Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 169

Another unsatisfied customer: Here's an alternative to Tom's daft draft idea

By Col. Chuck Bowes

Best Defense guest
respondent

I
challenge your premise that low-cost high school graduate
conscription is a better way of staffing our military services.

Today's high school
graduates suffer from systemically deficient abilities in science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM) that poses considerable challenges to our increasingly
technological military force. Research findings reported by the United States
Mission to the Organization for Economic and Co-operation Development (OECD)
reveals that U.S. middle school and high school students are habitually
under-performing their international peers in STEM achievement measures.

President Obama,
Secretary of Education Duncan, and Bill Gates also express concern that too few
young people are acquiring the knowledge they need to use technology in
creative and innovative ways. As U.S. student STEM achievement continues to race
to the bottom of all industrialized competitors, adding non-volunteer recruits
worsens the problem.

Today's graduates may
quickly master the user-interface on commercial technologies, but if one of
those competitors becomes a future adversary then our military recruits must be
competent in the underlying STEM areas in order to adapt specialized military
technologies to gain a competitive edge in cross-dimensional domains. A
competitive edge is increasingly dependent on America's innovative edge. Absent
another "Sputnik moment" that generates self-inspired reform for STEM
achievement, the U.S. requires new concepts, new organizations, and new
long-term strategies to develop agile young minds in order to retain our
dominant military position.

For the U.S. to maintain
its competitive edge it must carefully develop children with high IQs to
achieve high levels of creative productivity. Intellectually gifted (IQs above
130) people have an above average innate ability to learn significantly faster
than their cohorts. The National Science Board also recognizes that gifted
students will form the next generation of STEM innovators.



Instead of reinstating a draft, I propose that
our Defense Department train all of its officer candidates in ROTC programs and
transform its military academies to become prep-schools that offer 3,000
intellectually gifted old youth a no-cost in-residence opportunity to
specialize in STEM subjects during their early education. Further, we could
provide many more free non-resident academies at public universities across the
U.S. for just the cost of President Obama's $1.35 billion Race to the Top
campaign.

An operating budget of
$1.35 billion equates to $11,000 per pupil yearly, which is 9 percent less than the
2010 national high school average of $12,018 per pupil, and 59 percent less than the
District of Columbia school system spends per pupil. These opportunities
should be specifically reserved for the students with the highest cognitive
potential, just as varsity teams are reserved for athletes with the highest
physical talent. 



This proposal would provide the opportunity for
the estimated 120,000 highly gifted students to participate in a highly
challenging ability-based curriculum that accelerates their learning
commensurate with their higher intellectual aptitude. Similar to the National
Security Education Program and the CIA's Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholarship,
graduates merit a "priority placement" hiring status and are excepted from
competitive service under law as an incentive for long-term employment in the
armed services and military industrial complex.



Since this proposal is an additive intervention,
not a voucher system, it relieves pressures to provide special accommodations
for gifted students without stripping money from public schools.
Accordingly, the more gifted students in attendance, the more that public
schools can fully focus their resources on educating the ‘vulnerable' students
whom they commendably target now. Most colleges eagerly accept gifted
students and leveraging their existing underutilized infrastructure benefits
the college and offers a shrewd dividend to taxpayers created by decades of
investments from many federal sources.

Colonel Chuck Bowes is an Air National Guard
aviator and graduate of the U.S. Army War College. He is currently serving on
active duty at Headquarters 18th Air Force, Scott AFB.

Last thought from a dying soldier

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on July 2, 2010.

I was reading George Wilson's Mud Soldiers the other day, and this exchange, at the end of a
hard fight in Vietnam in March 1966, struck me.

Kroah heard a shout from First Lieutenant Steinberg, commander of the 4th
Platoon. 'I need some help over here!'

'George, I can't help you,' Kroah shouted back. ‘I've been hit five times.'

I've been hit seven,' Steinberg replied.

'Always the bullshitter, huh, George?'

'No bullshit, man.'

And it wasn't. Steinberg died with those words."

Two divas: Patton vs. Montgomery

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on June 16, 2010.

