Posted on 10/01/2006 9:32:33 PM PDT by neverdem
It is alleged, by former Lt. Gen. Mike DeLong, that Donald Rumsfeld once interrupted a briefing of his with the remark: "General, there was no verb in the last sentence." The retired general gave this to CNN as evidence of Mr Rumsfeld's obsession with trivial details.
Let me explain the U.S. defence secretary's curious remark. A sentence without a verb has no meaning. It is a waste not only of the speaker's breath, but of his auditor's time. As Harry Truman once said, being stupid "is hardly against the law for a general"; but it is an inconvenience. And the inability to form sentences is not trivial.
There are a lot of retired generals in the U.S. just now -- Mr Rumsfeld may have the Guinness record for cashiering them -- and a lot of second-guessing about Iraq. The most serious criticism has come from former Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in north-west Iraq two years ago. He told the same TV network the U.S. is in a fix in Iraq, "because Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ignored sound military advice, dismissed it all, went with his plan and his plan alone."
For a man who was in the field, and not in the Pentagon, this is an extravagant criticism. For those with some knowledge of Mr Rumsfeld's working habits, it also comes as a surprise. He has a reputation for encouraging reasoned debate among his subordinates (as does his boss, George Bush). He suffers neither yes-men nor fools. But having made decisions, he sticks to them. He is, in short, the polar opposite of so many Clinton appointees. And they were getting in his way.
The background assumption is that Mr Rumsfeld's Iraq invasion plan went superbly for the first three weeks, but has been souring ever since. The conventional view, spread by now almost across the political spectrum, is that he foolishly resisted the demands of his generals for sufficient troops to protect the "post-war" peace.
To start with, there was no single plan, and every plan made was modified in operation. To say Mr Rumsfeld stuck rigidly to his initial plan is to talk gibberish.
But more fundamentally, any well-run military will be at its best fighting a war, and at its worst doing police duties. They are different operations in kind, requiring different skills. Our Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are doing so well -- taking more casualties, but killing vastly more of the enemy, in proportion to their numbers -- because they are assigned a military role. Their job is to hunt down and kill Taliban, not to wait until the insurgency comes to them. Too much of the American Iraqi mission has consisted of being targets. It would not have been improved had more targets been supplied.
Has this become a quagmire, like Vietnam? Yes, in one important sense. The American military in South Vietnam was hamstrung because, except for desultory bombing, they could not take the battle to the enemy in the North. Brave and capable soldiers were stuck in defensive configurations, while politicians in Washington micromanaged them, with a view to the polls and the CBS Evening News.
Iraq is happily free of rainforest, but not of infiltration. There is an internal enemy, centred in the Sunni Triangle, but it, too, depends on foreign money and materiel. The further menace of a Shia underground, making reprisals against the Sunnis but also undermining the legitimate Iraqi government, has been added over time. Syria and Iran meddle on their own accounts, and act as conduits for the international jihadi networks. If we can't take the war to them, we can't win it.
The degeneration of the trial of Saddam Hussein into a farce symbolizes what has gone wrong. Here is a man who should have been shot within a fortnight of capture, after a summary trial, if any. He and his surviving supporters should never have been allowed the luxury of a rallying point.
By extension, persistent problems such as Fallujah needed definitive resolutions. We did not defeat Nazi Germany by trying to win the cooperation of local officials, or giving warnings to civilians that alert the enemy among them to flee or hide. We kept pounding till we saw the white flags, then interred whom we pleased.
War is rough work, incompatible with the postmodern, "gliberal" mindset, that permits fighting only if there will be no casualties, and assumes all offensive warfare is morally tainted. Mr Rumsfeld has moulded a fine offensive army, but for diplomatic and political, rather than military reasons, it is being used only on defence.
otiosus@sympatico.ca © Ottawa Citizen
Our military is a tool of our politicians and diplomats.
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The Words:
http://www.Freerepublic.com/~ALOHARONNIE
The Pictures:
http://www.RickRescorla.com/The%20Statue.htm
The Actions:
http://www.ArmchairGeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24361
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Rumsfeld also has enemies amongst the Navy. Several years ago he scrapped plans for a transition from the current technology of warships to a NEXT generation to an ADVANCED generation.
Rumsfeld ordered that we forego the intermediate step and instead leapfrog to the advanced generation. In the process he certainly saved many billions of dollars, a few years btwn now and the debut of the advanced generation ships and scuttled the intel efforts of a lot of Chinese who had been stealing and selling secrets to the ChiComms.
Anytime a strong SecDef disagrees with Flag Officers and the Defense Contractors, there will be friction and disinformation campaigns. Rumsfeld has bigger gonads than Hillary though; no problemo.
Excellent post.
Hear, hear.
WHAT??? This guy had to be a moron. Rummy Rules!
Playing politics with war, as the Democrats have consistently done since 9/11, trying to be on all sides of every issue while hiding their anti-military and anti-U.S. post-Vietnam views in plain sight, is disgusting to the point of treason.
SFS
bttt
The most serious criticism has come from former Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in north-west Iraq two years ago. He told the same TV network the U.S. is in a fix in Iraq, "because Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ignored sound military advice, dismissed it all, went with his plan and his plan alone." For a man who was in the field, and not in the Pentagon, this is an extravagant criticism.
