Explaining Broken Dialog

During the past decade of military operations combating terrorism, members of the U.S. government have thoroughly debated the power of the President and the role of Congress during a time of war. A historical review of war powers in America demonstrates the unchecked power of the executive when it comes to military decision-making and the use of force. Throughout history the power of the President to initiate, conduct, and sustain military operations without oversight has greatly increased. Through a historical lens, this essay will

Even with the approval of congress towards the Tonkin Gulf incident showed a “misuse of power” (Rotter, 77). When Dante B. Fascell said “The president needed authority. Who cared about the facts of the so-called incident that would trigger this authority? So the resolution was just hammered right on through by everyone” (Young, 120); this recollection makes it appear as through the Tonkin Gulf incident decision was not well-informed. The resolution was the issue of Johnson’s authority and the potential that offensive measures in South Vietnam could lead to a third world war (Young, 121). Another example that Americanization was unwise and not well-informed was Johnson ignoring the George Ball about better solutions to help America leave the war. Once again it is the issue with Johnson’s authority, he constantly ignores other possibilities of leaving Vietnam. At the end the Johnson administration would choose three tactics: bombing the North, intensify the war in the South using U.S. troops, and concentration on pacification of the

As acknowledge in the paragraph above the authors of this third edition book are Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis and they completely revised and expanded the book by adding more events and details of the American military experience in the Balkans and Somalia,by analyzing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2012, and by providing two new chapters on the Vietnam War.All of the authors of this history book are well educated and obviously know a lot about the history of the United States. Millet is a “University Research Professor,Ambrose Professor of History, and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University

The U.S. Constitution provides power to the President and Congress to develop and enact national security policy (Ulrich, 1). As such our civilian leaders have the right and responsibility to maintain oversight of the military. Two civil-military relations theories, Normal and Clausewitzian, offer competing views. The Normal theory suggests officers are professionals and interference from civilian leaders is inappropriate (Cohen, 4). The Clausewitzian theory contends the statesman may inject himself in any aspect of military strategy since

Congress and the president have diverse accountabilities regarding military action, which have been sanctioned by the United Sates Constitution; there are similarities with some of these tasks, creating boundary confusion when the topic of war is addressed. Dealing with the matter of a military assault against Syria in August of 2013 the Obama administration sought the endorsement of Congress. After the authorization was requested, debates regarding a president’s need for such a request

From the readings in Lesson 3, we discussed Congress's quandry regarding the employment of combat forces abroad. During the Vietnam Conflict, President Nixon employed hundreds of thousands of combat forces into Southeast Asia without approval of Congress. Eventually, Congress felt compelled to pass the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (over his veto). As such, the president can still employ troops abroad to defend US interests, but then is required to notify Congress of the employment within 48 hours, and then withdraw them within 60 days - unless Congress formally declares war or authorizes the use of military force. However, subsequent

Zunes, Stephen. "A U.S. Invasion of Iraq Is Not Justified." The Nation 275 (30 Sept. 2002): 11. Rpt. in Is Military Action Justified Against Nations Thought to Support Terrorism? Ed. James D. Torr. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. Document

Another example of Bush’s obstinacy is the surge in troops he approved in Iraq. “The conventional wisdom about the U.S. troop surge was that by 2006, Iraq was in complete chaos, and because of this, many Americans called for the U.S. to bring the troops home. Instead of withdrawing U.S. troops, President Bush sent in 30,000 additional ones against the advice of a number of his advisors” (Bowman). Bush assembled a panel of scholars, historians, and retired four star generals to help him create a new plan for the war in Iraq. The majority of these panel members agreed on one thing, the current track that the U.S. was on was not working, and advised Bush to change tactics. After a number of meetings with the committee, Bush decided to stay on course with his original plan and completely ignored the counsel of his own hand-picked advising panel. “The justification was for such a move was that by the end of 2007, Iraq started to stabilize. For example, in 2008, Senator Lindsey Graham spoke out on the subject at Republican National Convention and said that, "by every measure, the surge of troops into Iraq has worked”’ (Bowman). In a 2007 speech to Congress on the surge in the Middle East, General David Petraeus agreed and proclaimed, "The military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met" (Bowman). “On the other hand, some disagree that Bush’s aggressive strategy and blatant disregard of his advisors’ wishes were the reasons for success. Doug Ollivant, an Army

