Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 144

OK, what should we make of Benghazi?

By Steve Donnelly

Best Defense Libyan wars and Fox flak-catcher
correspondent

In 2011, Ambassador
Robert Ford boldly engaged his new assignment in Syria, brazenly and very
publicly meeting with opposition leaders on the brink of armed rebellion
against the al-Assad Regime.

Three times in as many months he had been surrounded by mobs
of pro-government protesters, pelted with eggs, and attacked in embassy cars on
the streets of Damascus. No phalanx of Blackwater. No body armor and helmet. No
impenetrable motorcade of up-armored SUVs.

Was he nuts? What was he doing there?

Foreign Policy's
Josh Rogin got the answer from the horse's mouth for a September 29, 2011
article:

"When an ambassador makes a statement in a
country that's critical of that country's government, when that government
visits an opposition or a site where a protest is taking place, the statement
is much more powerful -- and the impact and the attention it gets is much more
powerful if it's an ambassador rather than a low-level diplomat," Ford
told  The Cable  in an interview   last week.

Ultimately, the Syrian pressure
cooker was nearing boil, and Ford had to pull out.

Three years before, Ryan Crocker, himself a survivor of the
1983 Beirut Embassy bombing, whose residence had been attacked in 1998 when he
was Ambassador to Syria, and one of the first diplomats on the ground in Kabul
after the Taliban's departure in 2002, took up his post in Baghdad, not before
or after conflict but in the midst of it, and charged with the dangerous and
difficult task of US conflict stabilization and transition out of that
historically conflict-ridden country.

With Special Representative Sérgio Vieira de Mello killed along with 20 of his
staff in the massive 2003 Canal Hotel bombing attack on the UN's Baghdad
office, Crocker was, no doubt, the next prime trophy for Iraqi bad guys, but
even if almost suffocated at times by Blackwater, and US military and
diplomatic security, he stayed on and directed the civilian side of the US
Surge.

The unusual aspect of Crocker's task in Iraq was not just to
knowingly put his own life on the line, as many prominent diplomats have done
in this region with inevitable results, but to institutional that role within
the State Department ranks by managing the deployment of hundreds of
Crocker-inspired diplomats out into the dangerous Iraqi landscape to support
the civilian transition through the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, or PRTs
that walked into Sadr City in 2008 behind the US crackdown after hundreds of
mortars fell on Embassy Baghdad for more than a month, and regularly met in
provincial capital buildings that were themselves routine targets for massive
truck bombs, and firefights.

Surprisingly few of Crocker's PRTs were killed in Iraq,
primarily due to the robust US military presence there. But that is seldom the
case in most unstable areas where US engagement is essential. From 1968 to
1979, a US Ambassador was killed in office on the average of one every two years,
so its is not just about "our times."

Does that explain the professional tradition that Ambassador
J. Christopher Stevens was following as he settled in for a restless night in
the Benghazi compound after an important day of carrying the US flag into an
unstable and emerging democracy? Risky business. Important work. Speaks for
itself.

Ten Libyan guards, after all, were killed along with three
other US civilians, before, finally, the US diplomatic survivors in Benghazi
reached the marginal safety of the larger CIA compound a few blocks away, with
help from Libyans.

In June 2012, the Center for New American Security (CNAS) held its annual conference at the snazzy Willard
Hotel in Washington, DC ,for the national security elite to discuss waging wars
in the face of budget cuts. No one, however, was lamenting any shortages of
battleships, packhorses or the plumes for parade helmets. The masthead for the
CNAS Conference said it all: "Rethinking U.S. Security: Navigating a
World in Transition." As strongman dictators fall, things just get
chaotic, especially in landscape characterized by non-state actors and factions with scores to
settle with each other, transnational terror networks with scores to settle
with us, riots trigger by Facebook, and cyber-attacks that can destroy a power
plant grid by attacking the operating software. Much more complicated than the
days of Gavrillo Princip and Professor Moriarty, and little to do with
negotiating arms treaties in Helsinki.

The same hawks who cheered Crocker and his PRTs in Iraq, and
Ford in Syria, including Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, know why US
diplomats take these risks, especially in these fractured areas, underscoring Tom Ricks' accurate observation of Fox News's political "hyping" of Benghazi as a "wing
of the Republican Party."

