Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 202

Reading list: Understanding revolution

By Mike Few

Best Defense library of reading lists

As we embark on the second decade of the 21st
century, we face the possibility of spending another decade embattled in small
wars. Prior to attempting to fix our military organization, reconfigure
foreign policy and military strategy, and solving others' wicked problems; we
should begin by gaining a better understanding of revolution.

In the philosophical sense, most conflict today is
competition from the haves and the have-nots, the crisis of the nation-state,
and the dilemma of political power given scarce resources. In order to
seek solutions, we must first seek to understand both ourselves and
others. We have to learn how to see the world as it is and not how we
wished it to be.

As we are better able to see the problems before
us, then we may find better understanding and alternative solutions. In
the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is called learning to walk in another man's
shoes.

Below is a reading list that can help us along the
journey to understanding. This list reflects my own journey towards
understanding after fighting in the wars of the last decade. Specifically, it reflects my own frustration that we were not able to force the
desired outcome in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path
to Peace by Rye Barcott

Father of Money: Buying Peace in Baghdad by
Jason Whiteley

The Human Face of War by Jim Starr. Military needs smaller staffs, innovation, and focus on empowering
people. Book review here.

American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and
Dilemmas in National Security by Richard K. Betts. Post-Cold War
foreign policy has misused military power trying to turn a spoon into a knife.

Protestant Ethic by Max Weber. Father
of Sociology describes why Americans and the Western World are do-ers and why
we feel that we must fix other societies.



The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey. Che's early years when he was
traveling and feeling empathy for the bottom 99 percent. Of course, after he got
power, he was corrupted. Same issue we're seeing today with the Shiia in
Iraq. They want revenge and payback instead of focusing on healing,
forgiveness, and moving the state forward.

Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan
Revolution by Matilde Zimmermann. Biography
of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National
Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential
figure of the post-1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca,
killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader
of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich
archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds
new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes,
ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN.



Blood Done Signed My Name by Tim Tyson. Civil Right Movement goes
violent in Oxford, NC after black paratrooper is killed by a group of white
men, and the system acquits.



Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinski. How the movement in Chicago
forced the power structure to provide essential services to the ghettos. Why
should the suburbs have their trash collected and good schools but the inner
city does not?



Preface to Maynard Smith's Evolution and the Theory of Games. Nobel Laureate describes how difficult it is
to model human beings competing over limited resources.

Wicked Problems
And Network Approaches To Resolution by Nancy Roberts. My mentor
describes her frustration in trying to negotiate peace and modernization with
the Taliban in 1997 at the conclusion of the last Civil War.

And of course, Fight
Club -- understanding the anarchists who reject the state.

Michael Few is a retired Army officer and former editor
of Small Wars Journal .

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Running for the dogs in Bagram

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine
Correspondent

In the still-dark of a cold
and foggy-wet December morning with temperatures hovering just above freezing, more
than 400 servicemen and women gathered at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to
participate in a 5K-run. They didn't do it for PT or to raise funds for a cause
or even to boost morale (though I'm sure it provided amply on that front). They
were instead offering a show of solidarity and appreciation for the Military Working
Dogs who have made a deep and lasting impression there.

I spoke with the run's
organizers, Sgt. Alyssa Doughty, Capt. Katie Barry, and Spc. William Vidal who are part
of the 64th Medical Detachment
(Veterinary Services), early one morning last week. Our
connection was a poor one but even as the phone line to Bagram crackled and
echoed, one thing came through clear enough -- the force of feeling that fueled
this event.

"I've grown to love these
dogs more than I ever thought I would," Sgt. Doughty said. "Being in
Afghanistan of course is hard. You're away from your family in an area that can
be dangerous and so distant from home. But it makes it so much more worth it
that I came here and got to work with [these dogs] and truly see what they
actually do. It makes me appreciate them even more and want to fight for them
to be considered actual soldiers."

A big part of the team's
job is regularly working with the canines and their handlers, from day-to-day medical
necessities like keeping the dogs well hydrated and ensuring their paws are
protected from the rocky terrain. But they also deal with the worst casualties of
down-range dangers like gunfights and explosions.

"Here at Bagram, we get a
lot of combat related injuries in the field," Barry said. "We work with a lot
of dogs that are in a lot of pain, we get a lot of the dogs that have passed
away."

[[BREAK]]

During our talk Barry,
Doughty, and Vidal relayed stories of some particularly remarkable dog, a
wounded canine charge that tolerated an arduous healing process with more
patience and sweetness than could reasonably be expected. (Case in point the
above photo of Spc. Vidal holding Peggy, a MWD who lost the use of her legs for
no discernable reason. Through treatment Peggy is now well enough to be retired
and likely going to live with her handler.)

