Obama once again has no Plan A: Bombing is not a strategy

Is the president is politicizing the US military because he has no apparent idea of what military force is for?

This is not a strategy.

U.S. military officers have deep doubts about impact, wisdom of a U.S. strike on Syria - The Washington Post:

It's no surprise that retired military officers with deep experience in operations planning are expressing grave concerns over President Obama's desire to bomb Syria. The president has not articulated even the barest outline of strategic objectives or how American interests will be served by the "brief and limited" stikes.

What is surprising is that active-duty officers spoke critically about the impending strikes to the Post, even if the Post agreed to leave their names out. I retired from the Army in 1995 and I cannot imagine that happening in my day. 

The Post reports,

Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.

“There’s a broad naivete in the political class about America’s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve,” said retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the run-up to the Iraq war, noting that many of his contemporaries are alarmed by the plan.

Note that first sentence. I am reminded once again of how with this administration we are continually in a loop of deja vu all over again. They know nothing and learn nothing. With every crisis, real or invented, the world begins anew and the same blunders are repeated. In March 2011 in the runup to bombing Libya, someone asked me whether Obama had a Plan B if the campaign didn't go as planned. "Plan B?" I replied. "He doesn't even have a Plan A!"

Is anything different now? No. As I said then, "Hope is not a method and wishes are not plans."

I turned that into a post and, deja vu all over again, we are once more about to illegally bomb another country with whom we are presently at peace, without knowing why. I mean none of us know why, including the commander in chief himself. As Speaker of the House John Boehner told the president, 

... it is essential that you provide a clear, unambiguous explanation of how military action – which is a means, not a policy – will secure U.S. objectives and how it fits into your overall policy.

So the president has given me a hat trick: Hope is not a method, wishes are not plans, and bombing is not a strategy.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, understands this. 

Dempsey said this month in an interview with ABC News that the lessons of Iraq weigh heavily on his calculations regarding Syria.

“It has branded in me the idea that the use of military power must be part of an overall strategic solution that includes international partners and a whole of government,” he said in the Aug. 4 interview. “The application of force rarely produces and, in fact, maybe never produces the outcome we seek.” ...

“What is the political end state we’re trying to achieve?” said a retired senior officer involved in Middle East operational planning who said his concerns are widely shared by active-duty military leaders. “I don’t know what it is. We say it’s not regime change. If it’s punishment, there are other ways to punish.” The former senior officer said that those who are expressing alarm at the risks inherent in the plan “are not being heard other than in a pro-forma manner.”

As the Post's article shows, even very junior military officers know there is no Plan A. And so low is their confidence in their commander in chief that some are even willing to go on the record to say so. 

“I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said the officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned. “We have been fighting the last 10 years a counterinsurgency war. Syria has modern weaponry. We would have to retrain for a conventional war.”

This president's ineptitude and imperiousness inability to think strategically or listen to those who do has produced an active military that views the commander in chief with grave suspicion. And that is apparently where we are. It would be a true American tragedy if that deep suspicion took on a political tone, but that can't be ruled out.