An Army General's letter to Obama

The Daily Beast:

A retired career military officer tells the new president that we can’t win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan without the coordinated effort of all government agencies.

I served in the U.S. military for 31 years and left on principle in 2005, disgusted by the failure to properly plan and execute our mission in Iraq. So I feel compelled to offer some basic advice to the Obama Administration about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we are dangerously overextended without a plan for success.

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Today’s interagency process is dysfunctional and plagued by infighting. No one is in charge. There is no unity of effort. One would think that the Department of Agriculture would have a major role in Afghanistan generating economic alternatives to the production of heroin, which is a major source of funding for the extremists. But right now, heroin production is flourishing without adequate attention to it. And until the Department of Agriculture is as engaged and committed to defeating Islamic extremists as the Department of Defense, we are wasting our time.

So the president’s second action, once the interagency process is organized for success, should be to task it with developing a comprehensive strategy for defeating world-wide Islamic extremism. No such overarching strategy now exists and as a result, the shortsighted and uncoordinated efforts of our government’s departments and agencies are plagued by infighting, incompetence and wasted effort. The Department of Defense pursues its own strategy in a vacuum, which is a formula for failure.

The challenge in Iraq and Afghanistan has more to do with resolving the gross imbalance of wealth in our world than with the application of force to destroy an ill-defined enemy. The Obama Administration needs to address that challenge by clearly articulating ends, ways and means. How do we define success? What missions will be assigned to each US Government department or agency, and what resources will they require? Who is in charge? Without this fundamental strategic planning and coordinated execution, we risk the continued and unacceptable drain in US national treasure measured in blood and dollars with potentially little to show for it.