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View Full Version : The Pentagon Fights Back - Military Leaders Turning Against Obama Administration




r3volution 3.0
02-12-2016, 12:41 AM
...hat tip to Rad for bringing this to my attention.


Earlier this year, Seymour Hersh, America’s leading investigative journalist, published an intriguing article on U.S. policy towards the growing conflict in Syria and Iraq. “Military to Military (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military),” which appeared in the London Review of Books, maintains that the Pentagon’s intelligence analysts have, since 2013, been advising against the White House policy of removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, arguing that it would create a power vacuum in the country that would inevitably be exploited by groups like ISIS. The analysts cited the examples of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as examples of what might go wrong. They also argued that arming a group of “moderate” rebels to overthrow the Damascus government was delusional because even moderates were of necessity entering into “accommodations” with radical groups.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff also observed that the more extreme rebels were being supplied with weapons by feckless allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, who were exploiting the crisis in support of their own narrowly construed agendas. They attributed the White House obsession with al-Assad to a Cold War type of mentality born of the view that Syria is a client state of Russia, which continues to be seen as the principal challenge to U.S. global hegemony. It is not a view that the Pentagon embraces, seeing a much more complicated evolving threat situation in the heart of the Arab world that has little or nothing to do with great power rivalry.

According to Hersh, after being ignored by the White House, the Department of Defense began pushing back behind the scenes to undermine the administration policy on al-Assad by sharing intelligence with a number of foreign liaison services—to include Russia, Germany, and Israel—that it knew would be leaked to the Syrian government. The “leaks” of intelligence started in the summer of 2013 and continued until 2015, with the intention of strengthening Damascus’s ability to resist opposition forces, most particularly al-Nusra and ISIS. The information being shared was regarded as “military to military” exchanges and neither the White House nor the State Department was briefed regarding it.

As the United States has also been simultaneously arming and training the so-called “moderate” opposition forces, the possible support of al-Assad would suggest that Washington has been engaged on both sides of the conflict, which is quite possibly an accurate assessment. One expects a certain lack of coherence in the foreign policy emanating from the Barack Obama White House, but what is particularly disturbing is the “Seven Days in May” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May) suggestion that the Pentagon might be running its own unconstitutional foreign policy without the consent of the nation’s civilian leadership.

To be sure, there have been rumblings of discontent from the Pentagon that might have suggested that something was not quite right. Former Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta (http://www.amazon.com/Worthy-Fights-Memoir-Leadership-Peace/dp/1594205965) and Robert Gates (http://www.amazon.com/Duty-Memoirs-Secretary-at-War/dp/030794963X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454438984&sr=1-1&keywords=robert+gates+duty+memoir+of+a+secretary+a t+war) have complained in their memoirs that the national security policy process was increasingly being micromanaged by the White House, which itself was nevertheless unable to exercise effective leadership to establish priorities.

Continue Reading (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-pentagon-fights-back/)

kpitcher
02-12-2016, 03:15 PM
selling to both sides just doubles the profits!

jllundqu
02-12-2016, 04:33 PM
Bullshit. DOD and Pentagon isn't pushing back on a god damned thing. The brass are all good little foot soldiers doing what they are told. If they had a FRACTION of honor, they would have done more than 'pushing back' on a policy level to stop this madness.

Son_of_Liberty90
02-12-2016, 04:57 PM
Bullshit. DOD and Pentagon isn't pushing back on a god damned thing. The brass are all good little foot soldiers doing what they are told. If they had a FRACTION of honor, they would have done more than 'pushing back' on a policy level to stop this madness.

This x1000. Too little too late. Top brass is too busy selling their memoirs and instead of taking any substantive action against the white house.