Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 131

Another Army general blows up on the launch pad (UPDATED)

This time a three-star, I am told. The usual zipper
problems. More to come.

UPDATE: I talked to the general in question. He says his
departure is not the result of any allegation of wrongdoing but rather was
planned three years ago. "There is no investigation here," he said.

So it appears that I got all excited for nothing. If I hear
anything different, I will let you know. But at least for now, it appears that
I was misled by multiple hits on the rumor mill.  

Sorry, our MI unit is too busy to give you a briefing that might save soldiers’ lives!

Someone
passed to me an e-mail in which a senior Army military intelligence officer
declined a request to brief another unit on the "green on blue" threat
presented by Afghan soldiers and police.

"I respectfully
decline the offer for Dr. Bordin to conduct an OPD," Col. Sharon Hamilton wrote
last May to Lt. Col. Frank Tank. (I know, that name may sound odd, but it is
real -- Tank is a Knowlton Award-winning officer who has written for the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin.) Col. Hamilton
explained that Bordin "must remain focused on Brigade mission requirements."

She
wasn't being completely candid. But Hamilton's real problem with Bordin giving
a briefing was that the Army at that time was unhappy with a controversial
report Bordin had just produced on "green-on-blue" killings of American
soldiers by Afghan army and police personnel. That report, "A Crisis of Trust and Cultural
Incompatibility,"
subsequently became very well known.

But when
Bordin first distributed his findings, he got in hot water. A coalition
spokesman, Lt. Cdr. Collette Murphy, told the Wall Street
Journal that, "The findings are not consistent with our assessment." Murphy charged
that the study was "systematically flawed, and suffered from generalizations,
narrow sample sets, unprofessional rhetoric, and sensationalism." As a
Stars & Stripes article put it, "His prescient analysis was quickly and publicly ridiculed by
military officials, and Bordin was removed from his post as a research team
leader."

But a
year later, after a sharp escalation in green-on-blue killings, the Army embraced his
findings.

I tried
to e-mail Col. Hamilton, her old boss, as well as Dr. Bordin and Lt. Col. Tank,
in order to request comment and get additional information, but was unable to
reach any of them, or at least hear back from them.

Don't
you just love military bureaucracy?

It is all about the job, not the gender

By Donna McAleer

Best Defense giant slalom correspondent

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, upon the Joint Chiefs of Staff's
unanimous recommendation, last week signed the repeal of the combat exclusion
policy of 1994, opening more than 200,000 military jobs to women. This was a military decision endorsed by
politicians about military readiness, strategic decision-making, and national
security.

More than a year ago, the Army chief of staff, General
Raymond Odierno, said, "We
need their talent. This is about managing talent. We have incredibly talented
females who should be in those positions." This reflected an October 2010
decision by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead and Secretary of
the Navy Ray Mabus to open two classes of nuclear submarines to women.

Ground combat is paramount in the Army. The Army selects the majority of
its senior leaders from ground combat branches. The 1994 combat exclusion
policy prohibited women from serving in such units. This meant its most
significant jobs, high command positions (division, corps, and chief of staff),
only went to men with combat arms unit experience. 

With Secretary Panetta's decision, the law has now caught up to reality.
The exclusion policy didn't keep women out of combat. The conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan demonstrated this self-evident truth: bullets, RPGs, and IEDs know
no gender. The policy did prevent
women from officially gaining battlefield experience required for promotion to
high command positions directly responsible for national security, e.g., combat
command.

In his letter of recommendation to Secretary Panetta, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said work remained regarding
proper performance standards for those new military roles. He also listed
"goals and milestones," with quarterly progress updates.

This is the key to successful integration -- setting physical
and mental standards based on job requirements, and physical and mental
capability, not gender. Most of the opposition to allowing women in combat arms
branches focus on doubts about women possessing the requisite strength and
stamina and/or whether the presence of women dilutes unit cohesion. These arguments
have been used previously -- against the integration of African-Americans,
against integrating women into the regular force in the 1970s, and most
recently against gays and lesbians. Each time the military has emerged
stronger.

No one suggests a lowering of standards. And the unit cohesion argument
is really about sex. Will women and men in mixed company have consensual sex?
The military has laws on the books that prohibit relationships that could cause
problems within the unit -- similar to both norms and laws in the civilian
world regulating the workplace environment. The primary reason has always been
that emotional entanglements between soldiers can lead to jealousy, result in
favoritism, and prevent soldiers from carrying out their duties impartially -- particularly
in a life or death situation. While in the civilian world, a workplace
relationship will only kill your career.