Patton's diary, July 5, 1944: "Why an American Army has to go with
Montgomery, I do not see, except to save the face of the little monkey."

December 27, 1944: "I wish Ike were more of a gambler, but he is certainly a
lion compared to Montgomery ... Monty is a tired little fart. War requires the
taking of risks and he won't take them."

Tom's all for relief, but here's the story of how I got relieved unfairly in Iraq

By
Col. Larry Wexler (U.S. Army, ret.)

Best
Defense department of first person experience

I served in Iraq from 2008-2009 and served as
the deputy program director for LOGCAP Iraq. I was relieved of my duties
in March 2009 after having apparently performed them just fine from October
2008 to March 2009. In January my supervisor recommended me for a Bronze
Star for the work I was doing. He was stationed at Rock Island and came
for a theater visit in February 2009. At no time did he mention any
performance issues or his intentions to relieve me of my duties. What had
transpired up to that time was I reported fraud, waste, and abuse on the part of
the SERCO Management Contract and certain of the contractors and a failure to
perform on the part of KBR on their contract. Prior to all this I had
served 30 years in the Army in both active and reserve and extended my retirement
a year to serve on the LOGCAP contract, had been promoted to Colonel, had
command assignments up to 06 level and had attended the U.S. Army War
College. I was also mobilized for two years on a joint assignment as the chief of staff of a deployable joint task force headquarters core element. In my civilian career I served as a vice president of corporate infrastructure -- essentially purchasing and contracting.

Up to the third week of March I had no
communication that I was not performing my duties to my supervisors'
satisfaction, in fact I had accomplished 90 percent of my performance objectives on my
OER support form. I had built out a new life support area to
improve the quality of life for those assigned to my detachment, have developed
a better training plan, had developed a reception plan, had created a
functional chain of command to provide better customer service, developed an
SOP to ensure standardization across the detachment, and yet in March I
received a call from my supervisor that I was being relieved (he wouldn't say
why) and that I had one week to get my affairs in order and be on a plane out
of Iraq. My predecessor, who was also relieved, as well as the DPD for
Afghanistan who had been relieved, were all given a month to get their affairs
in orders. I was given a week because KBR and SERCO wanted me out of
country before the arrival of the Congressional committee on wartime contracting the first week of April. They did not
want me to brief them on the fraud, waste, and abuse on both contracts. KBR also wanted me out of the picture because instead of just handing the base
at Basra to them, I worked with JCC-I to bid out the base life support as fixed
price contracts. KBR did not like losing Basra from the LOGCAP
contract. They also wanted me out because I would have presented my case
that the fraud, waste, and abuse -- and failure to perform in accordance with the
respective contracts -- would cost them their award fee bonus. The retired
general in charge of the KBR LOGCAP Contract in Iraq worked with his active
duty general counterparts to have me removed, not for having failed to perform
my duties, but for having the integrity not to look the other way when contractors behaved badly.

The Army still relieves commanders or those in
positions of leadership, but as you can see not always for a good reason and
those that should be relieved for condoning fraud, waste and abuse are not relieved
because generals today for the most part look out for each to protect each
other.

Col. Larry Wexler (USA, Ret.), is an Armor Officer
with over thirty years of commissioned service, both active and reserve. He has served at all levels of command from platoon through group and is a U.S.
Army War College graduate. He was mobilized and deployed twice to
Iraq.

Gates to China: Grow up, little comrades

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on June 7, 2010.

Interesting comment on U.S.-China relations from Defense Secretary Gates in
Singapore over the weekend:

Last fall, President Obama and President Hu made a commitment to advance sustained and reliable military-to-military relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. The key words here are "sustained" and "reliable" -- not a relationship repeatedly interrupted by and subject to the vagaries of political weather.

Regrettably, we have not been able to make progress on this relationship in recent months. Chinese officials have broken off interactions between our militaries, citing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as the rationale. For a variety of reasons, this makes little sense:

First, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are nothing new. They have been a reality for decades and spanned multiple American administrations.
Second, the United States has for years demonstrated in a very public way that we do not support independence for Taiwan. Nothing -- I repeat, nothing -- has changed in that stance.
Finally, because China's accelerating military buildup is largely focused on Taiwan, U.S. arms sales are an important component of maintaining peace and stability in cross-strait relations and throughout the region."

