He would also be without troops, as the C.I.A. would then be run by someone else.
Without troops on the ground, air attacks cannot win a war.
Without troops on the ground, it's hard to see how Libya was invaded by US forces.
The United States, without troops on the ground or any direct influence over Iraq's affairs, has lost much of its leverage there.
As recently as last June, President Obama was recommending Yemen as a model of what can be achieved in the Middle East without troops on the ground.
The statement, released by alliance offices in Naples, added: "Without troops on the ground we are unable to positively identify the presence of any particular individual in these vehicles.
And from then until the last days of the war in April 1975, when General Minh temporarily became president, he was the odd man out in South Vietnamese politics -- a general without troops, a politician without office, a national hero with little to do but play tennis and tend his orchids.
Posen's version of withdrawal is realpolitik with a vengeance, offering the cold comfort of hardheaded calculations rather than grand illusions; but it's difficult to imagine how America, without troops in Iraq, could control events on the ground any better than it can now.
"Perhaps he is a general without troops," Lumumba said in Bangkok in October.
Armed drones can inflict damage at pennies on the dollar and without troops on the ground.
