Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 159

The U.S. military's 'casual' approach to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abu Mook, before going into radio
silence, takes a Parthian shot:

The casual arrogance with
which the U.S. military has approached the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan
has a direct relation to the difficulty with which we have fought each war.
That we think we can send a commander to Afghanistan with no prior knowledge of
Afghanistan and watch him be successful in the eleventh year of the conflict
shows that after eleven years of conflict, we really don't know too much about
Afghanistan. And we might not know too much about conflict either.

I've had
this sense, but have never been able to put it into words as well as Abu Mook
does here. "Casual arrogance" captures it exactly.

Can an Army of checklists really handle implementing mission command?

By
Richard Buchanan

Best
Defense office of mission command

Earlier
this year, Col. Tom Guthrie asked, " Do we really have the stomach for implementing mission
command, or is this concept a passing fancy, the Army's current bright shiny
object?" He continued: "If we intend to
truly embrace mission command, then we should do it to the fullest, and that
will require commitment to changing a culture from one of control and process
to one of decentralization and trust... Mission
command philosophies, however, go much deeper than that. Words like agility,
initiative, intent, empowerment, mission orders and adaptability
all point to the condition of decentralization under a most important
umbrella: trust. Without trust, mission command -- as a routine practice and
warfighting function, in garrison and in combat -- has little hope. With trust,
all of the desired effects within mission command's definition are possible."

Right now there is a serious relook at design by the Army,
based on the fact that after training of design at ILE, and training of design via various Defense Contracting MTTs, we are not "seeing" results of design in the field at the tactical level. Many officers will tell you that design is a great thing at the strategic and operational levels, but has nothing to do with the tactical level.
The same thing could be argued with mission command. Mission command, as well as design, are
currently both failing to gain traction. Mention the term mission command to
officers and the first thing that comes to mind is mission command systems
(or the science of control), not the far more critical piece -- the art of command. After the initial doctrinal release of mission command (MC), especially after ADP 6.0 and ADRP 6.0, one would expect to
see a slow but steady take up of mc, especially after General Dempsey released
his whitepaper concerning MC/trust in April 2012. I have had multiple engagements
with various levels of unit staffs since 2006 and what I have seen in the last
several years is something that I did not ever think I would be seeing -- lack
of trust. 

Lack of trust is deep between officers and officers,
officers and NCOs, staff and commanders -- design and mission command cannot
move forward until the institutional culture is rebuilt on trust, open and
critical communication/thinking built on dialogue. Commanders must
understand that they are responsible for building and mentoring agile adaptive staff teams. The rebuilding of the Army after ISAF is doomed. This lack of
trust has led to a strong increase in micromanagement at all staff and officer
levels. The flip side of this is that the Army has not recognized that while it spends
large amounts of money training individuals and units, it spend virtually
nothing on staff training -- it assumes that since you are an officer you can lead
and work within a staff.

Now there appears (and it is strange to see it building) -- a
management class struggle occurring in the Army -- the lowest management group
are the Captains through to some LTCs, followed by a middle management group of
LTC/COLs through two stars, and then the upper management group of three and
four stars. What is really interesting is that the basic management group is in
synch with the thinking of the upper management group about the cultural
resistance to both mission command and design. Successful implementation of
both are being inhibited by the middle management group that has a stake in
delaying the cultural change as it would impact their promotions (or they are
in lockstep with the culture that produced their promotions).

For the last six years we have become an Army of checklists -- checklists to be
used for deploying and recovery, checklists for leaving the FOB, checklists for
patrol and convoys, checklists for a CONOP vs doing a standard OPORD, and the
ultimate checklist, the OER. but does a checklist build trust, does a
checklist lead to team building and open critical thinking or staff dialogue? We
can take this checklist mentality a step further and say that even the use and
misuse of PowerPoint is in fact a checklist.

If we look at, say, a typical maneuver BN Staff, it might be
comprised of six or so LTs, several CPT,s one of which might be the S2, with the
S3 and XO being MAJs. Based on current military education paths, the LTs will
not have had intensive military decision-making (MDMP) training -- yes, they have
deployed and worked within a MDMP process, but they don't necessarily understand the why and how's of the process. Captains, if they have not been to the Captain's Career
Course, will have had little to no formal MDMP training even though they likely have deployment experience. MAJs, depending on when they went through ILE, may or
may not be fully experienced in MDMP, even with deployment experience. So how
does the staff then bridge the lack of true MDMP understanding? To date, through checklists,
WGs driven by PowerPoint presentations, PowerPoint driven CUBs, and PowerPoint
driven CONOPs vs OPORDs.

If the BN does not have a dynamic LTC who understands how
to build teams, build an environment of open critical dialogue without fear, and
foster trust, then the XO or the S3 becomes the defacto commander. If it is a
multifunctional BN then the situation is more dire as they tend to only
exercise the staff once a year.