Zakaria has more on Beijing's new arrogance.

(HT to AD)

Here's the most worrisome sign in a soldier coming home from combat

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on May 27, 2010.

[image error]

I had a couple of flights yesterday so I caught up on my reading of military
magazines -- Proceedings, Marine Corps Gazette, Air Force,
and Army. Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, the Army's highest-ranking
psychiatrist, tells her service's magazine what sort of homecoming soldier
worries her most:

As a psychiatrist, I must say that an individual who comes back from 12 to 15
months, moreover a series of repeat tours over the last nine years, and says,
'It hasn't affected me at all' -- that's the person I'm most concerned about.

The sorrow of life under DADT

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on May 26, 2010. 

[image error]

An Army officer writes about being a lesbian in the 10th Mountain Division --
and, in a courageous move, does it on the division commander's discussion board.
I think this is one of the best pieces of writing I have ever seen on the
subject. Imagine your partner not being able to wrap you in his or her arms when
you come home from a deployment.

Although many think homosexuality is a behavior, I beg to differ. I used to
pray to God every night to change the way I am. Ever since I was in Elementary
school I have known I've been different. My friends all had boy crushes and
never talked about liking other girls. I did and felt all alone. I asked my dad
what a "lesbian" was after reading about a woman named Ellen who came out
publicly that she was gay. My dad told me that it was a girl who liked another
girl and she was going to hell because of it. I cried myself to sleep that night
and for many years after. I did not want to like girls. I tried dating boys with
no success of changing my feelings. I figured I'd live a lonely life, until I
allowed myself to be who I am. I was raised Catholic and my family was very
homophobic until they realized they had a gay daughter. My other siblings are
heterosexual. That was not conditioning, a trend, or some form of faulty
upbringing that made me who I am today. I believe in God and know that he made
me who I am. No one else can judge me but him and I put my full faith in him
everyday as I go through life.

I also currently serve as an officer in the Army. I know exactly how hard it
is to serve knowing that my career could end at any moment if someone were to
find out about my sexuality. I have never gawked or looked at a woman
inappropriately whom I serve with. That is not out of fear of being caught, it's
out of respect for other women. I would never want someone gawking at me while I
change, so I don't do that myself. I have deployed with 10th Mtn proudly and
when I came home I was not able to share my relief and joy with my girlfriend as
others could at the welcoming home ceremony. I live in constant fear that my
career could end at any moment. I hate having to hide who I am and there's not a
day that goes by that I don't struggle with it. When I ended my relationship of
7 years, I couldn't talk to anyone about it. My relationship lasted longer than
most military marriages and yet I have no support. I still go to work everyday
having to put up a front that everything is fine, because as far as anyone was
concerned I wasn't even dating anyone.

I can't express the insurmountable stress it causes to have to hide a piece
of who I am. When DADT is overturned, I won't be jumping out of my office
screaming "I'm gay" to the world. I'll just be able to breathe easier knowing
that my job is secure and relax. I won't discuss my personal life with coworkers
because it's none of their business, but at least I would have the option to. I
wouldn't have to pretend to have a crush on a guy or go on a date with a fellow
CPT in order for others to not get suspicious.

For those saying that gays shouldn't be allowed in the military, the news
flash is that we currently do and are allowed to. Under the current policy, no
one is allowed to accuse us without evidential proof nor ask us questions about
our sexuality. I am also not able to talk about my relationships as others are
free to discuss their husbands/wives/girl/boyfriends. Could you heterosexuals
imagine not being able to say anything about your partner? What if the policy
said no one discusses their relationships, period? I bet the suicide rate would
skyrocket. Don't discuss your wife's new attitude or husband's infidelity. Don't
talk about your girlfriend getting pregnant or boyfriend proposing. Imagine
going throughout your entire career not being able to discuss your relationships
and not being able to bring your loved one to any military function. I bet you
couldn't.

It's easy to say the policy should stay the way it is when you don't have to
live it.

