Monday, September 04, 2017

Now We Fight

Our generals spend more time fighting the enemy and less time fighting our own lawyers.

This is a welcome change in how we fight:

One of Trump's first tweaks to the strategy designed to defeat ISIS more quickly was to delegate more authority to commanders in the field to make tactical decisions, without having to call back to Washington for permission.

Military commanders privately grumbled that the review process for even simple requests, such as moving forces around on the battlefield, could take days and required the submission of lengthy decision memos for the President Obama's appraisal.

As long as the administration has the military's back when inevitable battlefield honest mistakes are made, this is good.

If we are at war--and one problem of President Obama (in my opinion) is that he never saw himself as a war president despite setting a record for being at war--then the military should be told what to achieve and the broad parameters of what is allowed to achieve those objectives. Then generally left to fight the war. With oversight of course. And the civilian leadership can change objectives and parameters.

A further advantage of this change is that it is retraining our military to react on the battlefield rather than rely on the habit of referring decisions back home. If we become engaged in a high-intensity fight, our commanders can't afford to wage a war that slowly. What was a pain in the ass in a counter-insurgent fight would be catastrophic in a high-speed armored battlefield with enemy tanks, artillery, and planes trying to smash our forces up.

Having a squad leader and forward observer on the Potomac is no way to run a war.