The oft said, "It's
complicated," explains the chaos of Benghazi. We may never know anything
more than that those whose lives were
lost bravely put them on the line for what they believed to be important enough
to do so. What don't you understand about that?

Stephen Donnelly is former senior
planning advisor on Iraqi reconstruction for the Department of State.

Free at last! Thank God almighty!

Tom's book tour is pretty much over. In the coming weeks I'll be doing
one-off speeches for history buffs and such, but basically I am going home tomorrow.

On Thursday afternoon I spoke
to about 900 majors at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas. It was a good time, and I felt they appreciated the points
I was out to convey-basically a summary of the book, which is that
accountability is good for our military leaders because it forces them to be
more adaptive. A show of hands indicated that the vast majority of the officers
in the audience had served in Iraq or Afghanistan, or both. They are good
people.

But. But -- but at the same
time I felt like I was speaking to a lost tribe. These people care, but not, I think,
the American public, which thinks the wars are over, and pays more attention to
the sex lives of our generals than to the real lives of our soldiers. My talk
ended with some banter about whether these majors would rather be led into
battle by a moral fellow or by a combat effective adulterer. Guess what? Combat
effectiveness wins. But most Americans don't know what that means.

When I went outside afterward,
it was late afternoon here in the late November of eastern Kansas, and the
geese and ducks were crowding the flyway south above the wide Missouri.
It is, I feel, time for me to do the same: Go home. Last night, as I was
walking into my room in the Hoge Barracks at Leavenworth, I overheard a couple
of tired-looking officers talking over a beer. "We lost two guys that day," I
heard one quietly say. I thought, Yep, just enough to wound him for life, but not
enough that no one out there seems to care.

I grow
bitter.

Also, why do I feel, as I
look at the wise, slow-flowing Missouri, that "Shenandoah" is a war song? It
doesn't say it is in its words, but it sure feels like it to me. I love Bill Frisell's
guitar work, but sometimes he needs a little
patience. I used to listen to his versions of "Shenandoah" "Moon River" on a
Walkman with scotch-taped headphones every night in Kabul in the cold spring of
2002. Dunno why but it helped me go to sleep. Even now, when I hear the first few notes
of either, I feel I am back in my old blue nylon sleeping bag, looking up at
the Afghan night sky still hoping I was a few inches below the window glass
that would fly my way in any bomb blast. As my wife would say, this music makes
my heart sing. Not convinced? Try this.

Meanwhile, I see where
onetime Bill Clinton-pal Gennifer Flowers is describing herself as a "motivational speaker." Is this the new euphemism of the age?
The only thing she could motivate me to do is run as fast as I could in the
opposite direction.  

Rebecca’s War Dog of the Week: Handler to receive Navy Cross for acts of valor in Afghanistan

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

The Marine Corps Times
announced
this week that three Marines and a sailor are to receive commendation for their
service during combat operations in Afghanistan. All four men are being
recognized for the heroics they displayed while attached to the
1st Marine Special Operations Battalion. The Marine being awarded the
Navy Cross, the second highest military decoration for valor, is handler Sgt.
William Sutra. Also reportedly
on that mission was Sutra's explosives detection dog, Posha.

The operation that began on July 10,
2010 quickly went awry when the team was ambushed and caught in the open. They
were then pinned down by "heavy machine gun and small arms fire from multiple
directions." The mission lasted two days, during which time the team's "element
leader was killed by a makeshift bomb blast on the second day ... the survivors
repeatedly braved enemy fire to retrieve him" and continued to hold their
ground until the rest of the team could be evacuated from the area.

According to a spokesman quoted in a
MARSOC press release
about the medal recipients: "Members of the team unhesitatingly took charge,
and with complete disregard for their own lives, moved across open terrain to
reach their commandos' position orienting their fires on the enemy."

I haven't seen mention of
whether or not the dog played a vital role during that two-day mission. But
like Sutra said while the canine team was deployed together in Iraq in 2009, "[Posha]
might not know it, but his job here is to save my life and the lives of others."