Meanwhile, in the May issue of the Marine Corps Gazette, 2nd Lt.
Matthew McCallum argues that the right and honorable thing to do is to let gay
Marines be openly gay: "The Marine Corps needs to keep its honor clean and
allowed declared homosexuals to serve with pride."

Bottom line: I'm with these guys. I think some people are born gay.
Who are we to second-guess God?

Why Tom Ricks is dead wrong about reviving the draft

By Maj. David Rittgers, U.S.
Army Reserve

Best Defense guest respondent

From my desk as a trial
counsel (military prosecutor), your "Let's Draft
Our Kids" proposal looks more like a full employment act for military attorneys
than a productive use of taxpayer funds. A few of the hidden costs
associated with your proposal:

1. Not everyone who
starts the program will want to finish, and not everyone who signs up will want
to work all that hard for the generous benefits you're offering. I doubt
this will be a very efficient workforce. Between the malingerers and the
shift toward a pro-welfare state attitude of the young folks who would be stuck
in this program, you've also perpetuated the myth that we can continue to grow
government at a time when we're over a trillion in the hole each year with no
end in sight. The ironic outcome is that your future overpaid janitor is
someone who started in the Defense Service Corps in 2013 and never quite got off
the government dole, staying in a menial labor position with excellent benefits
his whole life.

2. Criminal
prosecutions: I don't know of any data on the topic, but it is my
impression that there is a higher rate of criminal activity and administrative
separation with the 'moral waiver' folks let in during the increase of the
ground forces during the war in Iraq. These folks never would've gotten
in if not for the relaxed standards in place in the mid-2000s. Proposing
to put an extra million or so folks (or more, I'm not sure what the numbers
look like on this) under UCMJ authority with lowered screening standards is a
recipe for courts-martial as far as the eye can see. I suppose we could
exempt them from the UCMJ and put them in some special status where they are
treated like any other person on a federal reservation, but federal courts
already have enough on-post DUI's that we send them and their caseload is
already significant, so that seems like a bad idea. Plus, if you exempt
them from UCMJ, you lose the ability to maintain good order and discipline,
which is implicitly part of the national service rationale under which we're
enacting this program.

What about drugs? Do we
conduct urinalysis screenings on these folks? If not, we're not
maintaining good order and discipline. This is another several thousand
administrative separations a year that major posts would have to do, meaning
more work for both government and defense lawyers. Plus, the other
services besides the Army don't always do separations for drug use, they are
more willing to take a "naked" urinalysis -- no other evidence beside
the positive test -- to a court-martial. That's a lot of work to get rid
of a janitor or gardener. I suppose we could have a lower standard of
discipline with regard to drug use in the service corps, but this double
standard undermines the good order and discipline we're trying to maintain, and
reinforces the perception that the civilian conscripts are second-class
citizens on-post.

3. Plus, do we let them
marry? You refer to them as "unmarried conscripts," but what if
they don't want to stay that way? If they get married, do they
qualify for off-post housing with tax-exempt basic housing allowance? Do
we kick them out? Is there a 14th Amendment substantive due process claim that allows them to
stay in? Do we separate them the same way we do for folks who fail to
maintain a valid family care plan for dependents while deployed? The JAG
attorneys still have to make this happen, in an adversarial process, that takes
months. That's not a lot of bang for the buck if the conscripts only sign
up for 18 months to begin with.

4. Setting aside the
above concerns, this would bring into the armed services a lot of young people
who will require legal assistance -- they're going to buy too-expensive cars,
enter into questionable contracts, and generally make a bunch of legally dumb
decisions. Adding, say, another 25 percent (at least, given the small percent of
the general population currently serving) to the youngest and most legally needy
demographic to major installations will be a nightmare for a JAG Corps already
with plenty to do.

The libertarian opt-out
doesn't solve these issues. We've already got a relatively small
all-volunteer force that has plenty of problems along these lines, and
increasing the population of folks in the military with what will certainly be
lower admission standards will remake the military's purpose from
winning the nation's wars to mentoring a young cohort of folks in
order to instill in them discipline and a positive work ethic. We already
do enough of the latter, and I fear that this proposal would impair our
ability to do the former. 

