Admiral Fallon's Resignation Was Long Overdue

The Spitzer debacle contributed to the disappearance of another important story that the media was well on its way to screwing up - the resignation of Navy Adm. William "Fox" Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command. When it broke on Tuesday, Shep Smith on Fox News was attempting to say that Fallon was the man responsible for the positive changes in Iraq since the surge. He went on to softball a few questions to several Democratic consultants that he happened to be interviewing at the time of the announcement, suggesting that this would be disastrous for the war effort. He even started repeating the old media mantra that Bush was once again silencing his critics, noting a few bizarre statements that Fallon had made in a recent magazine article that might have upset the President.

Shep's take on Fallon was about as far from the truth as possible. Fallon did resign after he participated in that sad, self-memorializing, and self aggrandizing profile of himself, The Man Between War and Peace, in Esquire Magazine. But the Admiral had no choice. He essentially pulled a Spitzer - something he did personally destroyed his ability to continue to lead, to continue to do his job - and he knew it.

Many articles are starting to come out about the real story of Admiral Fallon, and the damage that he did in his relatively short tenure as the head of CentCom. In my opinion, any one of the things I'm hearing Fallon did or said would have been sufficient grounds for his dismissal long before the publication of the Esquire piece. As for Bush's reputation for silencing critics - I wish it were so. Not only does Bush not silence his internal critics, he doesn't fire them either - even when their job performance has been disastrous. That has been a particular problem with the military. Frankly, not enough military leaders like Fallon have been fired when they screwed up or proved to be ineffective.

In the many wars that the United States has been involved in and won, there have been wholesale replacements of military leaders during the conflict. Effective peacetime military leaders are often not effective wartime military leaders. It's a natural occurrence - you don't get a chance to find out how well suited someone is for a wartime leadership position until after a war has begun. Literally, you need to see how a man (or woman) responds under fire. Admiral Fallon was a perfect case. He had previously served a long way away from the war zone, in Pacific Command. After he assumed command of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it quickly became apparent that he was neither a good nor an effective wartime commander. He was clearly not suited to be the head of CentCom - his resignation is a relief.

Max Boot has an op-ed on Fallon's major shortcomings in today's Los Angeles Times, Fallon didn't get it. In it, Boot shares the tidbit that not only was Shep Smith mistaken in assuming that Fallon was responsible for what's happening in Iraq today, but that Fallon was against the surge. Here's an excerpt from Boot's piece - I find it astounding that the man was appointed to lead CentCom in the first place:

But evidence of Fallon's supposed "strategic brilliance" is notably lacking. For example, Barnett notes Fallon's attempt to banish the phrase "the Long War" (created by his predecessor) because it "signaled a long haul that Fallon simply finds unacceptable," without offering any hint of how Fallon intends to defeat our enemies overnight. The ideas Fallon proposes -- "He wants troop levels in Iraq down now, and he wants the Afghan National Army running the show throughout most of Afghanistan by the end of this year" -- would most likely result in security setbacks that would lengthen, not shorten, the struggle.

The picture that emerges of the admiral -- "The Man Between War and Peace," as the overwrought headline has it -- is not as flattering as intended. "He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war [with Iran]," Barnett writes. And:"While Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III ... it's left to Fallon -- and apparently Fallon alone -- to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: 'This constant drumbeat of conflict ... is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.' "

What Fallon (and Barnett) don't seem to understand is that Fallon's very public assurances that America has no plans to use force against Iran embolden the mullahs to continue developing nuclear weapons and supporting terrorist groups that are killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is highly improbable that, as the profile implies, the president had any secret plans to bomb Iran that Fallon put a stop to. But there is no doubt that the president wants to maintain pressure on Iran, and that's what Fallon has been undermining.

By irresponsibly taking the option of force off the table, Fallon makes it more likely, not less, that there will ultimately be an armed confrontation with Iran.

Barnett writes further: "Smart guy that he is, Robert Gates, the incoming secretary of Defense, finagled Fallon out of Pacific Command, where he'd been radically making peace with the Chinese, so that he could, among other things, provide a check on the eager-to-please General David Petraeus in Iraq."

It's doubtful that this was why Bush and Gates appointed Fallon. Why would they want to "check" the general charged with winning the Iraq war? But it's telling that Barnett would write this; it may be a reflection of Fallon's own thinking. Even if he wasn't appointed for this reason, Fallon has certainly seen his job as being to "check" Petraeus. The problem is that Fallon is a newcomer to the Middle East and Iraq, while Petraeus has served there for years and is the architect of a strategy that has rescued the United States from the brink of defeat.

This is not, however, a strategy that Fallon favored. Not only was Fallon "quietly opposed to a long-term surge in Iraq," as Barnett notes, but he doesn't seem to have changed his mind in the past year. He has tried to undermine the surge by pushing for faster troop drawdowns than Petraeus thought prudent. ("He wants troop levels in Iraq down now.") The president wisely deferred to the man on the spot -- Petraeus -- thus no doubt leaving Fallon simmering with the sort of anger that came through all too clearly in Esquire.

Like a lot of smart guys (or, at any rate, guys who think they're smart), Fallon seems to have outsmarted himself. He thinks the war in Iraq is a distraction from formulating "a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East," according to the profile. The reality is that the only strategy worth a dinar is to win the war in Iraq. If we fail there, all other objectives in the region will be much harder to attain; if we succeed, they will be much easier.

That's something that Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno -- the architects of the surge -- understood, but that Fallon never seemed to get. Let's hope that his successor will have a better grasp of the region and of his role. This president, any president, deserves a Centcom commander who carries out his policies rather than undermines them.

Most of Bush's failures during his Presidency can be attributed to his reluctance to fire people who have screwed up - and those who were wrong for the job in the first place. Admiral Fallon was yet another example of this, even though Secretary of Defense Robert Gates bears a large part of the responsibility for moving him to CentCom.