias whose takeover, again, would not be any improvement on ISIS.
Lately senior U.S. officers have been bragging that Mosul will be liberated as soon as April or May. But it seems unlikely that this feat could be accomplished by majority Sunni forces since little progress has been made in mobilizing Sunni tribes and the Iraqi Security Forces, which were designed to be genuinely multi-sectarian, have largely fallen apart. That leaves the Shiite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga as the most capable striking forces, but neither one has any credibility in west Mosul, the Sunni part of town.
It’s possible that the assault force could penetrate Mosul and win some victories against the relatively small number of Islamic State militants who are said to be garrisoning the town–especially if the White House lifts the prohibition on allowing U.S. Special Operations Forces and combat-air-controllers to accompany the assault force into battle. But it’s hard to imagine how they could possibly hold the city afterwards. Unless the U.S. can cobble together a capable and credible Sunni force, the likely result would be long-term chaos, with continuing urban warfare that would allow the Islamic State and/or other extremist groups to assert their influence once again.
And that’s to focus only on the difficulty of driving ISIS out of Mosul. Don’t forget that ISIS also controls much of the rest of the Sunni Triangle in Iraq. And no matter how hard-pressed ISIS becomes in Iraq, it can always simply cross the Iraq-Syria border and regroup within its Syrian territory where, as previously mentioned, it remains virtually unchallenged.
Ash Carter is a smart guy. Presumably he knows all this. The question, impossible to answer from the outside, is whether he still genuinely believes ISIS is on its way to defeat or whether he’s just making such statements for public consumption. Whichever the case, he has embarked on a dangerous start to his tenure in office, because happy talk for public consumption has a way of overriding any private concerns and taking control of the official mindset. We have already seen the high cost of having an overly optimistic secretary of defense who buys bogus claims of progress from his generals. We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of Iraq in 2003-2007.
Handsy Joe’s Veep Creep and the Media
One of the clearest signs of media bias is when reporters are made more uncomfortable by the act of criticizing the Obama administration than by the behavior they’re criticizing. Case in point: yesterday’s piece in the Washington Post by Nia-Malika Henderson, in which she struggles mightily with the fact that, thanks to conservative objections, Joe Biden’s incredibly creepy behavior toward women in public is getting tougher to ignore.
One of the clearest signs of media bias is when reporters are made more uncomfortable by the act of criticizing the Obama administration than by the behavior they’re criticizing. Case in point: yesterday’s piece in the Washington Post by Nia-Malika Henderson, in which she struggles mightily with the fact that, thanks to conservative objections, Joe Biden’s incredibly creepy behavior toward women in public is getting tougher to ignore.
Handsy Joe’s veep creep is by now a staple of the Obama administration’s public events. Conservatives have long been frustrated by the pass Biden’s racist comments, obviously false stories, and emptyheaded rhetoric get from the media when the same press would hammer Republicans for even approaching the vice president’s antics. What conservatives would really prefer is not that Biden be run out of town with the same pitchforks and torches employed against Republicans but that the political correctness that suffocates public discourse in America be set aside far more often for both parties.
The latest incident was at Tuesday’s ceremony for new Defense Secretary Ash Carter. While Carter was at the podium, his wife walked up nearby. Joe Biden put his hands on her shoulders, left them there for about thirty seconds, and then leaned in to whisper something in her ear. The screenshot of the whisper quickly made the rounds (the full video of the encounter is here) and conservatives began another round of “What If A Republican Did This?”
But this latest incident had more force than, say, Biden’s comment about Somali immigrants being cab drivers in Delaware (made the same day). That’s because the Obama White House’s “war on women” has played virtually any Republican policy as some sort of insult to women. Additionally, the continuing scandal of false rape allegations, fake campus rape statistics, and the denial of due process to young men accused of sexual assault has created an atmosphere where many men seem to be assumed guilty from the outset. Yet Biden gets a pass.
So Henderson took to the Post to explain Biden’s behavior by claiming he’s just a goofy throwback to an age when accosting women was a more endearing practice. And her defense-which-she-insists-is-not-a-defense of Biden is a perfect example of the lengths liberal journalists will go to convince themselves and the country that they didn’t put a hound and a weirdo a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Here’s Henderson, playing off a column by the Washington Examiner’s Byron York:
Biden is a creature of his time; that’s not so much an excuse as it is context. He is folksy and always (overly) familiar, the kind of guy who name-checks somebody named “Mouse” at an NAACP convention.
Those personality quirks have typically been viewed as part of his charm and political strength. But the recent display does, as York and others suggest, raise the specter of sexism.
Well, no. The display doesn’t raise the specter of sexism so much as conservative journalists fed up with the hypocrisy point out the sexism. Henderson is talking about it because York is talking about it.
Henderson continues:
The right has suggested that if Biden were a Republican, the press would be much harder on him. I’m not so sure that’s the case.
