And while [Bush is] at it, perhaps he could tell various admirals to stop moaning about how difficult it would be to deal with the pirates off the coast of Somalia (isn’t keeping the shipping lanes open a core mission of the Navy?) and order the Navy to clobber them. If need be, the Marines would no doubt be glad to recapitulate their origins and join in by going ashore in Africa to destroy the pirates’ safe havens.Matt Yglesias replies:
I’m not one to say that we should blindly defer to the preferences of the military brass, but surely they’re due some deference. Is the Navy really “moaning” about how difficult it would be to stop the pirates, or are they perhaps accurately describing difficulties? Where does Kristol get off adopting a condescending tone on this subject? The Marines “would no doubt be glad” to spearhead an amphibious assault on land-based Somali targets? Has he asked anyone about that? I think a lot of Marines feel that the Corps has a lot on its plate in Iraq and Afghanistan. And certainly I’ve never heard someone with legitimate knowledge of the regional situation indicate that a simple “destroy the pirates’ safe havens” operation would work. You’d need to address the fact that the whole country is in a persistent state of anarchy.One might further note that the whole situation is a big unintended consequence of the Christmas 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Something that was done with full US support and loudly cheered by The Weekly Standard. But thought he consequence was unintended, it was widely predicted by people who knew what they were talking about. I harp on this because it’s a subject I was prescient on, but I wasn’t prescient due to any incredible leaps of genius — I just listened to the International Crisis Group rather than, you know, The Weekly Standard.
Incidentally, there's a difference between supporting the troops and wrongfully assuming them omnipotent and building foreign policy atop that premise. One of the more damaging subthemes of the foreign policy conversation in recent years has been the tendency to overestimate the power and size and resilience of the US military and embed those assumptions in punditry. A few years ago, perfectly credible people were talking about a chain of wars that would begin with Afghanistan and Iraq and quickly move to Iran, Syria, and occasionally, North Korea. As it is, the combination of Iraq and Afghanistan alone has vastly overstretched the military. Imagine if those folks had had their way.It's become a trope of liberal punditry to redefine what "supporting the troops" really means, but at the very least, wisely using the troops requires some level of realism about their capabilities. As it is, the neoconservatives have a tendency to flatter our troops and then take advantage of the resulting consensus about the military's awesome power to advocate for more war. As you can see Kristol's comments, the various admirals are perfectly able to explain what they can and cannot do, but it would be very hard for a pundit, or a politician, to argue that our marines couldn't fight off some pirates.
