Posted on 08/26/2007 10:21:51 AM PDT by rahbert
On Aug. 1, Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff, flew to the sprawling base at Fort Knox, Ky., to talk with the officers enrolled in the Captains Career Course. These are the Army’s elite junior officers. Of the 127 captains taking the five-week course, 119 had served one or two tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly as lieutenants. Nearly all would soon be going back as company commanders. A captain named Matt Wignall, who recently spent 16 months in Iraq with a Stryker brigade combat team, asked Cody, the Army’s second-highest-ranking general, what he thought of a recent article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled “A Failure in Generalship.” The article, a scathing indictment that circulated far and wide, including in Iraq, accused the Army’s generals of lacking “professional character,” “creative intelligence” and “moral courage.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The author, Fred Kaplan, is trying to sell his book:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470121181.html
Sheesh ping
I imagine that these days firing generals like Marshall did would be impossible, like trying to get rid of tenured professors. Also, captains leave partly because they are in great demand in the private sector where they can make a ton of money.
I didn’t know that Officer Advanced Courses were down to 5 weeks. I can remember when they were 6 months.
The Captain is right. If more senior generals had spoken up against Rumsfeld’s belief that fewer than necessary troops were needed, perhaps we would have gone in with sufficient forces.
The “surge” is proof we did not have sufficient forces in Iraq.
***Is this different than any other past war we have fought?***
It’s no different than anybody’s past war. It’s the nature of war.
And the surge is working.
As it turns out, what he didn’t want to happen happened.
Gen. Praeteus is now talking in terms of a 9-10 year US presence...exactly what Rumsfeld didn’t want nor accounted for.
Had we done it right, we probably should have followed the Powell doctrine.
IMHO, this is not a good omen.
It certainly doesn’t make much sense. H.R. McMaster was a hero of both wars in Iraq, with renowned victories at 73 Easting in 1991 and Tal Afar more recently. He was also selected to teach at West Point, which is usually considered a good sign for one’s career. Petraeus thought enough of him to rely on him in Iraq, but I guess the Army doesn’t think enough of him to give him a star.
General Cody himself has a pretty interesting history. He commanded TF Normandy, the task force of Apaches that eliminated two Iraqi radar sites to pave the way for the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, and in so doing, fired some of the first shots of the campaign.
OAC’s not very long, but CGSC (now called ILE) is longer than heck.
Sounds like professional jealousy at work -- think back to when McMaster's 73 Easting tactics/engagement were being discussed on the various Discovery Channel programs on GW1. McMaster was then a Lieutenant Colonel (late 90s) and the guys on his board now were then full birds and above who hated to see him get all that publicity for what they regarded as just a stroke of dumb luck. Never mind that his "dumb luck" was being played on every sand table professional armor school you care to name in the Free World...
And thus it has ever been WRT military promotion, especially to flag rank. I believe the President can intervene, however. I am open to comment/clarification on that.
I was wondering how long it would take the Left to drop their bogus “we support the troops” facade, and get back to good old-fashioned “militarism” bashing. Now I know; although there have certainly been enough hit pieces demanding General Officer accountability for Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Pat Tillman, etc., those were not necessarily blanket condemnations of the military’s senior leadership. This marks a new level of brazenness for the NYT, et al. It wouldn’t surprise me to see outright attacks on anyone “low” enough to join an all-volunteer military.
First of all, we do not know if McMaster has other problems. He could be a womanizer. He could have some black mark in his records no one wants to make public, but that would preclude promotion.
More importantly, Yingling is a Democrat shill groomed to rise in the Army and provide them cover for whatever bizarre positions they want.
And you know what . . . there is within the article here a manifestation of preference and empathy on the part of the writer. He does not look at who he is praising and ask . . . why are these men not leading their troops with 100% of their energies, rather than writing articles?
There is nothing wrong with writing scholarly articles as an officer. The problem here is the reporter is looking around only for those who do — presuming that they are the cream of the crop. They are not. The military is NOT a place where the most effective doer of extreme violence to the enemy is the man who writes articles and therefore should be promoted.
The military of the US exists to crushingly destroy the enemy. Not to make friends. Not to make people the world over like and respect them. The purpose is to smash. To induce horror at the thought of them on the battlefield. Officers who can do that might not be those who write articles and appeal to the sensibilities of reporters.
these criticisms arre really directed at President Bush and VP Cheney. The army needs to rid itself of a bunch of malcontent officers.
That would seem to have happened rather recently.
More importantly, Yingling is a Democrat shill groomed to rise in the Army and provide them cover for whatever bizarre positions they want.
What's basis the basis for calling Yingling a Democrat shill?
Maybe LTC Yingling doesn’t know what he is talking about after participating in the most successful tactical campaign of the insurgency....
On the other hand, just maybe in the “zero defect” “do more with less” 1990’s, we managed to promote a generation of risk averse, e-mail aficionados who think leadership is best practiced on a keyboard.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.