Recently, the military has strengthened its laws regarding
coercive sex recognizing a significant problem persists with rape and sexual assault.
However, correlating women in combat with levels of military rape and sexual
violence are inaccurate and inflammatory. Less than a quarter of reported rapes
occur in theaters of military operations and combat zones. Being in an all-male
unit is no protection from sexual predators. Half of sexual trauma survivors
being treated by the Veterans Administration are men.

General Dempsey indicated the persistence of sexual assault in the
military is linked partially to the military's separate classes of personnel -- male "warriors"
versus everyone else, including women. Lifting the combat exclusion policy and
treating the genders equally, he says, is more likely to lead people to treat
each other equally.

Today women make up nearly 15 percent of the 1.4 million strong
active-duty forces. The United States has been in combat in Afghanistan and
Iraq longer than in any previous war. More than 280,000 American women have
engaged in combat operations there. It is not unreasonable to think that some
have engaged in sexual relationships. Yet, there have been no waves of
"get me out of here" pregnancies, no orgies, and no combat failures.
In short, our men and women in uniform have behaved as military professionals.

Secretary Panetta's decision is a move in the right direction.
Servicewomen now have the opportunity to gain the same experience as their male
counterparts. It will take at least 20 years for servicewomen to gain the
appropriate escalating combat command experience. But the United States will be
well served by the increase in the number of sharp minds at the planning and
negotiating tables.

Service to country and in combat has never been about gender, it's about
the job.

Donna McAleer is a former congressional candidate
for Utah's 1st District, a West Point graduate, an Army veteran, a mother, and
the author of  Porcelain on Steel: Women
of West Point's Long Gray Line  (Fortis Publishing, 2010).

Troops shooting demonstrators in Fallujah: Seen this movie before?

Now, nine years
later, it happens again.

This
time, Mosul, too.

Mattis vs. Donilon: Wow, no one even called to tell him he was being replaced? (UPDATED)

I am
told that General Mattis was traveling and in a meeting
when an aide passed him a note telling him that the Pentagon had announced his
replacement as head of Central Command. It was news to him -- he hadn't
received a phone call or a heads-up from anyone at the Pentagon or the White
House.

I asked
a friend about that. He wrote back:

...the commander-in-chief can make a change
whenever he wants and give no reason. That is right and proper under our system
of government.

But there's also the matter of common courtesy
to an uncommon man. Here is what one person wrote to me: "What message does it
send to the Services when the one leader known for his war-fighting rather than
diplomatic or bureaucratic political skills is retired early via one sentence
in the Pentagon's daily press handout? Even in battle, Mattis was inclusive of
all under his command. He took the time to pull together his driver and guards
after every day's rotation on the battlefield, telling them what he thought he
had learned and asking them for input. Surely senior administration officials
could have found the time to be gracious. But they didn't."  Bing
West, admittedly a friend of Mattis and fellow
Marine, tells me: "It was injudicious to truncate Mattis's command time because
his toughness was well-known across the Middle East. The image of a determined
warfighter is precisely what a commander-in-chief should cherish when trying to
exert leverage upon a recalcitrant Iran."

ADDENDUM:

Pentagon
spokesman George Little sent along this note on Friday afternoon:

I
reject in the strongest possible terms your reporting about leadership changes
at CENTCOM.  The fact of the matter is that Gen. Mattis discussed the
timing for a change of command at CENTCOM with the Secretary last fall. 
At that time, Gen. Mattis was asked for recommendations on who might succeed
him at CENTCOM.  It would be wildly inaccurate to suggest anything
else.

I
wrote back to Mr. Little these questions:

Can
you answer these questions? They are yes or no, I think: Are you flatly saying
that Mattis was in fact called? Or are you saying that Mattis was not called
but should not have been surprised? Or are you saying something else?

When
he didn't address those questions, I sent them again and said I would publish
his statement along with the comment that he wouldn't address my specific
questions. This led him to write back:

He wasn't called.  He personally met with the
Secretary. This wasn't a surprise. You can't say I declined to address your
questions.

I
think Mr. Little is emphatically denying something I didn't say. That is, I
think Mattis knew he would be leaving eventually, which would lead to such a
conversation with the secretary, but was in fact surprised by the timing and
the lack of notice about a press release announcing his successor being issued.

Mattis vs. Donilon: Wow, no one even called to tell him he was being replaced?

I am
told that General Mattis was traveling and in a meeting
when an aide passed him a note telling him that the Pentagon had announced his
replacement as head of Central Command. It was news to him -- he hadn't
received a phone call or a heads-up from anyone at the Pentagon or the White
House.

