When military decisions are made for political reasons, soldiers die needlessly.
I’d missed this story. Perhaps you had, too.
It turns out that the decision to attack Fallujah and the decision to withdraw before taking Fallujah were both made over the protest of the Marine general in the field: apparently in the White House, where “stategery” — the habit of making every decision, no matter how technically complex, based on perceived political advantage — is apparently the single operating principle.
When military decisions are made for political reasons, soldiers die needlessly.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
When military decisions are made for political reasons, soldiers die needlessly.
Mark A. R. Kleiman: The high cost of stategery