I always thought his personal war planning group simply made too many assumptions, and started thinking of them as facts. You have to make some assumptions about the unknowable, or you can't plan. But there are two cardinal rules - don't assume away problems without having a contingency on the shelf to deal with them if your assumption is wrong - and don't nest assumptions.
Especially if the failure of any single assumption in the chain kills the chain.
If you don't do that, you move beyond simply accepting risk - you move into gambling. And if you are planning an optional war (perhaps not optional in that it might have needed doing at some point, but certainly optional in terms of timing) you simply have no business gambling. The sad truth however, is that risk versus gamble is usually a dichotomy resolved by the historians after the fact, not the decision-makers before the fact.
I admit - I was, and still am, prejudiced in favor of the "overwhelming response" form of swarming an enemy - done properly I still believe it presents the safest path to quicker victory and in the end, less damage and fewer casualties. Certainly, there are campaigns within wars and operations within campaigns, and battles within operations where you have no choice but to accept the risk of economy of force operations because as Napoleon putatively noted - "He who would be strong everywhere, will be strong nowhere."
There is a Clausewitzian maxim - one the Brits have mastered (as did we in our Revolution, and the North over the South, and that the Germans and Japanese learned to their rue - and that the North Vietnamese taught us:
"There is only one decisive victory: the last."
It is a lesson the Insurgency is trying to teach us. And one the President *and* Congress would do well to ponder.
As I read through the stuff at this link thoughtfully provided by Jim C - another thing from Napoleon comes to mind.
If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius where reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation.
The information provided by the National Security Archive at the George Washington University, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, are the Powerpoint slides used to brief the war plan. With associated commentary.
The more I read (and I read charitably, having done a fair bit of military planning, though truthfully none at this level) it would appear that we didn't meditate long and foresee - because we let our short-term objectives and desire for inventing a "new way of war" to blind us, and hamper our planning causing a lot of smart and brave people to have to start winging it.
There is less and less doubt in my mind as I live through this, that the greatest failing of this President and his Cabinet is failing in this observation of Clausewitz"
"no one starts a war-or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so-without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."
Not that they didn't think they had it covered... just that in the end, they did not.
I make no secret I didn't support invading, nor did I like that plan. I also make no claim that I would have done better. As I watch this unfold, my unsuitability for high-level command slaps me in the face time and again. I probably would have peaked as a division commander - and that only in an Army that promoted by seniority.
But these people sought those offices, and, I think, failed badly.
Don't take that to mean I'm a Murtha fan. I'm not. We have to make a truly honest effort to fix this. Which to my mind the opposition needs to be constructive, not destructive, but, well, there's another Napoleon quote that covers that, from both sides of the aisle:
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
This isn't a criticism of the soldiers. It's a criticism of the top tier of leaders, including uniformed ones.
As I told students in my military history classes - any echelon can lose a war, companies win them.
The companies are generally performing very well, and as always, it falls on their shoulders to bear the burden of the mistakes of their seniors.
And the middle-level seniors are doing their level best to retrieve the situation.
But it's hard to win a game when your game plan is flawed - then you have to be flexible and adapt. The soldiers in the line are flexing and adapting all the time. But the coaching staff isn't.
Not that it's helping to have the hired help of the owners continually sniping anything they suggest, almost without regard to what the proposal is. But do they want to be coach? Nope. They want to declare the season over and withdraw from the league.
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