Cross-posted to Registan.net
Far be it for me to carry water for any Presidential candidate (I still hate them all), but some criticism just goes far over the top. Many months ago, Barrack Obama got a lot of heat from the right-o-sphere for pointing out that the high number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan was harming the war effort—a point I quite vigorously defended him on. Several right-ish blogs, including one at National Review Online and even the otherwise-respectable QandO, chimed in by quoting something Obama didn’t say and disproving a point he never made. It was kind of silly.
Something similar seems to have happened again: Barrack Obama made an important point—this time that Iraq has been siphoning people and resources away from Afghanistan—and the right-o-sphere jumped on him like a White House intern. Naturally, none of the criticism makes any sense—as Abu Muqawama notes, ABC’s Jake Trapper does us the courtesy of actually talking to the people involved instead of quoting anonymous sources like NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.
But since when have facts stood in the way of partisan hackery?
Whatever other points he may deserve credit for, Obama did not get his story straight with respect to the “siphoning”, and the criticism was right on. Tapper helps him get the story straight, but it only reveals just how wrong Obama was. To wit:
OBAMA: “You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon …”
- Lieutenants lead rifle companies, not Captains (minor point really, and doesn’t really make Obama wrong since the guy was a LT during the time of which he spoke).
OBAMA: “…supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.”
- The platoon was NOT split up as asserted by Obama. Some of the soldiers were transferred to other platoons prior to deployment, but that was before this company went to Afghanistan, and well before anybody was deployed to Iraq. Even Tapper’s article confirms this:
According to McQ, this sort of thing is not uncommon:
OBAMA: “And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough Humvees.”
- This is flatly contradicted by every military source that I’ve read on the subject. Logically, it doesn’t really make much sense either since ammo is troop specific (as opposed to per platoon), and if there were less soldiers than normal, that would have made for MORE ammo than was needed. In any case, Tapper again shows why Obama was wrong in quoting the CPT complaining about ammo and equipment shortages PRIOR to deployment:
The CPT does speculate that equipment was prioritized for Iraq rather than Afghanistan (which shows that Obama wasn’t fabricating his story at least), but that does not necessarily check out — BlackFive blogger, Deebow writes:
OBAMA: “They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”
- Again, the CPT disputes this claim:
In the end, I think Obama simply misunderstood the story he was told, and since he buys the narrative that Iraq depleted military resources from Afghanistan his interpretation is what made the most sense to him. The shouting from the right may be a bit over the top (what else is new), but Obama was not correct and the military community is justifiably tired of politicians and pundits constantly getting basic facts wrong about their profession. Obama’s point of view on the topic is not unreasonable IMHO, but the CPT’s story doesn’t support it.
I’ll accept that Obama misunderstood a relatively minor point of the story he was told, but that doesn’t excuse the shrill, over-the-top criticism heaped upon him—just as it didn’t for his “air-raid” comment, which, like this one, was basically 90% accurate and consistent with experience on the ground.
It’s funny you quote that Blackfive blogger. Abu Muqawama, whom I quote and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, corroborates Obama’s story of shortages and siphoning. So are individual experiences too narrow to draw larger scale conclusions from? Perhaps. But it isn’t “basic facts” he’s getting wrong, at least in the sense of basic facts about the military as a whole—Captains lead platoons all the time (AM did so on two separate tours).
But what is this “buying the narrative” crap? Sorry to be so harsh, but there is no “narrative” (or meta-narrative if you want to be really annoying about it) about resourcing for Afghanistan. Troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan in late 2002 and sent to Iraq. They were withdrawn again in late 2006 and sent to Iraq for the Surge (I blogged this extensively on Registan.net). Similarly, Iraq saw ballooning increases in reconstruction funding as Afghanistan’s was cut.
That’s not a narrative. It is, to borrow your phrase, a basic fact I’m tired of people glossing over.
I don’t think that anyone actually doubts that Iraq takes resources and people that could be sent to Afghanistan.
(I will parenthetically point out that there are two elements that should be considered with this “truth” and that is 1- that Afghanistan has significant logistical issues that limit what we can get in-country so it’s not as simple as “what is available”. and 2- that we could send more to Afghanistan *now* if the political will was there… we *may* be trying to get our “allies” and those who supposedly support the actions in Afghanistan to carry more of the “multilateral” load.)
