Powell Doctrine Bad News

Geopolitics: The Obama Administration is apparently saying that before a final decision is made on McChrystal’s troop request there must be a clear exit strategy in Afghanistan. Various leaks and rumors have percolated out of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Afghan strategy deliberations. The leaks are sometimes contradictory, purporting one thing and then another. We of course don’t really know what is going on within these deliberations. Some of the leaks have been positive. The one cited above is negative. The term “exit strategy” comes from the so-called Powell Doctrine. Applied to Long War conflicts the Powell Doctrine is not only irrelevant, it would be disastrous. The PD says all wars should be fought like WW II or a sort of romanticized version of WW II. That is to say that public support (poll numbers) should be sky-high in favor of the war before American forces engage. The expeditionary force must be overwhelmingly huge with total national resources devoted to the war effort; the country must be on the path to full mobilization as in WW II or the war should not be fought. The PD departs from WW II strategy by saying that if US forces start to lose there should be an exit strategy, i.e. the troops should be brought home and not left in the field to fight a protracted lost cause. Truthfully, the core of the Powell doctrine doesn’t even really work for big conventional wars like WW II. Opinion polls were against American involvement for two years once war broke out in Europe. Japan mopped America up in the Pacific for the first several months of fighting, should that have triggered an exit strategy? The US Army was knocked back hard in the Battle of the Bulge, exit strategy?