I Leak, You Leak, We ALL Leak . . . Posted by Michael Cohen

Jonathon Alter's piece in Newsweek on last year's Afghan review is fascinating on a number of levels. But of particular interest is the White House's view of the incessant leaking that went on last Summer and Fall, reaching its crescendo with the release of the McChrystal review in September:

It was important to remind the brass who was in charge. Inside the National Security Council, advisers considered what happened next historic, a presidential dressing-down unlike any in the United States in more than half a century. In the first week of October, Gates and Mullen were summoned to the Oval Office, where the president told them that he was "exceedingly unhappy" with the Pentagon's conduct. He said the leaks and positioning in advance of a decision were "disrespectful of the process" and "damaging to the men and women in uniform and to the country." In a cold fury Obama said he wanted to know "here and now" if the Pentagon would be on board with any presidential decision and could faithfully implement it.

"This was a cold and bracing meeting," said an official in the room. Lyndon Johnson had never talked to Gen. William Westmoreland that way, or George H.W. Bush to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton had all been played by the Pentagon at various points but hadn't fought back as directly. Now Obama was sending an unmistakable message: don't toy with me. Just because he was young, new, a Democrat, and had never been in uniform didn't mean he was going to get backed into a corner.

I'll get back to the last point in a second about being backed in a corner, but all of this seems pretty important. 

Now Andrew Exum wants to argue that there is really nothing to see here; that Alter got spun like a top by the White House and as he puts it, "If you look at the decision-making process in 2009 on the war in Afghanistan, things more or less proceeded according to the normal theory."

Really? So apparently it's "normal" for the President of the United States to call the Secretary of the Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff into the Oval Office and tell them to stop leaking to the press . . .  and then feed that story to a prominent Newsweek reporter?  Apparently the Pentagon did no wrong here and the leaking, for example, of the McChrystal review put no pressure on the White House. Please. Even Peter Feaver, who is not exactly a huge fan of this White House, doesn't buy that argument. If this is the way strategic deliberations are supposed to work, I'd hate to see it when things go badly.

And look you might think I'm wrong and that the Pentagon did no wrong here. But clearly that was not the view at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Alter has Rahm, Biden and Obama all expressing frustration at the Pentagon's conduct. Clearly the White House viewed this as a problem and they believed that the Pentagon was trying to box Obama in.  Call me crazy, but that seems like a relevant data point.

But before anyone accuses me of being a White House apologist never fear, because there is also this illuminating passage that sent my head spinning:

Obama was trying to turn the tables on the military, to box them in after they had spent most of the year boxing him in. If, after 18 months, the situation in Afghanistan had stabilized as he expected, then troops could begin to come home. If conditions didn't stabilize enough to begin an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces (or if they deteriorated further), that would undermine the Pentagon's belief in the effectiveness of more troops. The commanders couldn't say they didn't have enough time to make the escalation work because they had specifically said, under explicit questioning, that they did.

(Obama) was a step ahead of them, and as much as some of them thought they had obliterated the July 2011 deadline for beginning a withdrawal, they were mistaken.

I truly can't believe that the White House believes this - and if you want to make criticism of Alter it's that he didn't point out how bizarre the WH thinking is. Let's say that a year from now the Pentagon says to the president "you know what, we were wrong; we couldn't accomplish everything we wanted in 18 months.  We've made progress; we're close, but we need more time."

Dear reader, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think that Obama is going to pull the plug on Afghanistan and order withdrawals or will he feel enormous political pressure - fed no doubt by a plethora of leaks from the military and their ideological compatriots in the GOP - to stay on course . . . because you know victory is right around the corner? How did this strategy work for LBJ and Vietnam?

Indeed, if the White House was serious about their 18-month timeline for withdrawal why were they walking it back practically days after the speech. Gates et al have said withdrawals would be "conditions based" - do you think the military might have some input into how those conditions are determined.

The bottom line is that the WH had their chance to push back on the military's grandiose dreams of counter-insurgency last Fall - and they blew it. 

But it's not like they weren't warned.

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