Now on the Best Defense bookshelf: Davidson’s ‘Lifting the Fog of Peace’

Most of the books I read are decades old (anyone for a mediocre bio of Maxwell Taylor?) but I do try to keep track of new books. Right now in the new department, I’m reading Lifting the Fog of Peace: How Americans Learned to Fight Modern War, by Janine Davidson. Her theme is that the U.S. military adapts well tactically but not so good strategically. And that’s bad news because, as the man said, good strategy can fix bad tactics ("every time you dis an Iraqi, you’re working for the enemy") but good tactics can’t fix bad strategy:

"The case of Iraq demonstrates clearly how learning at the tactical level does not necessarily aggregate to strategic success. . . . This demonstrates the limits of bottom-up military adaptation in overcoming poor strategic decisions made by uninformed by empowered leaders."

I agree with that, as far as it goes. But I do worry that in Iraq, the U.S. military shirked the mission given to it by its civilian leaders. That mission was revolutionary, to transform Iraq as a way of changing the Middle East. The military quietly shrugged that off and said, OK, we’ll do stability operations. But the mission was not to bring stability (Saddam already had done that); it was to destabilize the old way and bring a new way. Sure, that mission was crazy — but in our system that’s not the military’s call to make. That’s the job of the voters.