If this is the current situation at the BN level, does
it also occur at higher levels? Unfortunately, yes it does. Does the current process of
reseting the Brigades aggravate the issue? Many of the maneuver units reset a
large percentage (in excess of 60 percent) of their staffs either just prior to or
after a deployment. This constant churn of staff officers does not allow the
building of teams, much less building trust, and reinforces the misuse of
PowerPoint.

Take a complete staff of either a BN or a BCT and then ask
the following questions: have you sat through PowerPoint (PPT) presentations of
100 plus slides (the answer is always yes), did you ever question the
presenter (the answer is usually no), did you ever raise a question during the presentation
only to be shut down by the presenter (the answer is usually yes), if you were shut down what
was the response to being shut down (frustration), did you all just sit there
and nod north and south (yes), were the slides depicting data or
information (much of the time data), were decisions in the WGs always reached as
part of the WG input and output product process (the answer is only sometimes).

When you ask why we continue doing it if we all see the
same problems, the answer is silence.

After digging deeper in the dialogue with the staffs the
issues of mistrust between officers and officers, mistrust between officers and
NCO and mistrust between staff and the commander, frustration, and lack of team
building become points of conversation. If one digs even deeper one discovers
that micromanagement is rampant, following the motto it is easier for me to do
the work and complete it faster as needed than to mentor another officer/NCO. Or
the commander mistrusts his staff and out of fear of failures impacting the OER
he micromanages.

In this environment why do we think design will ever work? Design requires a staff to openly communicate in a critical discourse without
fear and in full trust that their experience will be listened to. Why do we
expect mission command to be successful if trust is missing?

So I agree with COL
Guthrie's premise -- "Even in these times of diminishing dollars,
spending billions will be easy compared to changing the climate and the
culture." That will take stomach.

I am
worried though that the Army does not have the stomach to
change the current culture and is in the process of slowly backing away from mission command and design, as it will take a solid generational change of officers in
order to successfully implement both.

Richard Buchanan is mission command training facilitator with the JMTC/JMSC Grafenwoehr, Germany training staffs in the areas of mission command, MDMP/NATO Planning Processes,
MDMP/Design, and Command Post Operations. From 2006 to 2008, he rebuilt as
HUMINT SME together with the Commander Operations Group (COG) National
Training Center (NTC) the CTC training scenario to reflect Diyala
Province. From 2008 to 2009, he introduced as a Forensics SME into
the NTC training scenario the first ever battlefield forensics initially
for multifunctional teams and then BCTs. From 2010 to 2012, he trained staffs
in the targeting process as tied to the ISR planning process as they are
integrated in the MDMP process. The opinions here are his own and not those of
U.S. Army Europe, the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, the U.S. government,
nor even the shattered remains of the once-proud Red Sox.

No Romney post today!

Now,
doesn't that feel better?

Iranian official: Yep, Qods Force is operating in Syria, but not to worry!

I've long thought there was a good study to be done of
Iranian advisory efforts in Iraq. They seemed to me a model of long-term,
low-key influence. No big bases, but lots of effects.

Now maybe it seems that study should be expanded to
Syria. An Iranian official, speaking about the  Qods Force (AKA the foreign operations wing of
the Revolutionary
Guard) said
over the weekend that, "A number of members of the Qods force are present in Syria
but this does not constitute a military presence." 

An Iranian foundation also has reportedly upped the
amount of the bounty it has placed on the
head of Salman Rushdie. Can you imagine if American foundations did
stuff like that?   

Meanwhile, someone blew up a bomb on the July 14
bridge into the Green Zone and killed a bunch of people at the checkpoint.
I've walked across that bridge a lot. It was my point of maximum vulnerability,
when I was outside the Green Zone yet not back in the able hands of the Washington Post security guys. 

Comment of the day: When I lost respect for Romney on foreign policy

From "Army FAO" on Friday:

I lost any remaining respect for the
foreign policy team advising Romney when they started pushing the
message that this wouldn't have happened if Romney were president. Really? Is
he going to prevent people from posting insults to Islam on YouTube? Or does he
propose to garrison every embassy with a full company of Marines who are
authorized to shoot protestors? This whole thing is a bad deal, but to argue
that Obama is responsible is just foolish. As usual Romney is connect to throw
rocks without saying what he would do differently. God I wish there was a
better candidate in this race for the Republicans. Who needs law to suppress
the vote, just run campaigns so negatively that no one can get excited for
either candidate.

A sad Best Defense precedent is set

Longtime
grasshoppers know that I am a First Amendment fundamentalist. That's the ideological
reason I've been extremely reluctant to censor any comments. The other, more
practical reason is that selectively censoring a nasty commenter only makes him
look better. Why help a jerk stay just inside the lines?