The jumping on Obama in this case is very like the jumping on Beauchamp. The stories they told tell lies. A person might say that Beauchamp was telling the “truth” about war and that any of the things he related did happen… someplace. Young soldiers are crass. They participate in gallows or morbid humor. And some of them kill dogs. Complaining that Beauchamp made up his stories because he never witnessed them seems, for some, to be about suppressing this “truth” about war. But the problem, and the thing that raised the red B.S. flags wasn’t the events but the *framing* of the events.
Essentially, the frame described a military that is a lie.
The actions described may have been probable. The *reaction* surrounding the actions Beauchamp described was impossible.
A person can point out that Obama was using his muddled story as an example of a real thing… that resources that ought to go to Afghanistan are being diverted to Iraq.
But I guarantee you that a great part of his audience did not for a *moment* doubt that what he described and the military and procedures he described were factually true. Because stealing weapons from the enemy in order to carry on the fight is Hollywood Romantic.
I have, a few years ago, spent time talking to someone trying to dissuade them from the *romantic* notion that soldiers are all on drugs because, in his mind, this is the picture that he’s got… SE Asia brothels and opium. It’s a fantasy.
Obama may have been intending to illustrate how resources are diverted from Afghanistan. He could have simply *said* that. But what he did *instead* was tell a story that was all muddled up AND HE COULDN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
He had no idea that capturing weapons from the enemy in order to supply the platoon would get a near unanimous “WTF?” from the military community. Turns out we can see how the “real story” became the muddled anecdote, but that doesn’t make it un-muddled. It doesn’t change the fact that it plays to the excessively annoying, false, and romanticized version of the military that many people on the left hold with utter certainty. Apparently that includes Obama.
Well, okay, I’m sure there are many on the right that hold the same romanticized ideas about the military.
They are annoying, too.
Right, that’s kind of the point here. Umm, but did you just compare Obama to Beauchamp? That’s something of a stretch, to say the least.
And capturing weapons from the enemy to use against the enemy actually happens. Several silver stars and other awards have been given to soldiers who do that very thing during a firefight. Even Michael noted that, while their purpose was not to resupply themselves (Obama got that wrong, though who knows if it’s because of how he was told), it most certainly does happen.
I’m not trying to excuse anyone (so on that we agree), but Obama didn’t get almost anything right in his anecdote. Sorry, but that’s just a fact.
In the Army? Every single military source that I’ve read says that is simply not true — it’s also irrelevant since the CPT was a LT during the time that he was discussing. Actually, the time he was discussing is another problem with the story since it was 4 or 5 years ago and doesn’t necessarily describe anything that’s going on now.
As Synova points out, when you have a limited supply of resources, it makes sense that using some in one place deproves them of being deployed in another. But from what I read (and, I should add, I don’t consider myslef fully informed, I’m just noting discrepancies), not only were troops not necessarily “diverted” from Afghanistan (because we had no intention of sending more), neither were resources such as ammo and equipment. Again, from those deployed in Afghanistan that I’ve come across, they claim that they never had a problem with getting ammunition except when in an intense firefight, which is decidedly the norm. So when I talk about the “narrative”, I’m talking about the dominant story of Afganistan vs. Iraq that’s out there. The other story, the one that dispute the “narrative” is one that’s not told outside the military and blogger communities.
Again, as I said before, I think Obama’s position is perfectly reasonable and a good case can be made to support his claims. The CPT’s story does not do that, however.
I think Synova just meant the reactions to both from the rightosphere and milbloggers was similar, and similarly elicited. Obama wasn’t being disingenuous I don’t think, but Beauchamp was.
I’m pretty sure that Obama simply misunderstood what he was told. When looking at the CPT’s anecdote from the point of view that Iraq is siphoning resources from Afghanistan, it’s easy to see why he thought what he did. But that’s also why he got the elements of the CPT’s story wrong.
I compared the situation and reactions to Beauchamp. My opinion of Beauchamp is that he was being “literary” and adopting a “voice” that he knew would appeal to his audience. The defenses of him that I read were all about how he was telling the “truth” about the way war dehumanizes people. The story was the frame. A true story could have been told about the same “events”.
I considered comparing the situation to the NYT piece on McCain as well. Is the story about the reaction of staffers or is it about a possible affair?
In the case of Obama’s muddled anecdote he undoubtedly intended one story and got another. Because of the context and implied context.
The frame caused people, who certainly know that a soldier may pick up an enemy weapon and fire it, to express a collective, “WTF?”
