The Navy’s McCain Moment
The Navy’s McCain Moment - WSJ Editorial
Ten U.S. sailors are missing after a Navy destroyer collided Monday with a tanker near Singapore. The cause is unknown, but the investigation should go beyond the narrow causes to ask if the collision is further evidence that the military is strained beyond what the force can tolerate.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson on Monday announced a pause in operations around the world. The Navy will investigate the crash of the USS John S. McCain, and also launch a broader review of Navy procedures in the Pacific theater, including training and maintenance. This is warranted given multiple incidents at sea this year.
In June a merchant ship collided with the USS Fitzgerald, a guided-missile destroyer, in Japanese waters. The Navy’s incident report details that the crew manning the helm at night didn’t detect the danger. Seven sailors died, and last week the Navy relieved the ship’s commanding and executive officers, noting “inadequate leadership,” which suggests failure by the crew.
In May the USS Lake Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing boat, and in January the USS Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay. It’s hard to credit all this merely to bad luck.
Whatever we learn about the McCain incident, one reality is that the Navy has been conducting missions across the oceans with less funding and fewer ships…
A True Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Is Trump's Only Hope
A True Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Is Trump's Only Hope by John Nagl - The National Interest
Last night, Donald Trump became the third consecutive U.S. president to commit to a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. He did not do so willingly; indeed, like President George W. Bush, Donald Trump had campaigned explicitly on the idea of abandoning nation-building campaigns like those conducted by his predecessor. But there are only three options when your enemy chooses to fight you as an insurgent: quit, conduct a scorched-earth campaign that kills everyone and destroys everything, or commit to counterinsurgency.
We cannot afford to quit. In the best two lines of his speech, President Trump laid out U.S. interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as is possible: “We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America. And we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us or anywhere in the world.”
Leaving Afghanistan would quickly result in the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, and the resumption of a safe haven for terror in Afghanistan, which cost us dearly on September 11, 2001. The United States cannot follow the Roman method of making a desert and calling it peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And so Trump, like Bush and Obama before him, chose a counterinsurgency strategy, not as his first choice, but as the least bad option available…