Which is why, if you ask the
generation of officers who presided over the birth of the all-volunteer force,
we got rid of the draft in the first place.

David
H. Rittgers, Legal Policy Analyst, Cato Institute. Mr. Rittgers is a
Virginia attorney and former Special Forces officer. He is currently
mobilized as a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves. His views do not
necessarily reflect those of the Army or the Department of Defense.

Rebecca's war dog of the week: CPO Sinbad the sub-hunting sailor dog

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on May 21, 2010.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense chief canine correspondent

Capt. Bruce Stubbs (USCG, ret.) sends along this from a Coast Guard website:

The crew of the Coast Guard cutter Campbell adopted a mixed-breed
puppy in 1938. Little did they know that their canine companion would become a
world famous Coast Guard veteran. He was, literally, a member of the crew,
complete with all the necessary enlistment forms and other official paperwork, 
uniforms, and his own bunk. He sailed on board the combat-tested cutter through
World War II and saw much action, both at sea and in port. As Life
Magazine reported: "An Old Sea Dog Has Favorite Bars and Plenty of Girls in
Every Port." Until recently he had the honor and distinction of being the only
Coast Guardsman to be the subject of a biography! It was Sinbad of the Coast
Guard, written by Chief Specialist George R. Foley, USCGR and published by
Dodd, Mead and Company of New York during the war. The book made him an
international celebrity.

Although he served honorably, he did run into a bit of trouble on occasion,
as any sailor might during a long career at sea. He caused an international
incident in Greenland, another in Casablanca, and was busted in rank a few times
for minor infractions. As another author noted:

Sinbad is a salty sailor but he's not a good sailor. He'll never rate
gold hashmarks nor Good Conduct Medals. He's been on report several times and
he's raised hell in a number of ports. On a few occasions, he has embarrassed
the United States Government by creating disturbances in foreign zones. Perhaps
that's why Coast Guardsmen love Sinbad, he's as bad as the worst and as good as
the best of us.

Regardless of the fact that he like to blow off a little steam when he was on
liberty, he was a brave and capable sailor when he was on duty. He earned the
respect and affection of his shipmates during one famous battle when the
Campbell fought it out with the Nazi submarine U-606. The cutter
was severely damaged during the fight and the commanding officer ordered all but
essential personnel off the ship. They transferred to a nearby destroyer but a
tough and hardy few stayed on board the Campbell while the cutter was
towed to safety, patching her hull and insuring that she stayed afloat during
the voyage. Among that few was Sinbad.

He served faithfully on board Campbell for eleven years, garnering
more sea time than most of his contemporaries, before finally retiring to the
Barnegat Light Station. He passed away 30 December 1951 and was laid to rest
beneath the station's flagstaff.

In that U-606 incident, Capt. Stubbs notes, the cutter Campbell rammed the
sub. The skipper of the Campbell was wounded by shell fragments and received the
Navy Cross for his actions in sinking the sub and saving his wounded ship.

By the way, the Coast Guard has put together this great web
listing of its various mascots, including a bear.

[image error]

The image of Sinbad up top is the sailor dog racked out on ship.

Here is one where Sinbad as a gunner.

[image error]

Here is one way Sinbad got into
trouble when in port.

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

Defending Jane Mayer

[image error]

Torture fan Marc Thiessen
continues his war on American values in a response to Jane
Mayer's recent takedown of him in the New
Yorker.

His exhibit A: Hey, the former director of the CIA agrees
with me! A lot of his other stuff is similar evidence of a "dog bites man"
nature. 

He concludes that Mayer has made a career of spinning the
torture narrative. Actually, Marc, she had a career long before that. She just
happened to be appalled by you and your panicky pals and rightly focused on the
damage you all have done to the country. I believe that more has been done than
is publicly known.

I really do
believe in civility and tolerance. But people who undermine our country, its
values, and its standing in the world are close to the edge for me.

There's more
here, but I feel like I have to go take a shower. (HT on this link to Mr. Andrew
Sullivan)