This is not extravagant criticism for a division commander. Rumsfeld has a lot of admirable qualities, but being stubborn, perhaps his most famous trait, is a double edged sword.
The background assumption is that Mr Rumsfeld's Iraq invasion plan went superbly for the first three weeks, but has been souring ever since. The conventional view, spread by now almost across the political spectrum, is that he foolishly resisted the demands of his generals for sufficient troops to protect the "post-war" peace.
There's a reason that's the conventional view. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it's crystal clear. The senior DoD management was adamant for so light a force, and they got it. A cursory examination of Cobra II shows that this was a great plan for wiping out the Iraqi military, but not for much else.
But more fundamentally, any well-run military will be at its best fighting a war, and at its worst doing police duties. They are different operations in kind, requiring different skills. Our Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are doing so well -- taking more casualties, but killing vastly more of the enemy, in proportion to their numbers -- because they are assigned a military role. Their job is to hunt down and kill Taliban, not to wait until the insurgency comes to them. Too much of the American Iraqi mission has consisted of being targets. It would not have been improved had more targets been supplied.
I'm not sure what his point is here, except to illustrate that he has a very limited grasp of the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Has this become a quagmire, like Vietnam? Yes, in one important sense. ... Brave and capable soldiers were stuck in defensive configurations, while politicians in Washington micromanaged them, with a view to the polls and the CBS Evening News.
Wait a minute, I thought this was a rah rah Rumsfeld article?
Iraq is happily free of rainforest, but not of infiltration. There is an internal enemy, centred in the Sunni Triangle, but it, too, depends on foreign money and materiel. The further menace of a Shia underground, making reprisals against the Sunnis but also undermining the legitimate Iraqi government, has been added over time. Syria and Iran meddle on their own accounts, and act as conduits for the international jihadi networks. If we can't take the war to them, we can't win it.
Rah, rah, rah!
The degeneration of the trial of Saddam Hussein into a farce symbolizes what has gone wrong. Here is a man who should have been shot within a fortnight of capture, after a summary trial, if any. He and his surviving supporters should never have been allowed the luxury of a rallying point.
Rah.... rah..
By extension, persistent problems such as Fallujah needed definitive resolutions. We did not defeat Nazi Germany by trying to win the cooperation of local officials, or giving warnings to civilians that alert the enemy among them to flee or hide. We kept pounding till we saw the white flags, then interred whom we pleased.
Since this is counterinsurgency effort, and not a maneuver war, this point is irrelevant and wrongheaded.
War is rough work, incompatible with the postmodern, "gliberal" mindset, that permits fighting only if there will be no casualties, and assumes all offensive warfare is morally tainted. Mr Rumsfeld has moulded a fine offensive army, but for diplomatic and political, rather than military reasons, it is being used only on defence.
The military, as an institution, is excellent to the point of being unbeatable at half of it's job. However, there is still a deep institutional mindset that the military's job is to conduct warfare, and everything else should be someone else's responsibility. It's an easy trap to fall in, considering how good they are at warfare. It also makes it an attrative option to borrow strength from the military's prowress, rather than do other things right, like the un-sexy but vital tasks of reconstruction and nation building.
Simply put, an active component that shrugs and says, "We don't do counterinsurgency, we do warfare" is like a National Guard who says "We don't do natural disaster relief". Sure, people like to stick to what they're good at, but their job is to enforce the political will of the United States by use of force. If they can't do occupations and counterinsurgencies, they they're not configured correctly, and will be unable to fulfil American security needs in the 21st century until they are.
Now we see Iraq where we don't dare escalate because the enemy is backed by a superpower that could embroil us in a nuclear armegeddon. How airpower can't attack a target unless fired upon first. See, it's just like Vietnam backed by Russia. The parallels are uncanny, just mind-boggling. /SARC
btt
Well formulated message!
About Gen. Schoomaker, there is still a lot of anger about his appointment because he's a special operator.
Check the backgrounds of many of the GOs appointed under Rumsfeld. They have SOF backgrounds.
As one who was there when SOF was a poor cousin, I love how the President, Rice, and Rumsfeld have brought SOF to the fore.
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He literally makes decisions of life and death. Resources are limited, otherwise they would not be resources.
There are many reasons for not expanding the end strength of the US Army. If you want we can debate that as well.
I am well aware of most, if not all of them.
If you want we can debate that as well.
If the Army comes out broken or perceived to have lost, it's all moot. Rumsfeld has had three and a half years in Iraq and Afghanistan. How much more time do you think the electorate will provide? In our democratic republic, I'm not too confident.
We've gotten this far only because of the stupidity of our enemies. If a pubbie succeeds Bush in 08, it will be just luck. And we will still have a military too small for all of its commitments. Iraq and Afghanistan are still ongoing engagements, and we still have Iran and North Korea on the table. Adios
The Army/Marines were stressed in 2003 and through most of 2004. At this point, internal restructuring, decline in force requirements in Iraq and elsewhere (Balkans, S. Korea) combined with an Army that grew in end effect by nearly 25,000 men active duty make this point nonsense.