Jordan, commenting on Blackfive, said this…
“The impression that comment made on the public was “Why is this still a problem? Can’t this administration do anything right?” because Obama’s doing what most of the Dems do. They take an earlier, problematic era in the war zone, without being clear that this was in the past, and not the current situation, and they imply that that’s what’s happening now. It alarms families, and creates confusion. ”
Do you think she’s mistaken?
Obama is most probably right if he’s arguing that we should *now* be paying more attention to Afghanistan and anti-Taliban efforts and rebuilding efforts in that country. And I sincerely hope he understands just how much of what we send to that country comes overland and at the pleasure of Pakistan. I hope that when he figures out what we ought to be doing in Afghanistan that he keeps in mind that he either needs Pakistani approval or needs to tell them to suck themselves because the US can run right over them. Or he could go with more cargo planes and a bigger, better funded Air Force. More fuel tankers and refueling planes and places close enough for the refuelers to be based from.
I’m looking forward to aggressive military funding from an Obama administration.
And then he’ll find out that “building more planes” just like “building more uparmored humvees” doesn’t happen overnight simply because the CiC says, “Make it so.”
Michael, yes, he is in the Army. From the post I linked to (which you should read, by the way):
So it is not at all as black and white as you’re making it out to be. It isn’t supposed to happen, but then again soldiers aren’t supposed to be stop-lossed three times in a row.
The issue in Afghanistan isn’t one strictly of “supply” in the sense of having enough bullets or shampoo, but in terms of overall resources—read the NYT Magazine article I linked in the sidebar about the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. There are simply not enough men, not enough command acumen, not enough materials, not enough planes, and not enough support to do the job they’re being asked to do in Afghanistan… and I’m going to have to ask you to take my word on it that this is absolutely the case, and the lack of available men and resources is critically hurting the campaign. Meanwhile, on a whim, Iraq gets 30,000 extra soldiers—more than are in Afghanistan at any one time.
The contrast is, at the very least, striking. And, to use some more actual data in this discussion, using enemy ammunition and firearms is, in fact, a very real problem in Afghanistan.
There’s more there, and I highly suggest reading it before accepting at face value what comes from the partisan mil blogs.
Synova, that’s fair, and I can’t disagree… except to say that the situation isn’t much changed. Afghanistan is so critically shortchanged for people that they rely on air strikes to make up the difference, and this ends up killing many innocent people and driving the insurgency.
This is about resources in a grand sense, and I forgive a presidential candidate in the midst of a cut throat campaign getting minor details wrong in relaying a soldier’s story. Contrary to Michael’s take, he was in fact mostly right, and it is others relying on an outdated idea of what Afghanistan was like that are leading to an incorrect assumption about what’s happening in places like Kunar, Nuristan, and Nangarhar.
That last comment is a bit churlish. Building more planes does, in fact, happen overnight if the money is there—especially when we have active assembly lines for planes they’ve decided they just don’t want anymore. If the Air Force were being rational and mature about its likely roles and actually asking for money for airlift and refueling planes, people (like me) wouldn’t be screaming to high heaven about their funding requests. But they short the logistical portions of their budget to buy more $200 million paperweights like the F-22… then complain they need an emergency supplemental to buy transport craft. They are sowing the seeds of our own destruction by being so childish.
So yes, I actually would welcome a new set of priorities under an Obama administration. He at least offers a small dollop of skepticism at the crap that spews out of the Pentagon’s public relations wing… unlike a certain Mr. McCain and his excreble 4% budget doctrine.
So, where is NATO and the UN in all this figuring with numbers???
Isn’t that the “solution” that some preferred. Stop doing things unilaterally.
Although, maybe they mean the US must stop making decisions unilaterally, you’ll still need to supply the majority of blood and treasure, but you’ve got to let us make the decisions.
“the U.S. bureaucracy”
Isn’t this the main source of the problem? An bloated tail, controlled by Congress, and whoever happens to lobby the hardest for their particular solution to everything.
He’s talking about leading a platoon of Rangers as a CPT, Josh. That’s not the same thing. Either way, this entire point is simply irrelevant.
Yeah, well sorry if you don’t consider what I read to be “facts”, but the people telling the stories are describing first-hand experiences. That’s “facts,”
JackJosh. And what you describe as a “problem” is described by others as being the norm, especially in Afghanistan where, for example, not only is it easier to carry an AK-47 (better weapon according to many) and the ammo is easier to come across since that’s what the bad guys use. Plus, it has a distinctively different sound than the M-16, which helps out our guys in battle since they bad guys can’t tell which shots are coming from friendlies and which aren’t.More importantly, your own quoted passage puts the real lie to Obama’s story:
Ergo, this ain’t an Iraq vs. Afghanistan problem, and it ain’t a GW Bush problem, it’s a good old fashioned Army problem.
