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<\/p>\n[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen”]<\/p>\n
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I have a new piece up at War on the Rocks<\/strong> ( which, by the way, is doing an important Indiegogo fundraising drive<\/a>):<\/p>\n THERE ARE NO TEA LEAVES TO READ ABOUT THE \u201cMOSUL PLAN\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n A mostly forgotten Arab adversary of American influence in the Mideast, the late Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, once said <\/a>\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The Obama administration appears determined to live up to Nasser\u2019s estimation of our strategic acumen.<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest evidence for this proposition would be the ill-fated affair of the administration\u2019s 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 \u201codd,\u201d \u201cvery unusual,\u201d \u201crare.\u201d The stories provoked a firestorm of criticism from members of Congress, the Iraqis, and within the Pentagon itself which predictably led the administration\u2019s numerous admirers in the media to mobilize<\/a> and<\/a>take up<\/a> a defensive crouch<\/a>, speculating as to the clever hidden motives for releasing the plan. [….]<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n