It’s a ‘perceived’ shortage of manpower and some in the political leadership smell blood and chase the issue. When Murtha opens his mouth and talks about how some soldier who had to redeploy in slightly less than a year, I can give my unit as an example which didn’t redeploy until ‘over’ a year back home (1st BDE 1st AD). Exact times will vary from unit to unit based on the type of unit needed. Playing on the ignorance of the public (No one is an expert in everything and most only have a very shallow understanding of the threat, our armed forces, etc. Just like I don’t know much about construction or photography) is no respectable thing. It’s pure self serving behavior. The common layperson only has a superficial understanding of this issue and his ‘opinion’ will be based on what is fashionable to believe and those arguments that sound better or are echoed more often and impressed into his consciousness. Just like name recognition works in elections, so does it with ideas. Repeat a lie often enough and it can become the truth.
The anti-war pundit has shifted from issue to issue picking and probing trying to find an angle. It’s to hot we missed our window of opportunity, no armored HMMWV’s, we’re bogged down outside of Baghdad, no body armor, soldiers that are all too young, now soldiers that are to old (180 degree turn in some of the media, but whose looking right?)…… Those debating the war are either for it or against it. Few have any true understanding about the issue, especially not the talking heads in the MSM. It’s all polemics and the people just pick arguments to support their already preconceived ‘opinion’.
In a war like Iraq you have a time where there are major combat operations and 330,000 troops on the ground as in 2003. It would have been a stupid, costly, and an ineffective measure to increase the DoD spending and personnel end strength the way some suggested in latter 2004 when the first such BS criticism appeared. By the time the force would have grown to the point proposed, the need would have been gone. It takes time to recruit, train, equip, and move large numbers. It was nothing more than arm chair quarterbacking which would not even have helped! Simply put, in 2003-2004 the Army and Marines were just going to have to ‘suck it up’ since it was a short term surge that was not going to last. Today we are at a point where we can sustain these operations indefinitely without depleting the force with troop levels of 130-150,000 in Iraq.
This war will not be won quickly. There are few measures of success along the way. Like the fall of the wall in 1989, we will know we are at the end when we get there. However, in the meantime we do know what is necessary to protect us, our interests, and allies. Iraq is but one battlefield in a much lager ideological struggle. The measure of success or failure is if we can build up the structures in Iraq well enough to where if we largely withdraw they can survive as a republic and democracy. Failure would obviously be if Iraq implodes.
The problem with Iraq is not the strategy, our DoD, its equipment, or even the Iraqi people. The problem is all based on ‘expectation management’, the political games in our own government, the games in our MSM that always need something to talk about, and a war is an endless supply of good footage and filler stories. Germany took SEVEN years until 1952 when their Bundeswehr stood up. Iraq is in year three. Things take time, and even this fact was already put out right after the fall of the Iraqi regime when the issue of Iraqi infrastructure was blown up by the MSM and some of our politicians in the summer of 2003. Do you remember the stories about Baghdad and a lack of electricity? New currency? Fuel prices and rationing? In the fast pace media news cycle a solid and valid argument just gets buried by new reports and stories and more 22 year old Princeton experts that work in some institute. The news and even our politicians feed on new stuff; and arguments no matter how true are old news tomorrow, and over shadowed by some other event. Iraq will simply take time, that’s the simple fact. It’s not more troops that are needed there, it’s no failed plan or lack of it, it’s simply the fact that big ships take a long time to turn. It is unrealistic, even naïve, to believe that you will reconstruct from years of embargo, Iraq’s war damage with Iran, the coalition in 1991 and 2003; create new systems in law, governance, security; put down an insurgency; and do all this in one year. That’s ‘stupid’!
1. There is a positive aspect to all this. The Democrats will play the age old opposition game and criticize and block everything. But, even if they gain more power they will largely back the war. They will throw out their token changes to show they did something but in the end, they really don’t have a choice.
2. People today are much more skeptical of the media. Rightfully so, since the days of yellow journalism never went away, just today people are a bit more aware of the agenda’s, sensationalism, bias, lack of subject matter expertise….etc. Abu Gharib did NOT have the impact My Lai had and not for the media’s lack of trying.
3. People are desensitized. Nintendo and violent PC games, movies and the normal news is often more graphic than reality! Constant scandals, over saturation of colors on TV, loud noise, the over use of certain words have caused the average person to be nearly numb. Even bright colors, combat journalism, sensational and controversial topics are hardly capturing people anymore. Next they will have to slap you so you look.
4. Unlike Vietnam today you have a counter movement to those who distort and play games. People like Kerry, Murtha, Michael Moore, Peace mom, Fonda…… they are themselves criticized when they open their mouth and criticize. Years ago, when people like Kerry and Fonda played their games there were no real powerful counter movements to them. It was a one sided shooting galleria.
5. The weakening strangles hold of the MSM. The internet, as talk radio in some aspects favor the conservative view point and in gives access to those stories that CBS might ‘Rather’ not want to talk about (Pun intended). The old guys are no longer exclusive.