It's clear that the team
has bonded with the dogs and are committed to them in a way they perhaps weren't
before arriving in Afghanistan. "Before
I got here didn't know the capability of these working dogs," Vidal said. "Being
here and seeing them get injured completely changed my mind about who they are.
I kind of see them a little bit more valuable more than myself, really, all the
training they have and all the amazing capabilities they have. "

Raising the level of
awareness of MWDs' role in combat and the tremendous effect their service has,
was indeed the driving factor behind the December run. The event kicked off
with a presentation including a moving video compilation. Vidal, who compiled the footage, said he mostly used photos that they
had taken themselves so "it hit really close to us."

Though the run wasn't the
first this team put on it was the last for the 64th, at least for now. Both
Barry and Doughty returned home from Afghanistan this week after completing
their one-year tour. Vidal who joined them in July will stay on until his tour
is complete this summer. Whether or not the runs or the upkeep of the "Wall of
Honor" -- a tribute the team erected showcasing photos of MWDs and their
handlers -- carries on is entirely up to
their replacements, the members of the 72nd Medical Detachment (Veterinary
Services).

"We hope that they continue
to honor the dogs that have been injured or lost their lives in defense of
their country," Capt. Barry said.

And so do we.

Photos Courtesy of W. Vidal

Reflections on Vietnam, 1964-65: Trying to get someone to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail

By Lieutenant General John H. Cushman, US Army, Retired

Best Defense department of Vietnam War studies

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "It might have
been!"

     
John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller

This is a sequel to my Reflections
on Vietnam 1963-64: Trying to talk to Gen. Westmoreland about COIN,
posted January 6, 2011. It is taken from an oral history now in progress.

Returning home from Vietnam in April 1964 I believed that I
understood that situation. I had brought back copies of the flip charts that my
deputy senior advisor Bob Montague had built to brief visitors to the 21st ARVN
Infantry Division headquarters at Bac Lieu and to our Advisory Team 51. They
described in detail the oil spot pacification scheme that the division with our
help had developed and employed.

While waiting to attend the National War College, I used
those charts to brief people at OSD and the CIA. I went up to West Point and
briefed the cadets. I briefed at Forts Benning and Bragg.

I briefed LTG Harold K. Johnson, the Army DCSOPS. For about
an hour I told him our story. At the end he said, "You know what we have to do
to solve this problem in Vietnam? We have to build a command post down in the
basement of the Pentagon where we can plot every platoon and every company and
plot out the Vietnam situation in detail." I said, "General, even at the 21st
Division we didn't keep that kind of detail. I don't see how you can keep that
kind of detail in the Pentagon." He said, "That's what McNamara requires."

This was May 1964. If General Johnson had been perceptive he
would have said to me. "You have just described the strategy for success in
Vietnam's countryside." He would have bought the concept right then. He would
have had me briefing everywhere. He did not. Eighteen months later he sponsored
a massive study called PROVN
which said essentially the same thing that I had been saying.

He missed a huge opportunity. We had the essentials of PROVN
in April 1964.

When I got to the National War College that August with
ideas on Vietnam, the Vietnamese government was in upheaval. There had been a
series of coups. Things were deteriorating in the countryside. Battalions of
the ARVN were being ambushed and beat up by main force Viet Cong. It got so bad
there was talk of committing U.S. combat forces. It was election season. Barry
Goldwater was President Johnson's opponent. That fall LBJ would not mention the
possibility of sending combat forces into Vietnam.

As a student my message was, "The countryside is no place
for American troops. They will only tear it up. They won't be able to tell
friend from foe." I believed that pacification was the answer and that with U.S.
advice and assistance Vietnamese troops could deal with the Viet Cong.

In my view there were two problems in Vietnam; one, the
instability in the countryside, and two, the reinforcements being received by
the Viet Cong from outside South Vietnam. I believed that I had found the
solution to pacifying the countryside. I began to study the problem of
infiltration.

Some supplies were coming through Cambodia. A small amount
came in over the beaches. But most reinforcements and materiel were coming down
the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and entering through the South Vietnam's northern
provinces. I thought that the best use of American resources would be to block
the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Each student was required to write an individual research
paper. I began to consider historical examples of counterinsurgency. An office
at the Pentagon was keeping a library of them. I compiled a list of recent
cases in which established governments had coped successfully with an insurgency
(Burma, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Malaya, the Philippines and Tibet) and a list
of those in which the insurgents were successful (China, Cuba, Indochina,
Indonesia, Israel, and Laos, and a draw, Algeria). There were seven of each
type.

