Words & Deeds
A combat-embedded Harvard-trained historian executes an academic takedown on Obama’s West Point speech. What follows is a guest post from Richard F. Miller, author of In Words and Deeds: Battle Speeches in History. I picked up Miller’s book the other day, intrigued by the idea of a military historian who takes his deadly subject matter seriously enough that he sought to experience it firsthand.* We had a brief email exchange, and this quick, off-the-cuff assessment of Obama’s Afghanistan escalation speech was the result.
Miller classes it a “Midst of Battle” speech, and rates it a not particularly good one. In fact, pretty bad. ”In general, a battle speech, or call to action is not the place to recite one’s limitations.” Ouch.
Here’s the full scorching, as Miller wields his analytical historian’s flamethrower:
For my companion volume to Words and Deeds (MS due in three weeks) I’m actually analyzing a few of Obama’s speeches as commander in chief. I’ll probably include the West Point address in the book’s epilogue. Regarding West Point, I would say this:
The form of battle speech is that of Midst-of-Battle Speech, probably the most common and diverse of the battle speech genres. The most relevant — and obvious — comparisons would be to Bush’s announcement of the Surge (Jan. ’07) and Petraeus’s Assumption of Command Speech (Feb. ’07).
The most important convention these sorts of speeches is first, simplicity of message (e.g., attack, retreat, hold) and next, consistency of message. The latter is key — time and attention spans are short. When a civilian commander, versus a NCO, gives such a speech, multiple audiences have to be accounted for — friends, allies, enemies, fence sitters, etc. This actually puts nuance at a severe discount — clarity is key. Battle speeches are not diplomacy. The same message must be received by all constituencies.
Given the foregoing, but not addressing the policy merits, Obama’s speech was a failure. It transgressed both simplicity and consistency with its call for a July 2011 terminus (since walked backwards and forwards by a variety of administration shills).
The speech was too long, and its length was spent badly. Where he might have outlined some basic tactics (a key according to SLA Marshall) he was silent about details — the numbers matter less than what one does with the troops. (Here both Bush and Petraeus excelled in defining broadly where and how new force would be applied.) Consistency also fell short because he reproached his predecessor, an gratuitous distraction from his message.
Consistency was also violated by the other boundaries that Obama set. For example, in emphasizing, unnecessarily, in my view, that America’s war-making capacity was subject to economic limitations, should the Taliban to assume that American can be compelled to withdraw by, Heaven forbid, dynamiting the New York Stock Exchange? In general, a battle speech, or call to action is not the place to recite one’s limitations. One can imagine FDR calling for “the inevitable triumph” but “subject to the success of next war bond drive.”
Moreover, civilian commanders-in-chief have a special responsibility in their battle speeches from which their military counterparts are exempt — rallying the civilian population. Here, Obama failed miserably, save for the only segment of the civil population that seemed to matter to him — the Democrats’ left wing. Unfortunately, in democracies, wars are not waged by placating special constituencies. They must enjoy broad based support. That begins with the “visible presence,” to use Patton’s phrase, of the president. The only resolution I observed during the speech were the stony faces in the audience.
One final and related observation. Staging and props matter a good deal in these situations. Talking to a roomful of cadets was a mistake and another distraction. There are certain kinds of speeches, just like there are certain kinds of orders, lover’s messages, job terminations, and awful medical diagnoses, that one gives face to face, period. The only way for a president to do that is alone, behind his desk, in the Oval Office. There is no more awesome responsibility than ordering youngsters to what will be a certain death for some. And that can only be done by looking directly into the camera and thus into the hearts of his fellow Americans. The presence of a visible audience during the speech acts like an automobile bumper, absorbing the shock of the speech.
But for some speeches, the shock should not be absorbed. The awesome, solemn, terrible business of ordering troops into battle is one of these.
A little background on Miller, with some of high-powered reviews of In Words and Deeds: Battle Speeches in History plus his other titles at this prior post: War & Peace.
Miller’s own site, with links to his embedded correspondence for WorldNetDaily and other venues, here.