I
mention this because over the last week, one commenter clearly was going out of
his way to be provocative and insulting. He was eroding the civility of the
continuing discussion. One soldier wrote to ask that the commenter be banned
for fear that the tone and type of comments would get Best Defense blocked on military computers.

Still, I
didn't take action, and instead just asked him to tone it down. (I am not going
to name him because I think that just would give him more of the attention he
seems to crave.) 

Then he
made a crack along the lines of where is Lee Harvey Oswald when we need him. My
stomach turned. I made a decision I had resisted for years. But instead of
going to censoring, I asked FP's
technicians to block his comments altogether.

This is,
of course, just a short-term solution, because he can always comment under
another name. This is where you all come in. The real  long-term solution is for all of us to ignore
those who degrade the discussions on this site. Resist temptation, and ignore
his provocations. So I am thinking that in the future I might I post an
occasional flag, along the lines of "Troll
alert: Please do not respond to this person's comments." Do you think that
would work?    

Steve Jobs: A great and toxic leader

We hear a lot about toxic leaders these
days, and especially how bad
they are for military units, so I was surprised when I picked up Water
Isasacson's terrific biography of Steve Jobs of Apple/Pixar fame to see
that Jobs was
a classic toxic leader -- bullying, self-indulgent, lacking empathy, often
ungrateful, unwilling to give credit where it was due, and a world-class
control freak. (I hadn't planned to read the book, but my wife, who cares about
computers maybe even less than I do but cares a lot about history, recommended
it highly as a story of our times.)

Job's awful behavior was not just a matter of corporate
antics. He was downright weird, not believing in showering much and wafting such bad body odor early that in his career he was told to work nights.
An abandoned child himself, he neglected for many years a child he fathered and
wasn't particularly good with his subsequent offspring. One former girlfriend
called him an enlightened person, but unusually, also a cruel one.   

Here's the problem:
There is no question that Steve Jobs was a self-centered jerk. Yet he also
appears to have been a great corporate leader and innovator who pulled off a
series of successes -- the Apple II and MacIntosh computers, the Pixar movie
animation studio, the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone. These have had an impact
on the way we live. In the process, Jobs built one of the world's most valuable
companies. 

So what are we to think? Issacson doesn't really tell us. I
wouldn't want to have worked for the guy. Yet it made me stop to think: In
retrospect, the two roughest bosses I had in my decades in journalism also were
the best for my career, holding me to high standards, rewarding my efforts, and
promoting me quickly.   

Romney's statements make a Foreign Service Officer feel 'physically ill'

A Foreign Service
Officer writes to me about Romney:

Thank you for your posting (and links) on Governor
Romney's response
to the death of Ambassador Stevens. I did
not know him, but I am
surrounded here at State by people who did, and
I can tell you that
this is a building filled with shock and grief.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton each made
statements that were
appropriate, both to the public and to the
Foreign Service. And it
was important to us that our president came to
the department to be
with us yesterday and to offer comfort.
Tomorrow afternoon, see how
many people go to Andrews to welcome Ambassador
Stevens home.

I felt physically ill when I first heard
Governor Romney's remarks,
and incredulous that he repeated them later.
It appeared to me that
the death of Foreign Service Officers was to him
nothing more than an
opportunity to score cheap political points.
And this man wants to be
our leader?

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Post Card Series: Hot dog, cool drink

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Kentucky Agribusiness Development Team 4's Master Sgt. Chris Campbell (right) of Nicholasville, Ky. provides highly trained Zack the military working dog with water from his Camelback while taking a break in the shade in southern Afghanistan July 10. With temperatures exceeding of 110 degrees Fahrenheit, getting lots of shade and water whenever possible is essential to helping working dogs function more effectively as a member of the team. Also pictured is Zack's handler, Sgt. Charles Nelson (left) of Ahoskie, N.C."

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Free Press.

We need to study who switches sides in insurgencies, and how and why they do

[image error]

Steve
Biddle, a smart guy, writes with some of his homeys in International Security in a study of the surge in Iraq that we need to better
understand how and why some insurgents change sides. "Our findings emphasize
the Sunni realignment's importance, yet realignment's role in civil warfare is
largely unstudied, as are its causes and consequences."

Some
good dissertation theses are to be found in following up that hint. Maybe a
comparative study of who and why changed sides in several civil wars. I think
especially the timing would be interesting: Is there typically a phase of the
war that provokes side-changing? (My cynical guess is: Yes there is, and it is
when the outlines of the ending start becoming evident. Biddle, by the way, is moving camp to
George Washington University. I hope they understand over there what a big deal
it is for them to get him. He is so astute that when I disagree with him, my
first impulse is to retrace my steps and try to see where I went off
track.) 

Here is
Joel Wing's critique of the article itself.

Meanwhile,
one night in August I dreamed that Moqtada al-Sadr went into exile in South
Africa. No idea why I chose that for him. Probably too much lobster for my
dinner whilst watching Olympics.