There’s a cloud of malaise worthy of Jimmy Carter that has settled over the nation’s military. The man who should be able to clear away the cloud, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, won’t be able to do anything about it.
The causes of this malaise are plainly evident, lying by the side of the political road like burned-out cars. They are the accumulated wreckage of seven years of failed policies, indecision and inaction.
Begin with President Obama’s strategy that called for American troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by now. Later, it was supposed to be by the end of 2016. As of two weeks ago, our military leaders had reportedly given up on Mr. Obama’s strategy to pull out of Afghanistan and were predicting that we would have to have troops there indefinitely — for decades to come at least — if the Kabul government was to have any chance of surviving rapid overthrow by the Taliban.
The military has no appetite for more decades of nation-building wars, nor should it. Having compounded President George W. Bush’s mistakes in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama evidently intends to kick that can down the road so that his successor will have to deal with it. Which leaves the military — from the grunts on the ground to the generals in the Pentagon — wondering what their mission in Afghanistan is and whether anyone cares if they succeed. The same is true for Syria and Iraq.
On Jan. 20, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joe Dunford said that Russian airstrikes have stabilized the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. What that means is that Russia — and its ally, Iran — have won the war in Syria. Those two nations have struck out at the anti-Assad forces, not the Islamic State, or ISIS. The accompanying failures of desultory U.S. airstrikes to destroy ISIS and Saudi and other Arab forces to evict Mr. Assad combine to leave our military wondering what they are trying to accomplish and how anyone plans for them to succeed.