As long as we’re doing Midst of Battle speeches, here’s NATO Secretary General Andres Fogh Rasmussen in a Washington Post oped, rallying his own troops, and doing a little cleanup after the American commander in chief:
To be clear, “transition” is not a code word for “exit strategy.”
…
In the end, it comes down to this: When Taliban soldiers come to take a young Afghan to fight on their side, what will his father do? If he sees that the Taliban has no chance of winning, if he sees that his life is getting better and if he believes in his government, then he will say no. And the insurgency will lose. It’s that simple. Those are the conditions we have to create, and next year we will start to see light at the end of the tunnel.
How about that. More clarity from a Eurocrat than an American president. You’ll want to read the whole thing. And someone please forward it to the White House for future reference. I like the way he didn’t shy from the dread “light at the end of the tunnel” phrase.
NYT has the news. NATO pledges 7,000 with “more to come.” That looks like an increase over the 5,000 hoped-for in earlier news reports, in contrast to the 25 percent cut Obama levied on his field commander’s request. Does Old Europe want to show us how its done? They have a way to go, but that’s not a bad start.
Thanks, Dymphna at Gates of Vienna. More astonishment and appreciation than faint praise re Rasmussen. And disappointment that an American president needs a Eurocrat to show him how its done.
* The idea of a military historian going into battle is an interesting one. Obviously he is not the first historian to have gone into harm’s way. So is there a loss of academic distance and dispassion, or an enhanced depth of knowledge? At the risk of bias myself, I’d tend to go with the latter. Getting close to your subject is always hazardous, for journalists and academics. But war is a peculiar thing, experienced at gut level in sometimes surprising and nuanced ways that may be hard for the unblooded to grasp. Any good historian is going to strive to be faithful to his source material, but in its interpretation, does direct experience become a useful lens, a filter or a cloud? That’s up to the historian, I guess, as we’ve seen enough times that lack of experience can run the same lens/filter/cloud gamut.
Topics: Afghanistan,Obama,history,military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:11 am Comments (7) on Friday, December 4, 2009
7 Responses to “Words & Deeds”
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December 4th, 2009 at 8:56 am
“Talking to a roomful of cadets was a mistake and another distraction. There are certain kinds of speeches, just like there are certain kinds of orders, lover’s messages, job terminations, and awful medical diagnoses, that one gives face to face, period. The only way for a president to do that is alone, behind his desk, in the Oval Office.”
The decision to make that speech to the cadets at West Point has Rahm Emmanuel’s arrogant, bull-in-a-china-shop signature all over it. He couldn’t resist the in-your-face, take it to the enemy camp opportunity. In his glee over the chance to put the generals in his sights, the genius forgot all about the backblast. All he accomplished was to enable the Corps of Cadets to know their enemy, Commander-in-Chief Obama, better than they did before.
December 4th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Now why couldn’t I have had a professor like this when I was in college? I might not have felt all alone. I got tired of hearing about how the PSU profs only went into battle to get a cup of coffee or to get the best protest sign.
December 4th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Here’s an idea: next time we vote on a president, let’s vote in an American one.
December 5th, 2009 at 12:23 am
RebeccaH, you’re even more pissed-off and scared than I am. I didn’t think it was possible. You’re a blast.
December 5th, 2009 at 12:35 am
[...] Journal appreciates the link by Andrew McCarthy at NRO in Alinsky Does Afghanistan. And Jules Crittenden has a remarkable find from a military historian named Richard F. Miller. A short clip of his [...]
December 6th, 2009 at 10:19 am
[...] historian Richard F. Miller, author of In Words and Deeds: Battle Speeches in History, wrote a guest post for Jules Crittenden’s blog about President Barack Obama’s West Point speech. His [...]
July 6th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
[...] Miller’s scholarly works on war words include his new release, FIGHTING WORDS: Persuasive Strategies for War and Politics and In Words and Deeds: Battle Speeches in History. Previously, Miller, scathingly, on Obama’s Afghan surge speech. [...]