That tour in Iraq was the first for Sutra and Posha as an
explosives detection team. Together they
carried out a variety of missions-reconnaissance
operations in Al Qadasiyah, patroling in Diwaniyah, meeting
with a local sheik in Afak. While they were stationed
in Iraq, Posha and Sutra, who hails from Worcester, Massachusetts, were
featured in an article, about handlers and their dogs. Of his
partner, Sutra had this to say:

Me and Posha, I feel like we're the same. I've
worked with four dogs. Posha's been a rough dog to
other [dog handlers] in the past, but I got the opportunity to pick him up
after my last deployment, and we click like I think nobody else has. We fit
well together."

The awards ceremony
is scheduled for Monday where the secretary of the
Navy will present the awards at Camp Pendleton in California.

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

Wanna cut the force fast?: Let the FBI read all our e-mail

By Matt Pottinger

Best Defense lack of privacy correspondent

If we are to follow the policies implied by the U.S.
government's handling of the Director Petraeus and General Allen cases, here's
what we should do: Open up the personal email accounts of all 2.3 million U.S.
military service members to the FBI and the Pentagon and let them have at it.

Just think of the benefits: We could complete the Afghanistan
drawdown overnight because 99 percent of our troops would be sidelined by
investigations into "potentially inappropriate" communications. We
wouldn't have to keep clarifying the nuances of "rebalancing" versus "pivoting"
toward Asia anymore -- all our ships would be stuck in port while sailors are
queried about sending "flirtatious" messages. And we could avoid the fiscal
cliff by laying off service members who, at some point in their lives, typed
words that someone, somewhere, construed as "intimidating."

In all seriousness, the aspect of the Petraeus and Allen
investigations that should most disturb Americans is our government's invasion
of citizens' private email accounts on the thinnest of pretexts, its reading of
every last message, and its sharing of the most lurid snippets -- regardless of
their irrelevance -- with members of Congress and unnamed officials who, in turn,
share context-free summaries with the press.

These developments give me a grudging respect for the KGB. At
least it had to expend real energy gathering the information it used to
embarrass, compromise, and incriminate the citizens it spied on. U.S.
investigators have it much easier. They have access to dossiers every bit as
juicy as anything the Stasi ever compiled, but they hardly have
to lift a finger to get them. Americans now compile their own
dossiers in the form of email archives, social media accounts, phone and
text-message logs, online medical records, and geo-location trails left by
their smartphones. The deterrence of shoe leather? Not any more. All that investigators have to do is serve a subpoena on Facebook or Google or
AT&T to get minute-by-minute records of the last decade or so of our lives.
(Most Americans are probably unaware that investigators
usually don't need warrants to read
citizens' emails. Or to access our location data.).

One wonders how America's most important general, George
Washington, would have performed for the country if his private correspondences
had been read and spread by government agents and press back then. In
1758, while he was engaged to marry Martha, George wrote at least two love
letters to Sally Fairfax, the wife of one of his longtime friends. To this day,
historians debate the nature of George and Sally's relationship. There is no
evidence the two ever slept together, but the letters surely would have created
a scandal if they'd come to light during the American revolution. At best, they
would have caused a serious distraction for the embattled general and his
underdog army at a time when distractions could have meant defeat. 

Washington understood as well as anyone the necessity of private
words staying private. He knew that the fate of a new republic -- and not just his
ego -- depended on his sustaining a good public image. After his retirement, he
spent years censoring his letters of material that might undermine that goal.
He even had his wife Martha burn their letters to one another after his
death. 

That option doesn't exist today. There's no furnace to pitch our
emails into, no delete key that can erase our indelible digital
scribblings. Numerous backup servers don't permit it. The most we
can expect and demand is a government that helps protect our privacy rather
than obliterate it.

Matt Pottinger served as an
active-duty Marine from 2005-2010. He runs a small business in New
York.

Soldiers who enlist on moral waivers -- more trouble in peace, but better at war?

I was struck reading an article by
retired Army Col. Charles Allen in the November issue of Armed Forces Journal that a 2007 Army study found that:

. . . soldiers who enlisted with
moral waivers were more likely to have disciplinary action under the Uniform
Code of Military Justice and to be discharged. But . . . such soldiers were
also promoted faster in the infantry branch to noncommissioned officer
(sergeant), more likely to re-enlist and received more commendations for valor
than non-waivered enlistees.   

