Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 160

Romney should have listened to Condi before shooting off his mouth about Libya

Sometimes a newspaper editorial gets it exactly right. This is one
such time. Read the whole thing, if you can. But pay attention especially to
the last paragraph, which states that:

As for Mr. Romney, he would
do well to consider the example of Republican former secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice, who issued a statement Wednesday lamenting "the tragic loss of
life at our consulate," praising Mr. Stevens as "a wonderful officer and a
terrific diplomat" and offering "thoughts and prayers" to "all the loved ones
of the fallen." That was the appropriate response.

Not persuaded? Then read more here from
Republican apparatchik Ed Rogers. And more here from James Fallows, who
concludes that Romney
isn't ready for that 3 am phone call. Here's a roundup. 

(HT to RD) 

A Leavenworth major studies running shoes -- and falls on his face

By Jim Gourley

Best Defense bureau of
physical training

The Command and General Staff
College recently published the thesis "Can Unshod Running Reduce Running Injuries?" by Major Brian Hallam. As printed, the report contains an
alarming number of inaccuracies, grammatical errors, and flawed
rationalizations. Its conclusions
and recommendations regarding improvements in army running training hold some
merit, but the path by which Hallam arrives at them presents a dangerous
influence to anyone who may use the paper as a training guide.

There are two immediate errors
that should have barred the paper from passing review, let alone
publication. Hallam claims on page
36 that "Humans are the only mammals that shed heat by
sweating." This is patently
false. Horses, for example, perspire
heavily. On page 55 there is a
sentence fragment that cannot be ignored: "It was found that the Pose Running Method and Chi
Running." This is a critical
omission, as the statement was supposed to declare some kind of conclusion
about running form, which is a primary element of Hallam's arguments.

Hallam's stated goal is to
investigate whether changing from conventional footwear to
"minimalist" shoes (Vibram FiveFingers, Nike Free, Adidas adiPure) would have an
injury-reducing effect on the large population of injured runners in the
army. This is no idle
consideration. The army has
a substantial body of evidence from its own studies indicating high rates of
running-related injuries. Even in
a wartime army, running injuries comprise a preponderance of lost duty days and
manpower. Hallam observes that
these problems have existed since World War II and have only increased in
number and severity over time.

Hallam references numerous
studies and scientific tests, but fails to connect them so that they may offer
any meaningful characterization of the problem with running injuries, let alone
a solution. Nor does he ever
introduce any evidence contradicting his hypothesis. He becomes so intent on affirming his thesis that he pursues
it to the exclusion of all other considerations. Hallam streamlines his argument by restricting his
investigation to three secondary research questions. He examines first the association between injuries and a
runner's footwear condition (shod or unshod). He then delves into the construction of contemporary running
shoes and whether their design can prevent injuries. His final approach is to determine if a change in footwear
type can change a runner's form and mechanics.

The narrative of Hallam's
argument follows a straight enough course. Runners in conventional footwear sustain more injuries
because these shoes promote a stride that causes the heel to hit the ground
first (heel-striking). Heel-striking causes muscle and joint stiffness as well as increases the
overall impact force of the foot with the ground, resulting in injury. By contrast, running without the
cushioning of contemporary shoes causes the runner to adjust their step so that
their mid-foot region strikes the ground ahead of the heel. This reduces impact forces and gives
the runner better overall posture to manage them. Hallam sporadically reinforces his arguments with anecdotal
experiences of a few adventure journalists who wrote about tribal cultures that
hunt antelope and run ultramarathons barefoot. He concludes by declaring minimalist running shoes the
"winner" over contemporary footwear according to a scorecard that
looks more like something from Outside
magazine's "Gear Guide" than an academic paper.  

There are several glaring
omissions and errors within the research. Time and again, he confuses correlation for causation. There are no distinctive one-to-one
comparisons between minimalist and contemporary shoes that could justify his
concluding scorecard. There is not
a single consideration of any negative consequences of unshod running. It is shocking that his research
supervisor didn't reject the work on these grounds alone, but it goes further. Hallam is even oblivious to his
self-contradictory remarks appearing on page 56, near the end of his analysis
section (emphasis added):

"This thesis has shown that shoes do not cause
injuries and it has also been found that shoes do not prevent injury."

"The answer to the primary research question
is that unshod running can reduce running injuries because unshod runners use a
forefoot strike."

