President Trump treats his generals like generals should be treated - green light to destroy Islamic State
Saturday, 15 April 2017
Russell Crowe playing the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius. Commander of the Armies of the North. General of the Felix Legions. Loyal servant to the true Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
In January 2016 I wrote this editorial about Trump's relationship with his generals.
Trump on the tough minded realists he'd like to see as Generals leading US Forces
Monday, 04 January 2016
Trump isn't a professional politician - so for an outsider his grasp of the relationship that a head of government, i.e. a politician should have with his Generals of the profession of arms is outstanding.
Obama never got close to it, Gillard, Rudd, Stephen Smith and the sundry disasters here in Australia never got it - but here's Trump laying out the groundwork perfectly before he's started in the job.
Generals should be frightening. Flinty hard, tough-minded realists, capable of causing large scale death and pandemonium on the strength of a lawful direction. They should be selected primarily for their excellence at leading warriors in the profession of arms. They should be in the background from the media but the foreground with their warriors, constantly ready to stop any threat.
If I was the head of government I would want the culture in the Department of Closing With and Killing the Enemy to be very, very different from the rest of government. I'd want the Generals to be very different people from me too. The last thing I'd be looking for is soft skills in promoting social engineering policies in transgenderism, diversity etc etc etc.
Get me the best, hardest, most effective and frightening military we can afford please General. Don't even think of becoming a media tart, forget about it if you think your job is primarily about EEO, OH&S and whatever other EIEIO Twitter trend comes along. Believe me we have enough people who think that soft stuff is their purpose in life without getting the Generals in the game.
Now this in the past 24 hours from the Wall Street Journal.
Trump gives generals free rein in Islamic State fight
U.S. military commanders are stepping up their fight against Islamist extremism as President Donald Trump’s administration urges them to make more battlefield decisions on their own.
As the White House works on a broad strategy, America’s top military commanders are implementing the vision articulated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: Decimate Islamic State’s Middle East strongholds and ensure that the militants don’t establish new beachheads in places such as Afghanistan and Somalia.
“There’s nothing formal, but it is beginning to take shape,” a senior U.S. defence official said Friday. “There is a sense among these commanders that they are able to do a bit more — and so they are.”
While military commanders complained about White House micromanagement under former President Barack Obama, they are now being told they have more freedom to make decisions without consulting Mr. Trump.
Military commanders around the world are being encouraged to stretch the limits of their existing authorities when needed, but to think seriously about the consequences of their decisions.
The more muscular military approach is expanding as the Trump administration debates a comprehensive new strategy to defeat Islamic State. Mr. Mattis has sketched out such a global plan, but the administration has yet to agree on it.
While the political debate continues, the military is being encouraged to take more aggressive steps against Islamic extremists around the world. The firmer military stance has fuelled growing concerns among State Department officials working on Middle East policy that the Trump administration is giving short shrift to the diplomatic tools the Obama administration favoured.
Removing the carrot from the traditional carrot-and-stick approach, some State Department officials warn, could hamper the pursuit of long-term strategies needed to prevent volatile conflicts from reigniting once the shooting stops.
The new approach was on display this week in Afghanistan, where General John Nicholson, head of the U.S.-led coalition there, decided to use one of the military’s biggest non-nuclear bombs — a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB — to hit a remote Islamic State underground network of tunnels and caves.
General Nicholson said it was too early to say how many militants had been killed in the previous day’s bombing. The Afghan Defense Ministry retracted an earlier statement that the strike had killed 36 militants, saying it was unable to provide precise figures yet. A military official for the coalition who viewed footage of the bombing said it was difficult to make out details of its effects beyond a “mushroom cloud” of smoke rising into the sky. He added that a second MOAB was available for use in the country, but no decision had been made on whether it should be deployed.
Islamic State’s Amaq news agency posted a statement on Friday saying none of its fighters were killed or wounded in the strike, which took place in Nangarhar province, along the country’s mountainous border with Pakistan.
General Nicholson indicated that he — not the White House — decided to drop the bomb. “The ammunition we used last night is designed to destroy caves and tunnels. This was the right weapon against the right target,” he told reporters Friday. “I am fortunate that my chain of command allows me the latitude to make assessments on the ground.”
A senior administration official said Mr. Trump didn’t know about the weapon’s use until it had been dropped. Mr. Mattis “is telling them, ‘It’s not the same as it was, you don’t have to ask us before you drop a MOAB,’” the senior defence official said. “Technically there’s no piece of paper that says you have to ask the president to drop a MOAB. But last year this time, the way [things were] meant, ‘I’m going to drop a MOAB, better let the White House know.’”
Indeed, on Thursday Mr. Trump himself emphasised the free rein he gives the Pentagon. “I authorise my military,” Mr. Trump said. “We have given them total authorisation.”
On Friday, the U.S. military said it has sent dozens of soldiers to Somalia, where Mr. Trump recently gave the head of the U.S. Africa Command more leeway to carry out counter-terrorism operations against al-Shabaab, the al Qaeda affiliate in the area.
The more aggressive military approach comes as the long slog against Islamic State is bearing fruit. The group is on the back foot in its Iraqi stronghold, Mosul, and is facing a hard battle to defend its de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa. The U.S. has sent more forces into Iraq and Syria, stepped up support for Saudi Arabia’s fight against Houthi militants in Yemen, and dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Korean Peninsula amid growing evidence that North Korea is preparing for a new nuclear test.
Loren DeJonge Schulman, who served as senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, said a more assertive military campaign is destined to fail unless it is part of a broader strategy against Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL. “It’s crazy that the Trump administration thinks that ‘taking the gloves off’ is either a winning strategy against ISIL or a useful narrative for the White House or the military,” said Ms. Schulman, now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs in the Obama administration, said giving the Pentagon more freedom is one of the most significant things Mr. Trump has done. “It’s not clear to me that he’s making any tough decisions,” said Mr. Chollet, now executive vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “All that he’s essentially done is ceded decision authority down to protect himself from making tough calls.”
The flip side of the Trump administration’s emphasis on a more-free-wheeling military approach to Islamic State is an apparent reduction of the use of soft-power tools — economic development, diplomacy and democracy-building — favoured by the Obama White House. Some State Department officials describe being cut out from the White House’s counter-terrorism strategy in the Mideast, with efforts to nurture democratic governments and push for more secular education systems carrying less weight in the White House’s evolving approach.
“State is being systematically sidelined,” said a State Department official who has worked on counter-terrorism issues in Washington and abroad. The official said the White House strategy of prioritising military might over diplomacy makes it hard to persuade Mideast allies to relax their grip on power.
Many of Washington’s closest Arab allies are autocratic regimes guilty of human-rights abuses that critics say fuel terrorism. “The problem there is that in many of the places where you need carrots, those carrots are often seen as threats to local governments,” the official said, referring to democracy and society-building programs the State Department funds across the Mideast. Egypt offers a prime example of the Trump administration’s leanings.
When Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, a military strongman, visited the White House earlier this month, Mr. Trump gave him a warm welcome. Mr. Obama had refused to meet him because of his regime’s alleged human-rights abuses. U.S. officials in the Mideast say a counterterror approach that focuses solely on military might without programs to fight the causes that feed extremism could backfire, leading groups like Islamic State to go underground and wait for future opportunities to re-emerge.
They are particularly concerned about Raqqa, where a U.S.-led military coalition is closing in around the city but post-liberation stabilisation plans aren’t finalised as State Department officials wait for White House guidance.