Presidential Debates and ASP

You heard it here, first.  Literally.  

The voice of ASP could be heard in Friday’s presidential debate on three key issues:

•  Accountability.
• Are We Winning?
• Iraq: Lessons Learned.

Let’s take these one by one. 

Accountability

In his opening statement, Senator McCain hearkened back to General Dwight Eisenhower drafting remarks on the eve of D-Day in the event the invasion had failed.  He cited the personal accountability Eisenhower demonstrated and rightly praised Ike for understanding that responsibility comes when things go right and when things go wrong.  Much has been made about Senator McCain being mistaken about the details of the scene he described.  But they ignore the broader lesson McCain was invoking–a lesson he got right, and a lesson I described almost four months ago in “D-Day + 64 Years:”

By D-Day, Eisenhower had done everything he could to make sure that the men under his command had everything they needed to succeed.  If they failed on the beaches, then he had failed them. 

I care less about whether or not Senator McCain was mistaken about General Eisenhower’s offer to resign.  The point is that accountability is a rare and precious commodity in public service.  We should demand it of our public servants–and they should hold themselves to it as General Eisenhower was ready to do.

Are We Winning?

In the discussion of the “war on terror,” Senator Obama seemed to make repeated references to the work done by my colleague Bernard Finel in the “Are We Winning” series.

OBAMA: “This is a time when bin Laden was still out, and now they’ve reconstituted themselves. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself acknowledges the war on terrorism started in Afghanistan and it needs to end there.”

OBAMA: “And the point that I originally made is that we took our eye off Afghanistan, we took our eye off the folks who perpetrated 9/11, they are still sending out videotapes….”

OBAMA: “The other thing that we have to focus on, though, is Al Qaida. They are now operating in 60 countries. We can’t simply be focused on Iraq. We have to go to the root cause, and that is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s going to be critical. We are going to need more cooperation with our allies.”

OBAMA: “And one last point I want to make. It is important for us to understand that the way we are perceived in the world is going to make a difference, in terms of our capacity to get cooperation and root out terrorism.”

The “Are We Winning?” reports have focused, at length, on the threat emanating from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, how Iraq became a strategic distraction from the fight against al Qaeda, how the geographic dispersal of al Qaeda and its affiliates requires America’s friends and allies to make meaningful contributions to the fight; and how the decline in America’s moral authority has damaged our cause.

Iraq: Lessons Learned

One year ago, ASP began an initiative to distill early lessons from America’s experience in Iraq.  Our series of online essays, Iraq: Lessons Learned, provided answers from leading experts on one question: What single lesson should America learn from its experience in Iraq?

In the debate last Friday, Jim Lehrer, the moderator, put it this way:

LEHRER: All right. Let’s go another subject. Lead question, two minutes to you, senator McCain. Much has been said about the lessons of Vietnam. What do you see as the lessons of Iraq?

In our series, contributors broke into two camps: those who believe the invasion of Iraq was a good idea executed poorly and those who believe it was a bad idea from the start.  Interestingly, Senator McCain and Senator Obama split into the same camps:

MCCAIN: I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict. . . .

OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator McCain and I have a fundamental difference because I think the first question is whether we should have gone into the war in the first place. . . .

You can watch their entire exchange here.

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