More White House-military tensions

Just when the White House seemed to have moved past the critical stories over its prolonged Afghanistan policy review followed by systemic confusion over what exactly the "July 2011" drawdown date means, along comes this New York Times story over the latest friction. Now, anonymous senior White House staff are expressing their "frustration" toward the military over the allegedly slow pace of troop deployments to Afghanistan to implement the new policy. This bears the hallmarks of some of the earlier damaging stories and could indicate increased tensions between the White House and the military and increased confusion over the goals and parameters of the Afghanistan strategy. Which is not good for civil-military relations, or the White House, or the Afghanistan war, or the nation.

But given the past year, the White House itself may bear a good share of responsibility for this imbroglio. After all, the White House that is "frustrated" this week over the pace of force deployment is the same White House that delayed responding to Gen. McChrystal’s initial strategy memo, instructed him to delay his own troop requests, and meanwhile took a very deliberative three-plus months to conduct its own review before announcing the new strategy.

Setting his own decision timetables is of course a commander-in-chief’s prerogative, so this is not at all to say that one (or several) delays deserve another. Rather, there are other, more troubling aspects of this latest story. Such as:

• More internal confusion and finger-pointing over the timetable of the strategy. According to the article, "One administration official said that the White House believed that top Pentagon and military officials misled them by promising to deploy the 30,000 additional troops by the summer. General McChrystal and some of his top aides have privately expressed anger at that accusation, saying that they are being held responsible for a pace of deployments they never thought was realistic, the official said."All of which is reminiscent of the ongoing confusion in the wake of the president’s initial speech over what exactly he meant by announcing a July 2011 drawdown date.
• Too much deference to domestic politics. The article notes: "Administration officials said that part of the White House frustration stemmed from the view that the longer the American military presence in Afghanistan continued, the more of a political liability it would become for Mr. Obama." While maintaining domestic support is a vital concern, lines like this risk sending a message to the military that the White House’s commitment to their mission is partly contingent on domestic approval ratings — especially when this White House has not expended significant amounts of political capital in trying to lead and shape public support for the "war of necessity" in Afghanistan.
• White House sniping at the military. The very fact of the story, which appears to have originated with senior White House staff who wanted to vent their criticisms of the Pentagon to the national media, will not be helpful for relations between the White House and the military, and risks spurring another unseemly skirmish of leaks and counter-leaks reminiscent of the messy Afghanistan review process.
• More confusion over the mission in Afghanistan. The article describes policy assumptions that some White House staff believe undergird the administration’s Afghanistan strategy, such as a relatively rapid "bell curve" deployment of U.S. troops that will substantially degrade the Taliban’s fighting ability and then withdraw and turn responsibility over bolstered Afghan security forces. Perhaps so, but these assumptions may overestimate the pace of our battlefield success in defeating the Taliban and in training and equipping sufficient Afghan security forces. It was likely for these reasons that Secretary Gates qualified the July 2011 date by making it contingent on the progress of the mission and conditions on the ground. But it sounds like some White House staff may have a more rigid exit timetable in mind that rests on some rosy assumptions.

Peter Feaver warned in October of a looming "slow motion civil-military crash", and this article is the latest sign that the drivers have yet to hit the brakes or steer clear.