{"id":74457,"date":"2017-09-03T10:05:07","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T14:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=74457"},"modified":"2017-09-03T10:05:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-03T14:05:07","slug":"townsend-we-dont-get-second-guessed-a-lot-by-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=74457","title":{"rendered":"Townsend; “we don’t get second-guessed a lot” by Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to an interview<\/a> with Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq when asked how the Trump Administration’s decentralization of command has affected the way troops are battling ISIS; <\/p>\n

Townsend replied:<\/p>\n

I will say that the current administration has pushed decision-making down into the military chain of command. And I don’t know of a commander in our armed forces that doesn’t appreciate that. I’ll — I’ll prefer not to go into specific examples.<\/p>\n

I will say that probably a key result of that is that we don’t get second-guessed a lot. Our judgment here on the battlefield in the forward areas is trusted. And we don’t get 20 questions with every action that happens on the battlefield and every action that we take.<\/p>\n

And again, I think every commander that I know of appreciates being given the authority and responsibility, and then the trust and backing to implement that. So, that’s what I’ll say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In response to another similar question, Townsend said he believes both the Obama and Trump administrations are “all in” on defeating ISIS, but he said the Trump administration has “empowered the chain of command to make more decisions on their own, and has then given top cover to the chain of command, I think, for the decisions that are being made. And I think that’s important.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article reminds us that Robert Gates and Leon Panetta complained that the Obama Administration interfered with their ability to wage war. From Military.com<\/a>;<\/p>\n

“It was micromanagement that drove me crazy,” Gates said at the Reagan National Defense Forum at President Ronald Reagan’s library in California over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Gates said he had to deal with members of the NSC staff who directly called four-star generals on matters of strategy and tactics. The White House also attempted to make direct contact with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Gates said.<\/p>\n

“I told JSOC if they got a call from the White House you tell them to go to hell and call me,” Gates said to a round of applause from the audience.<\/p>\n

Gates said the Obama White House too often let politics influence the policy when it came to the Defense Department.<\/p>\n

“I think when a President wants highly centralized control at the White House, that’s not bureaucratic, that’s political,” said Gates, a Republican.<\/p>\n

At the same forum, Panetta, a Democrat, had similar criticisms of Obama and his staff on military matters, and singled out the current campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in which Obama has ruled out the use ground combat troops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to an interview with Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander … Townsend; “we don’t get second-guessed a lot” by Trump administration<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}