Yeah, I really should start checking out all those non-partisan milblogs. Seriously, you can’t possibly mean to say that with a straight face.
?? No, actually Jake Tapper (not Trapper) quotes an anonymous source as well – we have to take it on faith that the Captain is genuine, because he remains anonymous.
And the left has been quite hysterical in this affair as well. See here for an example.
Where are you getting the Ranger thing from? AM is speaking specifically to the critique that Obama is wrong because “Captains just don’t lead platoons.” That is one of the angriest points raised by the Right in response to his point. And to break out a personal reference, I work with two Army captains who have lead regulars in Iraq, from the start, as Captains. So please don’t pretend this is irrelevant when it pokes holes in a critique. Obama was not wrong about it.
So, again, we’re left with the problems of first-hand experiences. At the very least, there is enough of a variation in personal experience to where I think we can rule out mendacity on Obama’s part. But wait—is it a problem that our own weapons are unreliable and unavailable enough that our troops have to use enemy weapons? Either what Obama said—which is that there are enough supply issues that they have to pick up AKs—is true, or it is not. Above you were accusing him of pushing myths, now you’re writing it off as routine.
So again: was he right or wrong? You seem to want him to be wrong while admitting the story was right. I don’t get it.
And yes, “partisan mil blogs.” More than a few, including Blackfive, have reacted with what I can only call numb hatred at the episode. That is not a desire to correct the facts, it is a desire to attack like a two-bit election blog. So yes—partisan. Other blogs like Abu Muqawama or Totten or Yon manage to correct the facts without being vicious and one-sided.
And Kieth, I think you’re right that a big part of the solution could be helping NATO to get over itself. Unfortunately, that just won’t happen with Bush still in the White House—no matter how much I like SecDef Gates, relations with NATO are more or less poisoned for the next year (despire France grudgingly trying to must up a few hundred more troops for Kabul).
It’s not an issue because the guy whose story Obama’s using was an LT (like everyone on the right said) at the time (and AM mentions his Ranger platoon in the comments). And no, this was not “one of the angriest points raised by the Right in response to his point” — you’re just making that up. The initial telling of story sounded fishy to many, and that was one of the reasons why. Period. End of story.
I’ve never ruled it in.
Wow. That’s not even close to what I was saying, and nobody is arguing that “our own weapons are unreliable and unavailable enough that our troops have to use enemy weapons” except Obama. Even the CPT he got his story from says that wrong. You’re reading into factual claims all sorts of underlying reasons that haven’t been stated. I haven’t accused Obama of pushing any myths, and frankly it’s pretty ridiculous of you suggest that I have. If you read what I wrote, you’ll find I said nothing of the sort, nor am I writing anything off as routine other than the Army has always had supply problems in theater ACCORDING TO YOUR SOURCE.
OBAMA’s STORY WAS WRONG. Where do I say anything else? Other anecdotes from the front lines may create some controversy, but the CPT whom Obama claimed he spoke with said very directly that “The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons.”
And let’s be really clear here: if this is the level of discussion you want to have then don’t waste your time writing anything else. I’m not going to respond to unmitigated BS.
They’re blogs, Josh. They’re partisan by nature. Characterizing them as expressing “numb hatred” is just BS. The BlackFive post in particular relates personally derived observations that run entirely counter to what Obama stated. You get personally offended if someone incorrectly punctuates a sentence that includes the word “Afghanistan”, so how do you think these guys feel when someone tries to tell them that what they went through didn’t really happen that way.
I think I’ve been pretty damned reasonable with respect to the topic. You, on the other hand, are letting your arrogance regarding Central Asia bleed into arrogance about fighting war, about which you have absolutely no reason to be so fricking haughty. Tone it down, or drop it.
Michael,
I’m making nothing up. The reason this initially sounded fishy to many was because people were saying “we just don’t have CPTs lead platoons.” That some details in this story were wrong is immaterial—they were calling BS for the wrong reasons (and this is where AM’s and Carter’s points come into play).