For example, when David Petraeus took command of the Afghanistan mission in July of 2010, he attempted to impose the same strategy that had worked in Iraq. As Gentile explains, the “American military establishment could only provide one course of action in Afghanistan – COIN.” In The Insurgents Kaplan tells the story of how one of Petraeus’s advisers told him rather directly to not talk about Iraq so much because he was not doing enough to factor in and adapt to the differing conditions in Afghanistan, such as its primitive economy and scattered population. COIN became arborescent in its approach, and was always looking back to the root concepts that had made the Iraqi operation successful. The strategy did not evolve as Kilcullen suggested it would. In many ways it seems that the COIN approach simply became the “New Western Way of War;” just as dogmatic as the ways of conventional warfare had been

“Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he's speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He's killed people unnecessarily — his own troops or other troops — through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand.” This quote which is the opener of Errol Morris's “The Fog of War” is a statement that is emblematic of the choices and decisions Robert S. McNamara had to make during his time serving in World War II, as Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and as president of The World Bank.

As a young officer bitter over the Vietnam War, Powell pondered “the what went wrong syndrome … which created a lively ferment.”2 He disagreed with how the war was run and often struggled with “looking to the other for answers that never came conundrums.”3 As a rising strategic leader, Powell was beginning to understand the “implications of the advice given … and the propensity for operating comfortably at the joint, interagency, intergovernment, and multinational levels.”4 He was also starting to grasp from “personal experience; cultural awareness”5,6 the importance of understanding what military objectives are, who sets them and why.

‘“As a presidential candidate, then-Sen. Obama of Illinois criticized Bush's unilateral military actions. “We've paid a heavy price for having a president whose priority is expanding his own power,” he said in October 2007. Yet Obama continued — and some say expanded — many of the Bush programs, including domestic surveillance and drone attacks”’

It is not enough to understand that the surge and Petraeus’s strategy were effective; policymakers must be able to comprehend why they were effective, that way these strategies and lessons are properly put into action in the future. I will explain why they were effective by comparing and contrasting the situation in Iraq before and after February, 2007 (when Petraeus took command and the additional troops started arriving) and establishing the causal relationships between the new strategy and the decline in violence and that between the troop surge and the decline in violence. Furthermore, I will address the arguments put forth by those who do not believe the surge or Petraeus’s strategy were the main factors that caused violence in Iraq to fall precipitously.

Colonel Mahaney is an Army Special Forces officer currently serving as the Senior Military Fellow of the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group. Previously, he commanded the Asymmetric Warfare Group. He has also commanded a Special Forces battalion and Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan. Colonel Mahaney is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and a graduate of NYU, Columbia, and the Army War

Politicians controlled the strategy in Vietnam, which Betts identified as “brief vogue of bureaucratic politics theory” [Betts, pg 66]. Politicians feeding decision to battlefield commanders created the “disillusionment over U.S. policy in Vietnam” [Betts, pg 66]. The results of this political driven strategy led to many tenants of Air and Space Power; one specific is centralized control and decentralized execution [AFDD1, pg 27]. Millett and Murray recalled how the reliance of indirect firepower created ineffectiveness of the strategy; effective strategy would allow commanders to draw the enemy closer in giving us better use of our technology and strategy and effective use of airpower in Vietnam [Davis, pg 102; Millett & Murray, pg 174-175]. Vietnam was a conventional war fought under unconventional and used guerilla tactics by the enemy [Gardner, pg 275]. Laird addressed the Americanization of the war and abandonment of our allies in Vietnam as he discussed the similar threats in strategy towards Iraq [Laird, pg 3].