I don’t see it so negative. We only need to last long enough to win in Iraq and frankly that may be accomplished in 2 to 3 years. I’m not saying that we will completely leave because of Iraq’s strategic location. However, I do believe by then we won’t need the large forces we have there today. Fixing yourself to an ‘arbitrary’ timeline is ignorant as some proposed. This was another stupid idea by the armchair expert and critic who isn’t throwing out viable solutions, just some BS that superficially looks good and checks the block of having a plan. Nonetheless, I do believe in 2 to 3 years you will only see us in the background.
There are some heavy hittters posting here, and I wonder what David Warren's creds are? The simple fact is that everyone who has seen Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan considers himself a Ranger by osmosis.
I agree... as much a Ranger as Tom Hanks...
The anti-war pundit has shifted from issue to issue picking and probing trying to find an angle.
Yep. There are many of those 180-degree turns you noted. Remember when it was a terrible sign of our incompetence that we hadn't caught Saddam's thuggish sons? So we gave them a TOW enema and then it was the Deck of Cards guys... so we brought them in, one by one... and it became where's Saddam? And we answered that question. And so it became what about Zarqawi, Zarqawi was nine feet tall and made of pure power (the homoeroticism in most of these clowns' writing about terrorist leaders is palpable... they're so authentic you know) and in due course we left our Joint Direct Calling Card on Mr Zarqawi's table... and they started stories about how Z-man was no big deal, easily replaced, and the new guy, why he was a piece of man-meat to make Rajiv Chandrasekaran and the rest of the never-leave-the-Green-Zone players swoon...
I mean, don't these guys get dizzy from the spin?
The 180-degree shifts are coupled with a kind of media Tourette's when something fits their "Acme Vietnam Template" so well that they just can't resist flogging it to a turned-off public. As in the NYT's two years and almost 200 page one stories on Abu Ghraib.
The media have done so poorly that most Americans can name only two Iraq War veterans: Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England. With minimal coaching, they can also get Casey Sheehan.
But as you point out, the public's not taking the spoon-feeding from the acolytes of Delphi, or the Columbia School of Journalism, either. I just saw a clip of a Saint Mother Sheehan appearance on Long Island that turned ugly when a vet and a Gold Star mother got in her face (she's not showing much sign of the hunger strike... I was hoping she'd go the way of Bobby Sands, but I guess a hunger strike at Gitmo-prisoner calorie levels won't show much effect).
I am particularly amused when news readers and politicians who have spent entire careers rubbishing the military now stop rubbishing long enough to say, "But I support the troops... that's why I want to pull the rug out from under them, and boost the stature of the guys trying to kill them."
Then there's the Army's own information operations, which would need about sixty years of Japanese engineers driving Deming-style continuous improvement to even get to the level of "suck." Mike Fumento (ex-82nd, accredited writer, went into combat with SEALS carrying a camera... and the SEALS would take him again) is stuck in Kuwait because he (oh my) criticized the LTC who is in charge of embeds.
Meanwhile, I heard from a young lion I was helping to mentor towards SFAS that his infantry unit hosted an embed (approved by same LTC). Who do you think it was? Peter Freaking Arnett. Fired from CNN for a fabricated anti-military atrocity story ("tailwind"), caught in the Gulf War fabricating an atrocity story ("baby milk factory"), exposed in vietnam fabricating an atrocity story ("we had to destroy the village in order to save it,") and that's who this ARMY JACKASS chose to tell the story.
There's something grievously wrong with this story. Bin Laden has recognized that the fulcrum of this titanic conflict is the information war. The Army assigns its least able men to that. Why?
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
"General, there was no verb in the last sentence."
----
lol, What a funny quote. Here is a rumsfeld quote collection:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/rumsfeld.htm
From where do you get 330,000 troops?
Today we are at a point where we can sustain these operations indefinitely without depleting the force with troop levels of 130-150,000 in Iraq.
I don't recall exceeding 150,000 personnel of the U.S. Armed Forces by any significant amount for any significant time in Iraq since March 2003. We've had to use a fairly large number of folks from the reserves to maintain our numbers in Iraq since then. IIRC, at times about 40% were from the Reserve Components. IMHO, that means the Regular Army is too small. Meanwhile, our allies in the "Coalition of the Willing" have been or are bailing out.
P.S. Thanks for your service.
Official US house document.
http://www.house.gov/pence/rsc/doc/LB6403.pdf#search=%222003%20operation%20Iraqi%20freedom%20330%2C000%22
A US Senator from Illinois.
http://www.mccotterforcongress.com/readarticle.asp?id=944
“Operation Enduring Freedom launched on October 7, 2001 and Operation Iraqi Freedom launched on March 19, 2003 called upon 330,000 active, reserve and National Guard members and units. In addition, 224,500 Reserve and National Guard members were called to active duty in support of the two operations.”
The Inspector General of the Army.
http://www.dodig.mil/sar/SARMarch2005.pdf#search=%222003%20operation%20Iraqi%20freedom%20330%2C000%22
Most the stuff you hear is trash, but the figure 330,000 is about right. In 2003 we were engaged also to a larger extent in the Balkans, S. Korea, had operations in the Philippines against a Muslim terrorist group and sent 4,500 men to Liberia, conducted peace and stabilization missions in Haiti, while expanding our operations in the Republic of Georgia and other former Soviet republics………… In 2003 the DoD was stretched thin for real. We had a lot of real world large scale commitments.
