No "ass-kissing chickenshit" he
Max Boot files this report about a very happy event – the “retirement” of Navy Adm. William Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command. According to Boot, Fallon’s downfall is the result at least in part of a fawning profile in Esquire Magazine. The underlying problem, though, appears to have been two-fold. First, Fallon sought to undermine policies the administration had already decided to implement. Second, Fallon’s policy preferences were consistently wrong.
As to the first point, Fallon publicly advocated that the administration negotiate with the leaders of Iran and that it reassure them that no military action is forthcoming. For example, as Boot reminds us, he told Al Jazeera:
This constant drumbeat of conflict ... is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.
But the administration does not want to handle the situation that way; it prefers to keep the military option on the table. While Fallon should be free, and indeed encouraged, to make his view known to the administration, he should have kept it within the administration instead of offering his dissent on Al Jazeera. Similarly, as Fred Kaplan argues, Fallon went too far when he made unauthorized remarks about the pace of our troop drawdown in Iraq.
It was bad enough that Fallon attempted to hijack our foreign policy from the civilians charged with setting it. In addition, though, Fallon’s policy track record was undistinguished at best (perhaps because, according to Boot, he had little experience or expertise in Middle East affairs). Notably, Fallon opposed the troop surge in Iraq. Although there may have been substantial arguments in favor of his position at the time, the surge has turned the tide in Iraq.
Nor did it help that Fallon does not get along with General Petraeus, the hero of the surge. Although Fallon denies calling the General “an ass-kissing little chickenshit,” it’s generally thought that there’s animosity between the two. When your relations with the author and implementer of a hugely successful war strategy are poor, your days are probably numbered. To make matters even worse, as noted, Fallon pushed for faster troop drawdowns than Petraeus thought prudent. It was almost as if Fallon did not want the surge to succeed.
We do know that Fallon thinks Iraq is a distraction from formulating "a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East." As Boot notes, however, no comprehensive strategy for the Middle East has much value unless we win in Iraq; “If we fail there, all other objectives in the region will be much harder to attain; if we succeed, they will be much easier.” Fallon didn’t seem to grasp the importance of winning wars.
But then, Fallon’s “comprehensive strategy” seems to include making the mullahs in Iran feel comfortable with the U.S. Losing in Iraq might help achieve that objective.
