Of course “our” (the collective US/UK) military forces are volunteers and are rightly expected (short of facially unlawful orders of course) to do the bidding of their rightful superiors, uniformed or civilian. This expectation, however, is no different than that obtaining during the Vietnam era when we had the draft.

No doubt you were alluding more to the social and political differences between a draft and volunteer force structure (although I would argue that some of the same socio-political sensitivities and dynamics at play in the draft era are also at work now with the increased involvement of National Guard and Reserve forces in close combat with the expected casualty rates). Nevertheless, the fact remains that lives and bodies of our military, intelligence and other agencies are literally in the balance as our political leaders engage in what we can all hope is in fact “sensible strategic deliberation.”

That these lives and bodies are of volunteers rather than conscripts is again IMHO quite irrelevant to this reality. Furthermore, from the circumstances surrounding the delay in the current US administration responding to Gen. McChrystal’s report and request (not being privy to the actual discussions in the White House and being cynical enough not to ever take press releases at face value, I am left to make reasoned assumptions based on the surrounding circumstances and readily concede I may be wrong), I do not think the “playing for time” of at least the US administration is actually that kind of “sensible strategic deliberation” to which you refer. Instead, I think it is rather (and this is the reason I compare it to the Vietnam experience) much of the same shameless partisan political maneuvering that came to light in the various mea culpa books by our political leaders who gave us our Vietnam defeat.

I realize a degree of this kind of realpolitik is inevitable in any significant problem facing an elected government but I still find it reprehensible that our political leaders appear to have less regard (there are myriad indicators of this–just look at the many politically important but objectively frivolous activities of our government during the inexplicably long period it was supposedly sensibly deliberating grand strategy to respond to Gen. McChrystal) for the lives and bodies of those they have sent into harm’s way (volunteers or otherwise) than they do for their own political fortunes.

Not making a binary decision at any one point, however, seems to me both a valid, and sometimes sensible part of strategic deliberation. And showing patience and realism about timetables and commitment seems prudent in conflicts likely to linger on for some time yet.

On the issue of troops, however, would you agree that there is an important difference with Vietnam, in that our respective armed forces today are all volunteers? Moreover, many of them will have signed up since these wars got started back in 2001. Leaders shouldn’t use troops lightly, certainly, but professional soldiers should, and do, expect to be deployed to fight in the national interest.

Maybe it is just me with my warped perspective of having been both a combat leader and now (somewhat–in comparison to the true brainiac denizens of KOW) academic, but I find it just a little discomfiting to read:

“Obama to a poker player who chooses to call, rather than raise the stakes or fold. Obama is playing for time, seeing which way things shape up. Stewart likes that, and so do I.”

While perhaps it is just the gaming metaphor that is off-putting, it bears keeping in mind that while “playing for time” may be appropriate for poker–even the high stakes, celebrity kind now all the rage on TV, is it “right” given the inestimably high “stakes” of the lives of our troops who are in actual operations? IMHO, it borders on the immoral to have troops (and most recently intelligence officers) being killed and maimed, not to mention the many innocents caught up in the fighting, while our politicians “play for time.” I have seen similar gamesmanship before in our Vietnam adventure (I make the reference advisedly given the previous debate on KOW but it is a frame of reference for me experientially as well as academically) and do not relish having to live through a reprise.

“

its not so much the labelling that jars, but the perverse process through which we create and debate slogans before the hard work of defining the conflict itself.

I don’t like ‘Long’ as much as you do, partly because it leaves the war unbounded, but mainly because it accepts and reinforces the status quo, the premise that the war has expeditionary nationbuilding at its core and that this is the only and necessary way to wage it.

I like the ‘Long’ bit – the purpose of my post. As for the ‘War’ bit, it’s certainly that, but of course, as a strategist you then need to decide how much of a war it is.

‘Long War’, as you say, might be useful in one way as an antidote to impatient visions of the conflict that were rampant in 2001 and then 2003, as a rapid political transformation at the end of a spear, of the Arab-Islamic world.

On the other hand, like ‘war on terror’, it still suffers from the basic defect: it contains no realistic limitation, whether geographical or political. In effect, it replaces meaningful strategy with a pretty empty slogan.