He would not have committed
this error if he had gone beyond the anecdotal accounts of Christopher
McDougall's Born To Run, which emphasizes the running
"superiority" of Tarahumara Indians in Mexico. Many are the Kenyan and Ethiopian
runners who set world distance records while running in contemporary shoes, and
several of them adapt the heel-striking pattern. Likewise, he would have discovered the fallacies of his
argument if he'd broadened his research to consider terrain. The barefoot runners traverse grassy or
soft soil, whereas most soldiers run on pavement. Hallam goes much further in his conclusions than Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University, from whose research he draws heavily and who
remarked in a news story
about running injuries that, "The long and the short of it is that we know very
little about how to help all runners -- barefoot and shod -- prevent getting
injured. Barefoot running is no panacea. Shoes aren't either."

It is suspiciously convenient
that Hallam includes no data on running injuries as a result of adapting
minimalist shoes or a forefoot/mid-foot strike. The body of research on this topic is not large yet, as the
barefoot running trend has not been in existence long. However, news reports have brought
attention to these injuries and both Vibram and Adidas are currently engaged in lawsuits over false advertising about the science behind their shoes.

The most jarring part of
Hallam's thesis is the conclusion, which offers recommendations so removed from
the preceding research that it seems to be from a completely different
paper. He proposes that the army
conduct research on the effects of running using a training technique called
the "Pose Running Method," that a formal running training program be
established within the broader Physical Readiness Training Program, that
soldiers interested in wearing the banned Vibram FiveFingers be allowed to try
them, and that the army research the effect of running form in combat
boots.

Nothing in Hallam's paper
suggests why he chooses the Pose method, though he acknowledges that at least
one other method (known as "Chi") exists. Nor does he offer any evidence supporting formalized training
programs as mitigating injury. In
fact, he cites earlier in the report a study of runners engaged in formalized
training programs that demonstrated typically high injury rates. Though he acknowledges that his final
recommendation regarding wear of combat boots is outside the scope of his
research, he offers an ambiguous range of concerns such that it is nearly
preposterous. In conjunction with
the construction of boots and their influence on running form, Hallam also
suggests that the tests study impact forces as a result of combat load. It is lost upon him that the
substantial addition of weight is likely to influence posture and therefore
running form in its own right.

No other factors are cited as
potential pathologies in running injuries, and this is the most egregious issue
within the report. Running
injuries are examined in a vacuum throughout both Hallam's discussion and the
army's own studies, failing to conceive a possible combined
effect of other forms of training and running on the lower extremities. Though high importance is placed on
impact forces, there is no recognition that the modern soldier, on average,
carries a great deal more body weight and is significantly less physically active than
those of twenty or even ten years ago. Weekly mileage, intensity, terrain, strength, flexibility, and a host of
other factors influence running injury. Hallam's suggestion that changing footwear or running form will decrease
injuries is dangerous not only because it fails to contextualize how to
implement these changes, but also because it implies an unrealistic expectation
that these factors alone will create statistically certain and replicable
results. In truth, the cure may be
worse than the disease.

In closing, I agree with the
fundamental assertion of Hallam's work -- the army's approach to running is
institutionally flawed. However,
it must be recognized that we arrived at these current circumstances by avoiding
the complexity endemic to a holistic approach and instead fashioning a
patchwork of piecemeal solutions. As a guide to possible improvements in soldier fitness, the work is
harmfully misleading. As an
academic work, the paper falls short of what ought to be a standard for
graduate-level work, especially at CGSC.

'Hanoi's War': A different view of how the Communists conducted the Vietnam war

I'm not
a fan of diplomatic history, but still found parts of Hanoi's War fascinating. It changed the way I think about the Vietnam War. For
example: "Ho and Giap were sidelined by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho at nearly all
key decision-making junctures . . . . It is worth contemplating how Hanoi's war
would have been different had Ho and Giap been in charge."

The
basic argument of the book is that Ho Chi Minh was a figurehead and that the
war was run by "the Comrades Le." In 1967, opposition inside the Communist
Party to the planned Tet Offensive was so pronounced that there was a series
of purges and arrests, including generals allied with General Giap. "The
alleged traitors were imprisoned in central Hanoi at Hoa Lo, known to Americans
as the ‘Hanoi Hilton.'" Giap himself was pushed in a kind of temporary
self-exile. 

The
focus of participants to post-American Vietnam began to shift surprisingly early. In
1970, Hanoi already was beginning to fear that China would dominate postwar
Indochina. Meanwhile, in Cambodia, not long afterward, Pol Pot began killing
off his Hanoi-trained cadres.