For each case I wrote a one-page paper describing the
government's internal measures compared to the effort being made by the
opposition, grading it on a scale of one to 10. For each case, on the same one to 10
scale, I determined the degree to which the insurgents did not receive
outside support.

When I plotted all fourteen insurgencies on graph paper the
successful counter-insurgencies were grouped in the upper right, with a "7" or
more in both dimensions. I plotted that as a "zone of success." I then gave my
assessment of the situation in South Vietnam: it was down in the lower left at
about a "3". I said, "You're not going to have a successful counter-insurgency
until you solve both problems. The zone of success is up here and the situation
in Vietnam is down here."

I derived this general principle that I put in my paper:

In order for a counterinsurgency to succeed, there must be both an
internal effort substantially superior to that of the insurgents, and an
effective restriction of (or an absence of} external support to the insurgents.
Neither action alone is sufficient to success. Both are necessary.

That simple operations analysis with its profound truth was
an appendix to my individual research paper, External
Support of the Viet Cong: An Analysis and a Proposal. Originally
classified TOP SECRET, it has been downgraded to unclassified and can be found
in the special collections of the library of the National Defense University.

I had become convinced that a satisfactory conclusion in
Vietnam was not possible if the Ho Chi Minh trail were allowed to exist. I
thought that there had to be some way to use the great military capability of
the United States to solve this problem. I thought air mobility could supply
part of the answer. I had been following the evolution of air mobility in the
Army for years and especially since the approval of the recommendations of the
Howze Board in 1963 as I left for Vietnam.

While at the National War College I kept abreast of the
formation of the 11th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning. Employment of that
division was a key element of my paper. 
My plan was to use the 173 Airborne Brigade (Okinawa), the 25th Infantry
Division (Hawaii) and the 11th Air Assault Division to seize blocking positions
on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

I thought that the force to seize and establish the
positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail must be a coalition force, including
Vietnamese and other nations' troops. As a cover plan, a Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization exercise in Thailand would provide a reason for moving forces into
the area. The assembled force would then launch the trail cutting operation.

Coalition partners would justify their action by citing
North Vietnam's operations in Laos since 1961 to seize the trail's territory as
flagrant violations of the 1954 Geneva Accords. I offered a U.S.
political-military concept aimed at convincing China that it should not
intervene in this defensive blocking action.

I thought that with engineer effort positions could be built
and fields of fire cleared to establish positions that could be held and from
which operations could be conducted to deny enemy use of routes. I made the
best terrain analysis that I could based on the available maps. I determined
that my planned multinational, multidivision joint force could do the job.

I also described how U.S. forces available at end-1964 were
substantially greater than those available at end-1960 during the Laos crisis. In
1965 we had, for example: 1,119 UH-1 and 71 CH-47 helicopters on hand compared
to only a handful in 1961. We had 139 Army CV-2B Caribou aircraft and 682 Air Force
C-130 cargo aircraft, compared to zero Caribou and 264 C-130s in 1961's
inventory. Secretary McNamara had in four years more than doubled the Air Force
and Navy's capabilities in tactical air. So I thought that adequate force was
available.

After the 1964 election someone at OSD called me wanting to
know more about my idea of cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail and using the 11th Air
Assault Division. He said, "Tell me more about this division." I sensed that
they were thinking of deploying the division and using it in the countryside. I
said, "Don't use this outfit that way. It's not the proper mission. This unit
should be assigned to seize and secure terrain interdicting the infiltration
routes."

My notion was overtaken by events. In April 1965 a battalion
of  U.S. marines landed at Da Nang. In June LBJ gave General William
Westmoreland the authority to commit American troops to ground combat
operations in Vietnam. That summer the 11th Air Assault Division, renamed the
1st Air Cavalry Division, was committed into Vietnam's countryside, as was the
1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Search and destroy began. Half a
million U.S. troops followed.

Years later, in the 1980s and 1990s, I presented this
trail-blocking idea at various symposia as having had merit as a possible
solution. I said that it should have been undertaken as a feasibility study.
Many commented that it would never have worked, for various reasons. I'm not
sure, but someone should have made a proper feasibility study. If done right,
there would have been no Ho Chi Minh highway and we could have had a success in
South Vietnam.

In 1984 General Bruce Palmer, who was the Vice Chief of
Staff under General Westmoreland, came out with a book The
25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam in which he said we
should have done something like this early in the war. I took some comfort from
the fact that he had the same notion.