There is a difference between what you can put up short term and what you can sustain over the long run. In 2003 we de facto had “ONE” active duty division that was not engaged somewhere at least in part. 2003 was not sustainable, 2005 already was.
Reshuffling the force; sending some of the pork in TRADOC, Material Command, and elsewhere into the major maneuver units. Increasing the Army end strength by about 25,000. A substantial reduction in force requirements in the Balkans, S. Korea and elsewhere has led to a balance today where the operational demands can be met by the current force strength.
What you had in the US MSM and which was played to the fullest by some politicians was a BS knee jerk reaction. It was pandering to public mood and the TV camera. What was recommended in late 2003 early 2004 was a obvious solution for the layperson which was a gross oversimplification based on a short term picture that if implemented would have taken so long that the need would have passed by the time the large scale changes recommended would have taken effect. That is what Rumsfeld was faced with when he RIGHTFULLY SO said we do not need to increase the DoD end strength substantially and was attacked by some politicians. But again, few will recall this and those chastising Rumsfeld in those congressional hearings which were nothing more than a dog and pony show for the public and to berate the Bush administration and Rumsfeld will surely not stand up today and state “I think Rumsfeld was right after all.” But he was.
When you have an operation like in Iraq; you have millions of interactions, hundreds of billions spent, hundreds of thousands involved, a plethora of systems, political agreements, etc. If you want to find an error in such a massive endeavor, you will surely find many. “Look look $20 million are unaccounted for, it’s a quagmire!!!” (Remember that angle?) There is not one single space shuttle launch where all systems are working. They may not have any failure on critical systems, but something somewhere is always broke. Systems that large simply are never 100%. There were hundreds if not thousands of mistakes made on D-day, while crossing the Rhein, taking Rome. How do you define success? The problem in Iraq is our own politicians, our media, and a public that has unrealistic expectations.
I will state something here that goes against all popular ‘opinion’ and you don’t need to believe it. But there is nothing wrong with the strategy in Iraq. More troops won’t fix the problem any either. What it takes is patience. Something our instant gratifying society has a difficult problem with. But selling that position won’t help a politician’s career nor the MSM. They need conflict. They live off of it! If Iraq can’t stand on its own feet in 3 or 4 years, then we have problem and then we can talk. What is happening today is that we are over analyzing, jumping to conclusions, knee jerk over reactions, and frankly our own government is part of the problem.
Offensive, adj. Generating disagreeable emotions or sensations, as the advance of an army against its enemy.“Were the enemy’s tactics offensive?” the king asked. “I should say so!” replied the unsuccessful general. “The blackguard wouldn’t come out of his works!”
— The Devil’s Dictionary.
I found good officers and duds alike came from all components and all commissioning sources. Not just in Stan but in a long career. You have to consider men as individuals. The Army's 1927 General Motors personnel system can't do that because the system believes that one 11A is equal to any other... something that neither of those men, nor any who know them, would stipulate. But don't even get me started on how busted personnel is. It's where we put our very worst officers and our very dumbest enlisted soldiers.
Those officers that are good and being groomed ... do NOT choose Public, or Civil Affairs, PSYOP or... S-5.
Well, they aren't necessarily the ones that choose. Commanders want the able in the S-3 and S-3 plans jobs. If they assign positions by strict rank order (as some still do), then either an able man winds up carrying the figurehead S-3 (battle captain/major, etc), or the unit as a whole suffers the consequences. Seen both outcomes.
who are the officers that run your entire IO? From Corp down, they are weak.
And who is accountable for this? It is a symptom, not a cause, and it is a symptom of command purblindness.
The media is fast, extremely fast.
And the Army makes glaciers look racy.
bureaucracy, process fixation, lack of creativity, self-censorship, and fear of failure
That's a road map to mediocrity. One with a big "you are here" arrow.
You simply can not wait for a divisional Chief of Staff to OK every IO message
True story from Afghanistan, 2003. CG visits deployed SO/Afghan task force which has liberated a vast area from TB-linked warlords, and done it with barely a shot fired. Asks, CG fashion, "Son, what can I do for you?"
"Well, we have this civil affairs team with us... how about approving any of their projects?" You see, the CG, a decisive and able man, knew CA was a key factor. So he had given orders that he wanted to see every CA project and sign off on it, personally. So literally two thousand proposed CA projects, most of them worth under $500, were piled up waiting for the CG's signature, because, BEING THE FREAKING CG, he was too busy than to fiddlefart around with CA projects when he had troops in contact, or the Ambassador (who had the Prez on speed-dial) tugging on his sleeve, or a delegation of pissed off Afghans in his waiting room.
The CG nodded, and magnanimously signed off on the spot on a footbridge (total cost: $225) and promised to approve the rest of the projects when he got back to HQ.
Needless to say, the CA guys left Afghanistan with a thousand meetings with begging Afghans answered by one footbridge. none of the other projects were ever approved.
the enemy does know the media and press cycle and uses it to his advantage better than you!