Best excuse of the day

From a recent e-mail I got: "I am exhausted -- it is now past 5:30am and I have
to grab a couple of hours of sleep before flying to Kandahar."

George Patton's reading list

This is
the note I sent yesterday to Fox's spokesman, who seems to be in charge of making
stuff up:

Mr. Clemente,

To clarify my comments for you: I did not apologize.

As it happened, I ran into Bret Baier as I emerged from
the interview. We know each other from working at the Pentagon. He asked if I
was serious in saying that Fox had hyped Bengahzi, and I said I was. We
discussed that. It was a cordial exchange. (I wouldn't mention this
private conversation except that you apparently are quoting my hallway
conversations as part of your attack.)

Later, as I was leaving, the booker or producer (I am
not sure what her title was) said she thought I had been rude. I said I might
have been a bit snappish because I am tired of book tour. This was in no way an
apology but rather an explanation of why I jumped a bit when the anchor began
the segment with the assertion that pressure on the White House was
building -- which it most clearly was not.

Best,

Tom

Mr.
Clemente has not responded, as is his right. While he stews, I'm looking forward to heading northward and diving back into my books.
Which brings me to today's subject. I've read a lot about Patton, but had never
come across his reading list before. My ex-boss Nate Fick sent it along.

It is a
good one, even though it was compiled by Patton's wife after his death as a
list of his favorites. It is as old school, as you'd expect, but reflects his deep study of war. Here 'tis:

Maxims of Frederick the Great
Maxims of Napoleon ,
and all the authoritative military biographies of Napoleon
Commentaries ,
Julius Caesar
Treatises by von Treitchke, and von
Clausewitz
Memoirs of General
the Baron de Marbot , and de Fezansec, a
colonel under Napoleon
Fifteen Decisive
Battles of the World , Creasy
Charles XII of Sweden, Klingspor
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire  (Vols 1, 2, 3)   (Vols 4, 5, 6) ,
Gibbon
Strategicon, Marcus and Spaulding
The Prince ,
Machiavelli
The Crowd ,
Le Bon
A History of the
Art of War in the Middle Ages , Oman
The Influence of
Sea Power Upon History, , Mahan
Stonewall Jackson ,
Henderson
Memoirs of U. S. Grant, and those of McClellan
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, R.
E. Lee, and Lee's Lieutenants, Freeman
Years of Victory and Years of Endurance,
Bryant
Gallipoli, Hamilton
Thucydides' Military History of Greece
Memoirs of Ludendorff, von Hindenburg and
Foch
Genghis Khan, Alexander, Lamb
Alexander, Weigall
The Home Book of Verse
Anything by Winston Churchill
Kipling, complete
Anything by Liddle Hart
Anything by J. F. C. Fuller, especially
'Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure'
The Normans in Sicily, Knight
The Greatest Norman Conquest, Osborne
The History of the Norman Conquest of
England, five volumes by Freeman
Caesar's Gallic War
Infantry Attacks ,
Rommel

Does the prospect of cushy retirement jobs in the defense industry bend active duty generals toward conformity?

That's
the worry of a smart, friendly foreign observer, who tells me that:

Some, if not many, of those still serving see
well-paid second employment as a consultant or DoD contractor as part of their
retirement package, a perk if you like. They do not wish to rock the boat in
case it sinks and they can't climb in when they retire. There will be
individual exceptions that disprove the rule, but this arrangement is, in the
round, not good value for your tax-payers' dollars.

Navy jettisons the president and provost of the poor old Naval Postgraduate School

I don't know what up with this, but I have gots to tell you, even with lousy leadership, living on
federal salary in Monterey, California, is one of the nicer things in life.

2nd ACR follow up: It is hardly alone in the erosion of its conventional combat skills

A friend familiar with the exercise that revealed serious combat weaknesses
in an Army regiment comments:

1. Over 50 percent of the 2CR
staffs' will transition out of the unit by March 2013 just three months prior
to deployment -- nasty habit by the Army, most units do it just prior to
deployment or right after redeployment -- meaning for all those officers trained
up to now will not be deploying -- what a wasted effort and it is over and
over, thus no institutional knowledge is ever developed. Now one has to retrain
the new inbound ones in just three months.

