New Article: There Are No Tea Leaves to Read About the Mosul Plan
[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen”]
I have a new piece up at War on the Rocks ( which, by the way, is doing an important Indiegogo fundraising drive):
THERE ARE NO TEA LEAVES TO READ ABOUT THE “MOSUL PLAN”
A mostly forgotten Arab adversary of American influence in the Mideast, the late Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, once said “The genius of you Americans is that you make no clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.”
The Obama administration appears determined to live up to Nasser’s estimation of our strategic acumen.
The latest evidence for this proposition would be the ill-fated affair of the administration’s former battle plan to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the butchers of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Problems began at the inception when the anonymous but official Central Command (CENTCOM) briefer revealed a plethora of sensitive operational details to reporters, a move described by journalists in their stories as “odd,” “very unusual,” “rare.” The stories provoked a firestorm of criticism from members of Congress, the Iraqis, and within the Pentagon itself which predictably led the administration’s numerous admirers in the media to mobilize andtake up a defensive crouch, speculating as to the clever hidden motives for releasing the plan. [….]
Read the rest here.
The dust-up over the Mosul Plan is, in my view, symptomatic of dysfunctional organizational problems, especially with the senior White Hose staff and NSC. The latter of which is now of enormous size, estimated 400-500 people, depending how you count various civil service employees and military personnel on “loan” from their agencies and departments ( a “mini-State Department”, in the words of one member of the natsec community).
By contrast, Brent Scowcroft helped the collapse of the USSR to a soft landing and managed the Gulf War with an NSC of about 50.
lewis shepherd:
March 13th, 2015 at 2:32 pm
Nasser, “mostly forgotten”? Outrageous! But otherwise agree & very insightful.
zen:
March 13th, 2015 at 4:05 pm
LOL. Well, he’s definitely not forgotten in Egypt….
.
Yes, I had this objection from a mideastcentric -journalist type think tanker offline too. Wonky ppl like us know very well who Nasser was, general public, not so much. Younger folk, they know bin Laden, very few of them know Nasser unless they are history buffs, IR types or are from the region.
zen:
March 13th, 2015 at 4:06 pm
And thx Lewis!
larrydunbar:
March 14th, 2015 at 3:52 pm
But if there were tea leaves they would say that the US isn’t quite ready for Iran to take the lead in the area, right? I mean that decision is being reached as we speak, and if the Iranians think they are up to it, why not let them try to maintain that position? Is there some reason Obama would be opposed to either possibilities?
Dave Schuler:
March 14th, 2015 at 5:46 pm
When President Obama says he didn’t learn about the offensive to re-take Tikrit or the revelation of the plan to re-take Mosul until he learned it from the media I believe him. I don’t think he knows about a lot of foreign policy issues and doesn’t want to know because he’s focused “like a laser” on defeating the real enemy–Republicans.
larrydunbar:
March 14th, 2015 at 6:47 pm
” I don’t think he knows about a lot of foreign policy issues and doesn’t want to know because he’s focused “like a laser” on defeating the real enemy–Republicans.”
Really, because it seems to me like he “gets” it. This drone business is about keeping your enemy thinking about the sky. If you’re about to have a turnover on the ground in management, and it is coming from the sky, then it is time to think locally instead of internationally.So Obama is in there stirring up the bee’s nest.
Then it really comes down to, what do you want the management look like, who takes the place of the leadership you have “taken-out”, so to speak.
If we were looking into the tea leaves, I would, as I have just suggested in my last comment, say Obama is undecided.
I think the Republicans have chosen the side they want to be on, and that is Iran’s.
In other words, attack Iran, and let the whole region become Shia or occupy it.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the US Republicans have no intentions of occupying Iran.
On the other hand, Obama might, because he may have to.