More than that, the enemy has made it hazardous enough that Western reporters will not try to report except from hotel bars (it gets you the dateline, all they really want from a foreign locale). Then, once the press is blinkered, these volunteer stringers who can go into the terrorist-held areas with complete impunity miraculously show up. Perhaps it's raw coincidence, or simple opportunism. But we do not have the ability to be opportunistic that they do.
At one point, the various levels of HQ wanted to chop off on any ODA that had a plan to grab a bad guy, so they had to be submitted first three, then five, then seven, then fourteen days in advance. They had to be signed off in HQ in the Gulf and at Macdill. And Macdill didn't work weekends or holidays. Beginning in Bagram there was no sense of urgency.
Many attacks on us are recorded and then distributed world wide on the WWW.
Conversely, the Army cracks down on milbloggers. The guy who made that decision should be in charge of the wool-sock warehouse in Shemya for a couple decades.
The enemy knows the culture, he knows the buttons to press to get a reaction in his target audience. Most of our CA, IO, and PAO’s didn’t.
Well, the enemy also has the advantage in that the press admire him. He has "authenticity." He trips their submissive receptors -- and from what I've seen of them, vast swathes of the press are homosexuals that dream of being ravaged by Zarqawi. Guys like Rajiv Chandrasekaran want to be Osama's pages and interns when he takes over!
The Divisional IO officer a major was weak and eventually was fired (He was moved to Corp where he could work under the adult supervision of an O-6 and do less damage)
Ah yeah. One of those firings that doesn't quite generate a relief-for-cause OER, so that units downsrtream are stuck with the same dud over and over again. It's a pity they can't QC the officer corps like the Japanese QC car parts.
CA's officer failed, she was concerned about personal awards and comforts more than her job.
Lots of that, always. I don't know why but there is a subset of women soldiers who play the whole thing like it's a game. They are very good at the bureaucracy thing and you cross them at your peril, but heaven forfend that they would actually bestir themselves... nine to fivers.
The PAO was obese and literally didn’t fit in the largest BDU’s made.
That is all but unbelievable. I have seen guys 100 lb overweight in BDUs.
operating in a system that was untested and unestablished (They were figuring out what to do and how when there).
Yep. At Counterattack +5 (officially, on Oct. 7), we still don't train or exercise what Osama says is most of his war. Interesting.
General and CoS that were micromanaging
Having gotten to be field guy and HQ guy in one tour, I learned a few things, and one is that the impulse to micromanage is almost irresistible. It ought to be a part of all training for staff and command positions. A good sergeant major can be very effective here, but I have found that many commanders had experience with bad sergeants major and as a result place scant trust in them. How does an army get bad sergeants major? One way is by thinking anyone can just punch the right tickets and become one. Another is by giving in to the wacky delusion that this can be taught in school (it cannot, no more than command leadership can).
The most effective officer I personally ever met was, in my opinion, Bull Simons. (Some of the others were greater soldiers, more consummate warriors, but Simons was a LEADER). Another would have to be Bob Rheault. The former was dismissed from the Army, for having insufficient formal education (he was a high school graduate, in an era when that meant considerably more than a BA is worth today). The latter was actually thrown into irons by a weak general who resented and, as far as I can tell, envied him his gift of command. (Rheault has never spoken an ill word, at least not in public, about the man that destroyed his career, and went on to try to destroy the very unit he had commanded. By the way, Rheault had an education -- if you count West Point. Heh).
3ID took hundreds of top notch pictures of the war. Many very graphic but nonetheless told a story that would have had a positive impact in the media. Army internal censorship caused many of these great products not to be released.
I recently heard Matt from Blackfive on Pundit Review Radio describe an experience with PAO. They contacted him and said that they would be sending exclusive content to some blogs, did he want in? Sure, he'd try it. And they sent him the kind of crapola that appeared in bird-cage-liner base newspapers in Beetle Freakin' Bailey's day: "44th Underwater Mess Kit Repair Battalion's Organization Day A Smashing Success!" and the ever popular, "Retiring Sergeant Major Reflects On A Changed Army."
Meanwhile, the jihadis have organised their US fifth column, CAIR and MSA, and have gotten YouTube to pull anti-jihad videos and ban the posters -- while posting their head-harvesting and martyrdom promotions themselves.
I just thought about something. We agree that the Army does not assign able men to PAO. Al Gore was, in the Army in Vietnam, a PAO (well, enlisted type). As was, in the national guard -- Dan Quayle. It's bipartisan bozosity!
Seldom do Army units return to where they were.
The personnel system assumes that all elements are fungible. The theater commander can't ask for X Infantry Brigade, he can ask for AN infantry brigade, and he gets whatever one is in the on-deck circle.
do you think the actual PSYOP and CA units that will support the BDE was training there with them? Nope. Lessons learned from 2003-2004? Zero.
It goes back to the belief, ingrained in the system, that units are fungible and that experience doesn't matter. "You get everything you need in your green training cycle. Now shut up and drive on, Lieutenant" (Captain, Colonel)
With no functional IO message your job is made much harder.
They're terrified of the press. Look at how the USMC was ready to hang that Marine who made the Hadji Girl song. When even the Marines are full of sitzpinklers then we have a real problem on our hands.
