Streetwise Professor

Jennifer Rubin says that SecDef Robert Gates should resign for his statement that ground troops will not be committed to Libya while “I’m in this job.”  Rubin interprets Gates’s remark as a threat to the president.

That is a very plausible interpretation.  What should we make of it then?

The first thing to note is that Gates is not in the habit of making threats.  He is not a grandstander.  He is not a prima donna. He has a long record of service as a loyal servant in several administrations.  His remarks are an exception.  There must be an exceptional reason for him to make them.

Recent events provide clues for Gates’s outburst–which his remarks were, compared to his very low key norm.  In particular, the let-the-rebels-do-it “strategy” has proved to be utterly fantastic and farcical.  As a Patton, not a Gates, would have put it, these rebels couldn’t fight their way out of a p*ss-soaked paper bag. Testimony by Gates and Admiral Mullen revealed that there are perhaps 1000 with any military training.  They have no heavy weapons.  No discipline.  They are prone to indiscriminate killing–so much so that NATO has threatened to bomb these ostensible “allies” in the fight against Khaddafy unless they knock it off. Good luck with that.

Recognition of this is predictably leading to a serious potential for mission creep.  For instance, since the effectiveness of air power is sharply limited in supporting offensive operations by the lack of targeting assets on the ground, a proposal is afoot to have US troops train rebels as forward observers.

Please.  FO is a very demanding job that takes intensive training.  The US has acute difficulties in finding, training and keeping enough Joint Terminal Attack Controllers of its own.  It’s going to train some yo-yos whose main military qualification is shooting AKs into the air?  If these guys make mistakes, things go very wrong and people get killed.  In Libya, many of those killed would be civilians–the very people we are intervening to protect.

That this “solution” is even being considered is a confession of desperation.  To quote another famous military mind, Oliver Hardy: “Another nice mess you’ve gotten us into.”

Gates–unlike some other people I could name–is apparently thinking several steps ahead. He can foresee the dynamic of escalation and deepening involvement–he doesn’t want the mess to get worse.  Tentative measures fail.  A president has put his credibility on the line.  So the level of US involvement will creep up.  But not enough to achieve anything decisive.  So it will creep up some more.

Anybody seen this movie before?  Gates has, apparently, and is doing something that for him is exceptional in order to re-write the ending–or to stop filming altogether.

Checking an incompetent commander is always an extremely difficult endeavor.  In the US, Congress is supposed to check the executive.  That poses its own difficulties, because leadership by committee is always messy and erratic, and because politics and personality bedevil the process.  But messy oversight is often far superior to no oversight at all.  But in the case of this administration and Libya,  it has made it perfectly clear that it will not accept any Congressional control at all, going so far as to make the completely outrageous claim that it is actually in compliance with the War Powers Act.  You can argue that the WPA is unconstitutional, but you can’t argue that what Obama is doing adheres to it: but Hillary has done just that.  What’s more, so far Congress has acquiesced to this action and attitude, which had the president been of a different party it would have likely considered a usurpation of Congressional authority.

Checking a commander from inside the chain of command is even more fraught.  For dramatic depictions of the dilemmas involved, read (or watch) Mutiny on the Bounty or the Caine Mutiny or even Mr. Roberts.  Obedience is necessary in a military organization, but like anything, the obligation to obey cannot be unconditional.

That’s easy to say.  What’s far harder is to identify where the obligation ends, and how to limit insubordination to what is necessary to avoid catastrophe without destroying the military organization in the bargain.*

In this context, it is worth reading H. R. McMasters’ Dereliction of Duty.  McMasters is a Gulf War I hero who commanded a troop of the 2d Armored Cavalry that rolled over an Iraqi armored force at the Battle of 73 Easting (an event portrayed well in an episode of Greatest Tank Battles.)  He is now a brigadier general.  Dereliction of Duty is based on his PhD dissertation.  It argues that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were derelict because they acquiesced in McNamara’s gradual escalation strategy in Viet Nam even though they realized that it was a recipe for disaster.  McMasters argues the Chiefs should have made their objections to McNamara’s strategy known to the president, and failing to persuade him that way, to resign publicly.

That, of course, would have posed its own dangers.  But I think in the present circumstances Gates recognizes that it may come to that.  The handling of this military adventure is so appalling that there has to be deep discontent in the Pentagon, and in the ranks.  I strongly suspect that Gates is firing this warning shot now in the hope that he can stop the escalation process before it gets fully underway.  It’s a rather desperate measure, and given Obama’s narcissism and stubbornness, it’s unlikely to have an effect.  Arguably the best hope we have is that Obama really doesn’t have his heart in any military adventure, least of all this one: hopefully these sentiments will prevail over his desire not to be seen to retreat from the unnecessary confrontation with Khaddafy that he so thoughtlessly entered into.

So yes, maybe Gates should resign–but to make the point, not, as Rubin would have it, to atone for having made it through his threat to resign.

It should not have to come to that.  It would be far better for Congress to live up to its Constitutional duties.  But with Harry Reid adjourning the Senate in order to avoid forcing his caucus to have to vote on an amendment quoting Barack Obama v.2007 (“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”) that doesn’t look likely any time soon.  So Gates, the archetypal loyal bureaucrat, is stepping up instead.

I doubt that it will be enough.  I shudder to think what will be enough.  May is only a month away.

* In my leadership class at Navy I wrote a paper on the necessity of disobedience in certain circumstances.  The prof was not amused.  Especially when I quoted Jackie Fisher: “In war the first principle is to disobey orders.  Any fool can obey orders!”