About the rest of your angry screed, permit me the liberty of quoting your first comment:
You and I agree on this. Flubbing details in a debate in the midst of a campaign is surely not the crime the blogosphere has made this out to be—that is my main point. My follow up points is that the idea Obama was trying to get across, which is that these wars have stretched our military thin enough to where we’re making terrible choices, is not controversial in the slightest—SecDef Gates happens to think the exact same thing (that some people here, or on some other milblogs, don’t appear to think so baffles me, given the preponderance of evidence).
But please: keep on being so very angry at this discussion. But, much like the vitriol flung at Obama, it’s really uncalled for.
And that last little dig—again, in the context of both this discussion, and both of our histories of writing—is childish. Get over yourself—you’re not being reasonable by arguing minutae of semantics here.
Josh:
I told you I would respond to your BS, so I’ll let this guy do it instead:
How was it that Obama was right again, especially given that the very person he claimed gave him the information disputes what he said?
What’s uncalled for is you deliberately twisting what I said.
Arguing about minutiae? How many times did I say that the CPT/LT point was completely irrelevant and should be dropped? How many times did I write that Obama’s point was reasonable? How many times did I simply point out that the CPT’s story does not match what Obama said? Yet you want to insist that Obama was right? Where?
I really don’t have a problem with the theory that fighting in Iraq detracts from our ability to fight in Afghanistan. I don’t really buy it since we were planning on leaving in early 2002 when we were transitioning over to the ISAF (just like everyone, including the Afghani’s, wanted us to do), but it’s not an unwarranted point. It’s certainly plausible.
However, it’s just not supported by a CPT claiming that prior to his deployment he had some troops shifted to other divisions (normal), that he had equipment and ammo problems while training at Fort Drum (irrelevant to Obama’s point), that he had some heavy equipment supply problems upon initially getting to Afghanistan (not unusual for the Army, and to be expected for a light infantry unit like the 10th Mountain Division), and that they didn’t HAVE TO capture enemy weapons to get the ammo they needed, even if they did use them. IOW, the CPT’s story is basically nothing like what Obama claimed.
Other than that, though, Obama was right on …
“relations with NATO are more or less poisoned for the next year”
Uh, no. NATO wouldn’t have done more no matter who was in office. That has been clear since the early ’90′s. If they do do more, even after Bush leaves office, it would be to his credit. In fact, I would suggest we have already gotten more than we should ever have expected given NATO’s history and the desultory state of other nations ability to project force.
Finally, whatever his larger point, his story was false, and obviously so. People have every right to be offended, though I don’t think he was being mendacious either, though his staff I have less faith in. I like Obama, even if I disagree with him.
He basically took some truth’s and falsehoods and exaggerated them and used them to support arguments they cannot support. Not purposely, but that is what he did. None of the things he related were due to Iraq, as the officer himself has said, and a knowledge of the military and Afghanistan in particular would clue one in on. That Iraq may indeed be a problem doesn’t make using things which don’t support the point okay. I, and many others, am tired of fake, but accurate. At minimum we would like it acknowledged that it is fake, even if one thinks the larger point is valid based on other evidence.
I think it takes far longer to increase the size and capability of the military than many people realize.
No, planes can not be made overnight. A single aircraft (or humvee or set of personal armor) can be made quickly enough but there are manufacturing limitations. Factories may have to be build before production can be increased. People have to be hired and trained. (For something like aircraft this is, unless I’m terribly mistaken, not a short process. The consequences for manufacturing errors is too extreme.) The same is true for increasing the number of people in the military. Every additional aircraft needs a crew.
Even if we had a draft and all those young men were marching off to boot camp, we wouldn’t have enough trained people to *train* them. We wouldn’t have the facilities to *house* them. We wouldn’t have the ability to *feed* them. And unless “training” was entirely gutted, we still couldn’t put them into a war zone *quickly*. And even then, we wouldn’t have any more NCO’s. It takes 10 years to make an NCO. No less. Not in war time and not because someone wants very badly to have more of them.
During the 90′s we downsized a whole heck of a lot and it’s not possible to wave a magic wand and suddenly have the manufacturing or training capabilities at the desired levels. We’ve actually ramped up and increased total numbers at about the same rate per-year as they were previously reduced. Yet, that seems to be the argument. Somehow we were supposed to have been able to auto-magically have a much larger Army with the first and best thing in armor and machinery.
They’ve been building at the military bases here. Among other things, family housing. Because if you’ve got more people you’ve got more families. There is a whole support structure that has to go in and I don’t think that most of those who find it politically expedient to go on about how our military is so shortchanged by this administration ever think about that.