As I see it, junior officers and NCOs need to have more juice, more freedom, and fewer "helpers." I can't figure out why we have two dozen generals over there. Heck, I can't figure out why we have almost as many generals as 1945 when we had 12.5 million men in uniform. EVen if all these guys were able, it's an incredible burden just answering their queries.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Sorry about the grammar in my last post. I post during my breaks in my Project Management course and only have 15 minutes. Here goes my lunch time. :-)
One of the issues with the senior leadership is that they are nearly all egomaniacs. These people are the ones who are able to play politics and survive in a complex bureaucracy where from day one you have to manage your own career if you really want to climb to the top. They are not necessarily the best leaders nor the most technically and tactically competent but rather groomed. Politics plays a huge factor at that level as well. It is no coincidence that Wesley Clark climbed the way he did during the Clinton years. At those levels who you know (The coat train you’re riding on), the political affiliation you have, and how well you can politic, overwhelmingly decide the fate of your career. To often the general does not see himself as an ‘enabler’ but a big man decision maker. The fight in Iraq is one at squad level often. We are not in a battle where large maneuver is needed, where synchronization of air, artillery, armored columns etc are the core of the fight. This is a low level fight.
Again, you hit it right on the head. There is no need for all those generals and commands in Iraq. In fact more often than not, these levels of command ‘inject themselves’ as an approval or authority in matters of the targeting, clearance for fires, etc. They end up being a resource user and offer little to those doing the work. They keep control of vital assets that should be divided among the BDE commanders and bellow but instead sit in some super fire base near Baghdad. A Divisional command in effect consumes more than a maneuver BDE in logistics. Think about that for a second. What decisions are made that really should require a Corp approval? I will tell you right now and I’d swear to this as well. Muqtar Al Sadr would be dead today if it were not for all those important people who had to give their blessing on going after him. This is a low level fight that is at BDE and BN level as far as where the authority should lie.
You mention Bull Simons, the firm for which I work today and our founder hired this great American to help out in Iran years ago, his Raiders in Vietnam were phenomenal, what rank did he retire as? Look at what happened to Billy Mitchell, COL Hunt who basically ran the Philippine resistance as a guerilla during Japanese occupation…… Some of the greatest ‘leaders’ we have ever had; people who had other’s voluntarily follow them for their true ability to lead; some of those with true ‘vision’ that saw the handwriting on the wall of how warfare is evolving; were actually crushed or hit a glass ceiling because they didn’t fit the mold at the time or simply were not someone’s pet project.
Don’t get me wrong, we have the most effective and lethal force on this planet. As crewed up as you know we are, always remember the enemy is even more screwed up. We have the best equipped, some of the best trained, one of the largest, an all volunteer force that recruits with some of the highest standards, a system that is tested and evolved over the years with a stable operating system that is not experimental, and one of the most experienced forces there is. We can make the systematic destruction of another nation’s military look easy. The anti-American pundit is repeatedly forced to downplay our success as in the Balkans, Iraq 1991, or Iraq 2003. They are forced to rewrite history or minimize the foe we stood up against. After all, how did that T72 score against an M1, what did those Vipers do to the MIG29? We ‘are’ the trend setter. We define doctrine which even our potential enemies emulate. However, one of the things which have historically made us as strong as we were was our ability to adapt, to learn from mistakes, and morph or change our shape like an ameba. In Iraq we are doing that fairly well when it comes to the leveraging of technology, adaptation of plans, to meet the maneuver commanders needs, but in the realm of IO we have failed. We have failed miserably to the point where all we can best do is damage control and react.
And again we agree. Our commanders ‘dislike’ or even ‘fear’ the media. General Sanchez wanted nothing to do with the media. He avoided them like the plague. When he was in a press conference he was tense, uneasy, and not very smooth with his transmittal of the message. A General needs to be able to deal with the media and has to have a good understanding of ‘his’ IO assets. At division level you have an O4 slot for an IO officer who should be coordinating CA, PSYOP, and PAO activities. He should be in sync with operations. However, for the reasons discussed in earlier posts, our IO activities are failing. As you correctly point out, this failure is as much on the shoulders of those in CA, PSYOP and PAO as it is on the senior leadership which is unaware of how they need to fight this, lack a strategic vision, and only reluctantly deal with the media in a haphazard way.
Example: The media keeps saying “we have no plan”. Well, that’s simply not true. There was a plan and we are executing it. However, if you can’t tell people what the plan is, it amounts to there not being one. Camp Victory was not miracled there over-night. Construction and preparations began as soon as we arrived and it was part of the plan to eventually move into larger camps on the outskirts of the city as the Iraqis become more capable of assuming the security role. Smaller firebases in Baghdad were consequently shut down over time.
The sad thing about all this is that ever since Vietnam *EVERY* US military operation has been scrutinized by the media. From journalists on the beaches of Somalia taking pictures of landing Marines, to the Balkans, or CNN’s claim to fame in the first Iraq war 1991, the media is part of the new reality of warfare. We do not operate like the Russians where in the second Chechen war they just ensured the media couldn’t get in and only fed the news which they wanted to get out. Hell, the government owns most their national media. Everyone knows that in an insurgency (Philippines, Nicaragua…..) PSYOP plays a major role. There is a reason why SF and PSYOP have had such a tight relationship that goes so far back. This should have been foreseeable. It’s easy to armchair the Iraq war and say this or that was done wrong. Most is hind sight genius where only after the fact all the true variables were known. But the need for a powerful and effective IO campaign; should that have really surprised us? Finally, our inability to adapt and ‘fix ourselves’ is another angle that saddens me. Bottom line is, if we loose in the IO battle, more dealings are done at the end of an M16 barrel.