2. The
official responses are interesting in that based on CALLS article lead in
-- the CALL writer got input from the OC-Ts and the O7s, who are the LTC/COL
OC team leads to include the RGT Staff observers, so it was overall a fairly
accurate picture. CALL based a reviewer at all CTCs -- if one goes back and
reviews all DATE exercises -- and there have been two at JMRC, several at the
NTC -- they ALL show similar issues. The Force has simply in ten years of COIN
lost their basic conventional Army skill sets.

3. With each section it indicated what warfighter functions were being addressed
and when it stated "All" then you know it just was not a pre-summary report, or a
shortened report or a snap shot -- it was an overall assessment for the six
warfighter functions. Yes, there were on occasions success, but few and
far between -- was actually surprised at the official responses.

4. The
underlying tone of the report reflects a serious lack of trust, serious
micro-management, and a deep lack of communication, i.e. dialogue -- all items deeply
embedded in mission command, but not spoken about in the report. Heard from the
field that the OCs basically hit the check marks on a standard critique list
-- also OCs tend to not cover the warm and fuzzy items in mission command, i.e.
trust, dialogue, team building, as they themselves are not anchored in the
necessary education/experience in mentoring those items.

Just a
note -- all of the bloggers and those who used the term mission command and
mission orders to include CALL's use of mission orders blow completely by what
MC really is -- i.e. even the doctrinal side is confusing -- in ADP 5.0 mission
orders emphasize Cmdrs intent -- in ADP 6.0 mission order is assumed to be the
standard three orders that also have been issued FRAGOs, WARNOs and OPORDs.

If
mission command is mentored correctly and the staffs are educated and trained
in MC -- even when cut off from the RGT Cmdr, and even when things are going
south individual units should and must adjust on the fly using independent
decisionmaking -- follow the Cmdrs intent and drive on in the knowledge
that the RGT Cmdr has allowed them to succeed even though he is nowhere to be
seen or even heard on the radios.

You
will notice in the
CALL article that even
while seeing some of the problems experienced right out of the mission command,
ADP 6.0 really did not address them -- this goes to our current way we evaluate
units. We have a series of organizations all calling themselves Mission
Command Training Programs, but absolutely none of them mentor, none of them
while using the term MC, and none mentor the core problem that jumps out of this
CALL article -- the need for trust and dialogue in a fear free environment -- all fuzzy things
which calls on one's confidence as a mentor, as you must be stable yourself in
the areas of trust and dialogue."

Tom
again: Meanwhile, a former 2nd SCR soldier writes in to say that the erosion
was exceptional, and resulted from poor leadership:

I've been watching the
comments here for a while, and I've finally decided to say something.  I
was a part of 2SCR for few years. Now when I first got to the unit, I was
under exceptional leaders (2007). Towards the end of my time (2012), it
eroded very, very quickly. I speak from personal experience when I say
that the unit doesn't train to standard, it trains to time.  Once we hit
the time, it didn't matter if we met the standard. Basic soldiering
skills are almost non-existent. One example is we did training on
field maneuvers and we never went to the field to practice, we
watched it on a powerpoint slide then checked the block as if it were done.
Also, we never followed a training schedule. A false training
schedule was put up every week, sent up, but we never even so much as glanced
at it.



Overall, I think it is a shame. The unit
definitely disheartened me from the military. For a long time I thought
that the military values, the Soldier's Creed, the NCO creed were things people
just pretended to be passionate about in boards and then threw it all away when
they left. I think it is also eroding soldiers' values and work ethic.
The only good thing I can say after walking away from this unit is that
after all of the hate and rage I had, it brought me closer to Jesus Christ and
God. I just hope and pray that people stop worrying and identifying with
what is on their chest and realize what an immense honor and responsibility it
is. The rank is honorable because of the responsibility you have to live
up to.  I just see a bunch of people who want the "honor" but
not the responsibility, not realizing that you cannot have one without the
other. My hopes and prayers are that people come home safely.