Nor did
I know that Hanoi was very upset and worried by Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing.
And with good reason: That year, both Beijing and Moscow began cutting their
military aid to the North Vietnamese. 

All in
all, it reminded me of Piers Mackesy's classic The War for America, which shows us the American revolution through the eyes
of the British government.

RIP, Ambassador Stevens

This is the man we lost in Libya. 

(HT to
MD)

'The U.S. Navy has an integrity problem’

By
Capt. John Byron (U.S. Navy, ret.)

Best
Defense office of maritime ethics

"The
U.S. Navy has an integrity problem." So begins
a marvelous study of Navy commanding officers
fired in recent years. It's written by Navy Captain Mark Light, a student at
Army War College when he originally drafted this essay and now moved up on the
faculty at Carlisle. Naval War College Review just published an
edited version and well worth reading in its entirety.

Readers
of this blog have seen a tedious series of train-wreck
stories
about Navy Commanding Officers fired for everything from running
aground to friggin' in the riggin'. The body count between the study years of
1999 and October 2011 is at 101, a high and growing number and that includes
only senior officers, O-5 and O-6. Captain Light lays it all out, or at least
all that can be laid out, given that the data is often short on specifics on
the 'officially fired' and also excludes many situations in which the sacking
was effected through a short tour or backdoor transfer and so below
the threshold of an official detachment-for-cause. 

The
data shows an essentially even trend on the number fired for professional
reasons, but an ugly ramp up of personal or ethical misconduct. The Navy's
problem exists both at sea and in command ashore. Light notes both an increasingly
high standard in the Navy and the effect of modern information technology and
social media etc. on both the ease with which situations are aired and the
visibility they then get. Mixed-gender crews do not seem to be
a factor ... but the vestiges of an archaic Navy 'culture of the service' do
seem to play. 

So
too do the cultures of the three main warfare communities of the Navy: Naval
Aviation, typified by Top Gun shenanigans; the Surface Navy, modeled after
Captain Bligh's BOUNTY; and the Submarine Force, an enigmatic
Silent Service no outsider can penetrate. He's got something there: the Navy's
three warfare cultures are enormously powerful and persist through wars and
reforms both; not all they hold dear is positive for the Navy or its
mission. 

Captain
Light closes with three recommendations to reverse the trend:

Establish a sense of urgency.
Set the standard.
Improve the metrics.

This
is a rock-solid review of a serious Navy problem by a serious Navy
professional. Bravo Zulu. 

And
where are the equivalent studies from the other Services? Does the Navy do it
better? Do the other Services have such excellent leaders that firing is seldom
called for? Or do they lack the integrity that holds those in command to an
unwavering high standard and makes sure that the rest of their leaders know it?
Captain Light tells me that at his war college 'nobody can figure out how to
come up with data like mine for the Army or any other Service.' Why not?

11 years after 9/11

Last
year's 10th anniversary of 9/11 was a big one for me. I needed to
observe it carefully and intently. I wanted to be alone for a few hours. I
chose to paddle a sea kayak up along through a bay and tidal rapids to an
obscure corner of a salt pond where boats almost never go. I grounded my boat
at the base of a outcropping and sat and ate my lunch, and then looked out on
this beautiful peaceful world for a long time.

Then I
leaned back on the moss-covered ground and slept. When I awoke from my
afternoon nap in the sun, I said, "That's it." For 10 years, 9/11 and its
consequences had dominated my life. I had lost friends. I had worked pretty
much non-stop for a decade. It wasn't time to forget, but it was time to move on and
reclaim my life, to be a more attentive husband and father, among other things.
It was time to try to be normal again. Over the last year I've been especially
conscious of the small things -- my wife's wonderful scrambled eggs, the joy of my
dogs in running in the woods, the tranquil gurgle of water passing along the
hull of a sloop on a warm summer afternoon.

I think
the country has more or less regained its equilibrium. We overreacted, and our
leaders did especially, I think. Their overheated rhetoric was never matched by
any sense of national mobilization, which I think contributed to the nation's
psychic imbalance: If we are at war, why doesn't it feel like it?

Let's
not forget 9/11. Let's remember that we are still at war in Afghanistan. But
let's also enjoy some normal.   

Former Bush aide complains that Obama doesn't attend enough intelligence briefs!