I asked
a friend about that. He wrote back:

...the commander-in-chief can make a change
whenever he wants and give no reason. That is right and proper under our system
of government.

But there's also the matter of common courtesy
to an uncommon man. Here is what one person wrote to me: "What message does it
send to the Services when the one leader known for his war-fighting rather than
diplomatic or bureaucratic political skills is retired early via one sentence
in the Pentagon's daily press handout? Even in battle, Mattis was inclusive of
all under his command. He took the time to pull together his driver and guards
after every day's rotation on the battlefield, telling them what he thought he
had learned and asking them for input. Surely senior administration officials
could have found the time to be gracious. But they didn't."  Bing
West, admittedly a friend of Mattis and fellow
Marine, tells me: "It was injudicious to truncate Mattis's command time because
his toughness was well-known across the Middle East. The image of a determined
warfighter is precisely what a commander-in-chief should cherish when trying to
exert leverage upon a recalcitrant Iran."

How the debate on gays may have opened the door for women in the military

I
suspect that the ease with which the U.S. military has accepted openly gay personnel may have encouraged the Pentagon
to drop the much-tattered combat restriction on women. The same arguments that were
made against integration of blacks in the 1940s 
and of gays over the last 10 years were made against allowing women to openly serve in combat
roles.  But, despite those Chicken Littles and Henny
Pennies, the sky didn't fall. And the failure of those
dire predictions of destroyed unit cohesion to pan out undercut the
argument against women in combat.  Also,
there was a powerful argument that we already have seen women fight in Iraq -- and be decorated for valor in combat.

Ironically,
integrating women into infantry units may be far harder than it was to
integrate blacks and male gays. The real battle is yet to come: It will be over
whether there will be different standards for women than for men, and if so,
how different. Or, as retired Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Mellinger puts it, "'If you want to ride this ride, you must
be this tall' must be the mantra, not 'everyone gets to play.'"

Rebecca’s War Dog of the Week: Hunting for land mines in snowy Afghanistan

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Winter Postcard:

Working at a clip on the snowy
ground at Bragram Air Field is Drake, a mine detection dog, and his U.S. Army
handler Sgt. Garret Grenier. This dog team (only doing training exercises in
this photo taken on Jan. 8th) is part of the 49th Engineer Detachment and their
job is to find buried explosives, specifically land mines.

U.S. Army Capt. Jeffrey Vlietstra, the
officer-in-charge of the 49th Engineer
Detachment, says that the original mission of
these dogs that arrived in Afghanistan in 2004 was to
find the mines on Bagram Air Field but that "eventually the program expanded
and they started working in Kandahar" searching for IEDs.

"Our dog teams are the tip of the
spear," Vlietstra explains.
"Our engineers clear the way ahead of the maneuver force and our dog teams
clear the routes to ensure their safety."

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk,
is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by
Atria Books in August 2013.

Did Obama end the Reagan revolution? Or did Bush kill it, and Obama bury it?

I was
thinking over that question last night as I fell asleep at the Army War
College, where I am visiting. I think one reason President Obama excites so
much emotion is that he represents the end of the Reagan revolution.

Look at
this way. FDR's New Deal lasted about four decades, until it began collapsing
under President Carter. Then Reagan came along. In a nutshell, he inverted the
New Deal: Government was not the answer, he said, it was part of the problem.
He also began a massive transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the top 1
percent of our society. One reason he could do this is that he didn't get us
into an expensive war.

In both
cases, eventual successors from the other party lived with the work of their
predecessors. Just as Eisenhower did not try to undo the New Deal, Clinton did
not try to reverse the Reagan revolution.

I don't
think Obama killed the Regan revolution. I think it was getting old -- it had
lasted nearly three decades. But I think the Reagan influence effectively was
killed by President Bush's lengthy Iraq war, which proved so expensive that it
was no longer possible to transfer wealth to the rich at the Reagan-era rate
without running up huge deficits.

Obama, I
think, buried the corpse, especially with his second inaugural. Government, he is saying, often
is part of the answer. I think people are ready to hear this. They don't mind
paying taxes as long as they believe the results are concrete: fewer potholes,
longer library hours, healthier kids -- and disaster relief for the victims of
Sandy.

Lede of the day: Hmm, do you think the Pakistani govt. really could be that nasty?

Here is
the "lede," or first sentence, of an article from the Pakistani newspaper Dawn:

The
father of a Pakistani officer investigating a corruption case against the prime
minister has questioned whether his son's death was an act of suicide.