The generals are not Borgists. They are something worse ...

 

(Editorial Statement)

The Borgist foreign policy of the administration has little to do with the generals.

To comprehend the generals  one must understand their collective mentality and the process that raised them on high as a collective of their own. The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively. These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board."

If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective self image as warrior chieftains.

In Obama's time they were asked what policy should be in Afghanistan and persuaded him to reinforce their dreams in Afghanistan no matter how unlikely it always was that a unified Western oriented nation could be made out of a collection of disparate mutually alien peoples.

In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them.

Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War College.

I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers. pl

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

Thank you.

So this is different, qualitatively, than the idea of Professionalism bandied around among the "professional & managerial" classes?
Nevdr heard anyone being called to be a programmer, as an example.

[Sid_finster]

If they are anything like the business world, they are good at repeating instituional prejudices and cherry picking facts as needed to support the preordained conclusion.

Critical thinking, not so much.

[Keith Harbaugh]

Question 1: How much influence does the brass really have over policy?
Very little on social issues, it seems to me.
Does/did the brass really favor opening the military's doors to open homosexuals and what the PC call "transgenders"?
How many male-on-male sexual assaults have there been?

In the Army I knew, as a ROTC cadet in the 1960s and on active duty in the 1970s,
there was a strongly homophobic attitude.
No one ever explained why,
but IMO it reflected a very valid desire on the part of the Army
to ensure that sexual desire did not taint the command relationship.
As an example of how that can happen,
consider the case of General Jeffrey Sinclair.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/us/politics/raunchy-skit-described-in-generals-court-martial.html
That, of course, was a male/female relationship,
but it doesn't take much imagination to foresee
similar homosexual superior/subordinate relations developing.
Sure, the regs will forbid them, but they won't stop them,
anymore than the Navy's regs prevented its current corruption scandal.

Then we can also consider the sad fate of the outstanding Marine General and Chairman of the JCS, Peter Pace.

My point is that the views of the brass carry zero weight in Washington
when they conflict with the Washington political climate
(which, IMO, is both revealed by and influenced by the Washington Post.)
So if that Washington political climate supports intervention
(as it certainly has regarding Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria),
then the brass will bow to the prevailing winds.
Besides, that no doubt will lead to more lucrative post-retirement gigs.
Cf. Petraeus, David and Keane, Jack

Question 2: Who/what caused the U.S. to support deposing Qaddafi?
Did the brass play any role whatsoever in that decision?
I think not.
For what did influence it, see
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/americas-foreign-policy-valkyries-hillary-clinton-samantha-p-5047
and
https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-women-advisers-pushed-war-against-libya/

Question 3: Who/what caused the U.S. to intervene in Syria?
Colonel, I totally agree with what I believe to be your position,
that the interests of Israel played, at the least, a very large role in that decision.
But, interestingly enough,
there was another factor,
what I not very tactfully call "The Liberal Airhead Factor":
Viz.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/the-rise-susan-rice-samantha-power-8553

[LondonBob]

Not seen a comment about it but Justin Raimondo provides an analysis of the Trump Mattis relationship as described in the Washington Post.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/02/11/president-held-hostage/

“He has repeatedly pressed Mattis and McMaster in stark terms to explain why US troops are in Somalia. ‘Can’t we just pull out?’ he has asked, according to US officials.

“Last summer, Trump was weighing plans to send more soldiers to Afghanistan and was contemplating the military’s request for more-aggressive measures to target Islamic State affiliates in North Africa. In a meeting with his top national security aides, the president grew frustrated. ‘You guys want me to send troops everywhere,’ Trump said, according to officials in the Situation Room meeting.

I live in hope Trump is learning and will begin to assert himself more.

[Ron]

Colonel Frank Kitson's book - 'Counter-Gangs' was the book which insitutionalised false-flag synthetic terror waged by deep states. Kitson oversaw the killing on both sides of the Irish Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s, and even the paedophile ring that ran Kincora Boys' Home, STILL uninvestigated, because PM May's intransigence.
On top of Casey's ignorance then, was overlaid a little dangerous 'knowledge' rooted in a sociopathic and barbaric mentality (Kitson got to the highest knighthood of which the UK establishment was capable)