Marc Theissen
complains in a column that
President Obama doesn't attend enough intelligence briefings. I wonder if it is
better to not attend them, or to go but not heed them.

Please, no flowers. Instead,
the family of the writer wishes that contributions be made the American Amnesia
Society. 

A few thoughts on the future of the advisory effort: Contracting didn't work, and neither will a separate advisory corps

By Col. Robert Killebrew, U.S. Army (ret.)

Best Defense chief mentor

On contracting, the current arrangement has been
shown not to work, for a number of reasons -- and I have top-notch friends who
went that route so I know it's not quality of people, just the fact that
contracts don't take the place of enlistments.

On "advisory corps," I've long been on record
saying that it's an exceptionally sucky idea.

With regard to special qualifications of advisors, we are
in agreement again. I was an advisor in a long-ago war, and I've been around
the business for a long time. I think
that advising, training, and equipping allies will be -- has been, in fact -- a
core competency of the armed services -- we have been in the advising
business in every war since WWII, to include Desert Storm, but we consistently
refuse to embrace the business between wars, so it's always a surprise. (Like those guys who are always surprised by
the premature arrival of lunch.)

If I could, I'd tackle the job on several fronts,
starting with consistent joint and service doctrines so we could learn how to
put DOTLM-PF standards against the advisory mission. We should insure that advisory tours reward
people who seek them, and have a school for advisors that teaches the doctrine,
applies the resources, and that can be expanded as it is needed.

I wouldn't make advisory training mandatory unless there
was a requirement for large numbers of advisors, but when we need the
capability, we should have a doctrine and be able to expand the schooling. We
can go back and forth about the differences between advising and training and
equipping and so forth, but that will be dictated by the specifics of each
situation; the important thing is to have the school, have a way that
encourages the best and the brightest to pull an advisory tour without damage
to their careers, and have a surge capability. There are things that have to be fixed at State, but the military still has
a way to go.

Tom
addendum: Maj. Matthew Billings, based on his time in Iraq, seem to think differently:

Really what I think that the Army should do, since
we've seen two recent conflicts using this type of mission set, I really think
that the Army ought to consider having entire advisor brigades formed. A unit
that they can deploy to a certain area for a certain mission and all it needs
is maybe a little bit of focused cultural training before they deploy. That way
you have people who have been working together, training together, and know
each other, and all of the personality conflicts have been worked out ahead of
time and don't come to a head during the deployment. That can be very
dangerous. That is the direction the Army should be heading.

Iraq: Not an unraveling, but a stalemate? And still more violent than Afghanistan

I was
thinking recently that I was wrong about Iraq, because I expected it to fall apart, but it hasn't.

By
coincidence, a few minutes later I read Joel Wing's summary of the state
of things in Iraq,
which interested me because he always has been more optimistic about Iraq than
I have. He concludes that Iraq is stuck in a political deadlock that is causing an annual cycle of violence:

After the summer is over, attacks and deaths will go down in Iraq.
The problem is that the routine will repeat itself next year, and the year
after that until there is a change in the status quo. That will not come from
the security forces that are set in their ways. Only the political class can
bring about a real transformation. In 2009 and 2010, large numbers of Sunnis
participated in elections after largely boycotting them in 2005. That led to a
drop in casualties. Now, things are going in the other direction, as the ruling
parties are moving farther and farther apart in their feud over the
distribution of power, increasing ethnosectarian tensions. That growing
resentment within the country, gives some the reason to fight rather than
reconcile adding life to the insurgency. The problem for Iraq is that nothing
looks to be changing the political deadlock, and in turn the security situation
will not improve either.

Wing
also reports that Iraq even now is more violent
than Afghanistan.
Indeed, over the weekend there were bombings in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Baquba, Samarra,
Amara, Basra, Dujail, and Tuz Khurmato.

Meanwhile,
Iraq is allowing Iran to fly military supplies through its airspace to Syria.

And an
Iraqi MP called for dumping the U.S. and starting an
alliance with Russia.
Frankly, okay by me. Knock yourself out.

Union Pacific railroad fires a conductor for quoting Gen. Mattis in a tattoo

The
Union Pacific railroad fired a conductor for a quote in a tattoo. The words in question were
something in my book Fiasco that
Marine Gen. James Mattis recalled to me that he told Iraqi officials during the
2003 invasion:

I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I am pleading
with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all.

As a
friend of mine said, that's a pretty long quote. Maybe it ran up his left arm,
across his back, and down his right.