But those are just the meandering thoughts of a has-been.
I think you're overgeneralizing the PSYOP and Civil Affairs folks. I'm an infantryman by trade but allowed myself to be temporarily sucked into the world of IO. So I've worked with IO folks in their IO world and also worked with CA and PSYOP folks while in a manuever unit. They didn't strike me as being lesser men than their combat arms rank-equivalents.
As for the career-oriented mindset, I agree that is a problem. The Army recently created an IO Command at Ft Belvoir, which was a good step in making IO a more palatable option for the career officer. But now the future of that organization seems to be in limbo as the military ponders the future of IO and whether it should remain a J39/G7 thing or if it should become a much smaller thing largely dominated by, and perhaps taken over by, PSYOP.
I was in 3ID in OIF I and would like to point out that 3ID is not all that and a bag of fritos. We did our share of pooch-screwing too. But I will say that I was equally unimpressed with 1AD when they rolled in and promptly began to disarm all of the locals whom we armed. Their IO was no more inept than the rest of their operations, IMHO.
I'm with you regarding the rest of what you've written on this thread, especially regarding reserves. I have served about half of my short career in the guard and the last half in the active component. My first NG light infantry platoon could have stomped the crap out of my first active duty mech infantry company.
It's hard to ague with these words.
L
When I was an infantry platoon leader in the ARNG, my SAW gunners had been carrying a SAW for 10 years. My machine gun teams had been together for 6 to 8 years. My platoon sergeant had commanded the company at CMTC a couple years prior when there were almost no officers in the battalion save for the BC and S3. Nearly everybody in my platoon was a married man in his late 20's to early 40's with kids, a mortgage, a full time job. A bunch were self-employed and a couple were self-made millionaires. I could entrust an E-4 with more responsibility in the ARNG than I could entrust with the average E-6 on active duty. I was the youngest and one of the most uneducated individuals in the platoon that I led. Individuals chose to not get promoted because it wasn't their full time job and they enjoyed being a SAW gunner, machine gunner, etc. The result was super competent individuals at every level.
On active duty, the average age in my platoon was about 20. The work ethic was embarassing. The maturity was non-existent. Rather than NCO's mentoring subordinates, I had to pull aside NCO's and often ask "WTF are you thinking? And what kind of an example are you setting?" What did this have to do with competency and capabilities? Everything! A typical week-long FTX on active duty was less productive than a typical weekend drill in the ARNG, and less frequent. In the guard, when we showed up to train, we took roll, drew our gear, briefed the unit, and we trained from Friday night until Sunday night and we were hungry, filthy, and tired when it ended. In the active component, the 9 to 5 mentality carried over into the field and many often wondered why we bothered to make the training an overnight affair.
The difference was due to the maturity and motivation of the individuals involved. The guard was composed of mature folks who were there because they wanted to be. The active component had lots of great individuals, but they were grossly outnumbered by people who were just there because they didn't know what else to do after high school and knew that they would get paid as long as they showed up. We still got the job done, we motivated the individuals to perform, but it couldn't compare to the level that you get when everybody in the unit is a self-starter.
Now, as a disclaimer, I think that I had an exceptional guard unit and a rather unexceptional active unit. But OC's whom I worked with at JRTC noticed similar trends in evaluating active and ARNG units. They noted that there are still some good ole boy, weekend warriors that rotate through. But their observation was that the really good ARNG units were better than the active folks, partly because they were older and partly because of the set of civilian skills that they brought with them. Their only weakness was poor funding, which manifested itself in slightly crappier equipment. But, to that, I would say remember the words of Schwarzkopf after ODS: "We could have traded equipment with the Iraqis and still won."
Sure, you might not do PT very often or spend much time in training. I'd still take you over a guy half your age. Maturity and experience, in my opinion, especially in the type of war that we are now in, counts for a heck of a lot more.
"Does anybody know what the optimum age for a close-combat soldier is at the squad level? What is the most efficient age? Very interesting. It's 28 to 32." - MG Bob Scales (USA, Ret.)
>>"General, there was no verb in the last sentence."<<
HAHA! I was literally cracking up over that one! And what a great way to tell someone to get to the point! Say what they are going to say. Etc.!
I am not so sure that this is a counterinsurgency war. If it were only the Sunnis, yes, but there is the complication of Shia pretenders like Al Sadr and the further problem caused by Saddam when he "arabized" the Kurdish region. There neither Sunnis nor Shia Arabs want to let the Kurds have Kirkuk. and its oil-rich environs. We have the further complication of Turkey and Iran and the Kurds.
Post of the day! Tell it brother. We cannot "win" til we fix this gaping hole in our strategy.
Regards,
We have the best military in recorded history. Too bad the same can't be said of our civilian leadership.
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