That needs no specific rebuttal, right? It’s too obviously insane to need any further deconstruction, yes? Back to Henderson:
He is given a pass because he is from a different time. There are plenty of older male politicians whose frame of reference in greeting the opposite gender is far too 1960s rather than 2010s; almost none of them are on-camera nearly as much as Biden is.
Sure. And of course that was the reaction when Foster Freiss retold an old birth-control joke, right? No? It’s also worth pointing out that the “he’s old, give him a break” defense doesn’t seem to show up on other issues for GOPers either (like race).
Here’s Henderson’s conclusion:
But as a man who prides himself on his work on women’s issues, Biden might heed his own advice. He said that attitudes are changing about what “constitutes appropriate behavior.” That should probably apply to Joe Biden’s interactions with women too.
Kid gloves doesn’t begin to cover it.
Look, Biden’s not some threatening sexual predator. I’m sure he means well. And in the annals of Democratic Party men, he’s tame. Allahpundit grades such incidents “On a scale of one to Ted Kennedy.” Ted’s more successful brother was probably worse, though he didn’t kill anybody.
On some level, you can’t really expect the party of FDR and Bill Clinton to even notice behavior like Biden’s. But as the Washington Post proves, even if you do finally force them to notice, you can’t make them care. After all, it’s not like Biden’s a Republican.
Why Is Military Morale Dropping?
One of the conceits of the antiwar crowd–those who argued over the past thirteen years for leaving Afghanistan and Iraq regardless of the situation on the ground–was that doing so would be a favor to the American military, which has sacrificed so much in those wars. The sacrifice has been real and ongoing, with an increase in post-traumatic stress disorder and in suicide and divorce being only a few of the more discernible costs. Yet a new Military Times survey of 2,300 active-duty troops finds that morale is actually lower now than it was in the days when far more U.S. troops were deployed in harm’s way.
One of the conceits of the antiwar crowd–those who argued over the past thirteen years for leaving Afghanistan and Iraq regardless of the situation on the ground–was that doing so would be a favor to the American military, which has sacrificed so much in those wars. The sacrifice has been real and ongoing, with an increase in post-traumatic stress disorder and in suicide and divorce being only a few of the more discernible costs. Yet a new Military Times survey of 2,300 active-duty troops finds that morale is actually lower now than it was in the days when far more U.S. troops were deployed in harm’s way.
Back in 2009, when an average of 50,000 U.S. troops were in Afghanistan and 135,000 in Iraq, 91 percent of troops surveyed said their quality of life was good or excellent. Today only 56 percent say that and 70 percent believe their quality of life will decline in coming years. Some other findings: “73 percent of troops would recommend a military career to others, down from 85 percent in 2009. And troops reported a significant decline in their desire to re-enlist, with 63 percent citing an intention to do so, compared with 72 percent a few years ago.”
Troops are less willing to reenlist now than in the days when they were much more likely to be wounded or even killed in the line of duty? How could this be? Why aren’t troops embracing the Obamian paradise of unilateral withdrawal from war?
Part of the answer is provided by political scientist Peter Feaver, who is quoted pointing out “that the mission mattered more to the military than to the civilian. For the civilian world, it might have been easier to psychologically move on and say, ‘Well, we are cutting our losses.’ But the military feels very differently. Those losses have names and faces attached to [them].”
Few civilians can realize how deeply dispiriting it is for troops who fought for cities such as Fallujah and Al Qaim to see them fall to black-clad jihadist fanatics. Once troops served with a purpose–to avenge 9/11 and to defeat our nation’s enemies. Now, however, with an administration that makes withdrawal the highest priority, the military’s sense of mission and purpose is waning–with deleterious effects on morale. “Of those surveyed, 52 percent said they had become more pessimistic about the war in Afghanistan in recent years. Nearly 60 percent felt the war in Iraq was somewhat unsuccessful or not at all successful.”
This problem is aggravated by the severe budget cuts that the White House and Congress have collaborated to enact. The Military Times has a telling anecdote: “A Navy aviation machinist’s mate first class based in El Centro, California, said operational budget cuts left him and fellow sailors cannibalizing working parts from other aircraft entering phased maintenance so they could repair higher-priority broken jets. Even uniforms are in short supply, he said, as the Navy embarks on what could be a decade of scrimping under sequestration. ‘We are on the bare necessities and sometimes not even that. For example, I need new boots but they’ll ask me, ‘How long can you stretch that?’ ‘ he said.”
Another telling line: “A Navy fire controlman chief with 10 deployments said budget fears are contributing to a feeling of distrust and abandonment. ‘If sailors are worried about not getting paid, how am I supposed to do my job?’ he said. ‘I’m not an effective warfighter if I don’t have the backing of my government at home’.”
The U.S. military, to be sure, remains the most professional and capable force in the world. But it is suffering real damage and it would be nice if we had a president who recognized that was the case and sought to do something about it. Even a better secretary of defense, which Ash Carter promises to be, will have limited leverage to reverse crippling budget cuts or to implement plans for Afghanistan and Iraq that make military sense. Alas, the U.S. military appears to be in big trouble and help is still a couple years away at best.
April 2015
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