General Cushman commanded
the 101st Airborne Division, the Army Combined Arms
Center, and the ROK/U.S. field army defending Korea's Western Sector. He served
three tours in Vietnam.

Program
for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam (PROVN) March,
1966:

"PROVN examines the situation in South Vietnam within
the context of history and in broad perspective. Specific problems of
pacification and long-term development are identified, and specific actions are
proposed to alleviate them...

"PROVN submits that the United
States and the Republic of Vietnam must accept the principle that success will
be the sum of innumerable, small and integrated localized efforts and not the
outcome of any short-duration, single master stroke."

Text: "Final declaration,
dated July 21, 1954, of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace
in Indochina, in which the representatives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic
of Viet-Nam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the State of
Viet-Nam, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the
United States of America took part...

"In
their relations with Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam, each member of the Geneva
Conference undertakes to respect the sovereignty, the independence, the unity,
and the territorial integrity of the above-mentioned states, and to refrain
from any interference in their internal affairs."

PTSD counselor lied about seeing combat

The counseling director for a veterans' organization in
Houston specializing in PTSD turns out not to have been a much-deployed
Special Operator as he claimed. Apparently he never saw one day of combat.  

The odd thing is that these guys all
tend to have had actually been in the military, but as a cook or, in
this case, an MP.

I don't get it. Checking out someone's
record
is fairly easy, especially when claiming to have been a SEAL or Special
Operator. My favorite is the guys who tell you they were in units so secret
they can't reveal their name…

Wing on Iraq: No civil war looming, but it's still a deadlier place than Afghanistan

No, it is not
heading for civil war, figures Joel Wing. At the same time, he says,
"Iraq is likely to continue to be a deadlier place than Afghanistan into the
foreseeable future, despite the decline of the insurgency there."

What I miss about Iraq: The world's best tomatoes and the stars in the desert sky

I don't always agree with Mike Few, especially when he
baselessly attacks friends of mine. On the other hand, he had a nice
Nirvana-ish piece about what
he misses about Iraq that made me pause to wonder about what I miss about
Iraq.

I found it easier to think of things I don't miss: the adrenaline jolts, the horrible climate (especially
the mudstorms, when duststorms got overtaken by rainclouds), the fear of
getting kidnapped, having loaded weapons pointed at me at checkpoints by
nervous young men, or the body pieces of a suicide bomber that once landed in
the backyard I would look at every morning.

So my list is shorter. In fact, it is only two
things: The best tomatoes I've ever eaten, and the stars at night in the desert
while I lay in my sleeping bag on a rooftop outside Najaf. I specifically
remember we were driving from Baghdad to Tikrit in the summer of 2003. Around
noon we stopped to buy fresh tomatoes and some baked bread, still
warm. We sliced them up, salted them, and ate them by the
side of the highway.

Taken with water,
they made one of the best lunches I've ever had. I would have enjoyed the meal
less had I known how dangerous Tikrit was about to become.

What do you miss, if anything?

Egypt: Things are getting too interesting

The Egyptian military appears to be on a
collision course with the U.S. government. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dempsey
is heading to Cairo to talk to the generals.

What makes it especially interesting is that Egypt appears
to be calculating that President Obama and Congress won't cut off the $1.5
billion (that's a B) in aid that the U.S. provides annually. Given the mood of
Congress, and Obama's
visceral disdain for Third World tinpot generals, I think that is a bad
bet.

It is interesting that two of our largest aid recipients
(Egypt and Pakistan) appear increasingly to be acting as adversaries.

French's book on British COIN: A review

By Bob Goldich

Best Defense guest book reviewer

I just finished an incredibly
insightful book, David French, The
British Way in Counter-Insurgency 1945-1967. French is a distinguished British historian
who has produced superb
books on, among other things, British Army mobilization and training in
World War II, and the British regimental tradition. IMHO, Four of the many
conclusions he comes to in this work are:

1. The British used a lot more
coercion and force in their COIN operations than more hagiographical accounts
of those operations admit or imply. This isn't new, but he gathers together
information from ten post-WWII British COIN operations to make his point very
meticulously.

2. Because of the gross
misinterpretations regarding (1), COIN doctrines based on a supposed
"hearts and minds" and humanitarian-oriented doctrine are based on a
totally incorrect interpretation of history. Last line of his book, page
255: "Misleading history had contributed to producing a misleading
doctrine."

3. British success in post-WWII
COIN was mixed at best. Oft-cited Malaya worked very well. By any
standards the British lost in Palestine, the Suez Canal prior to the late 1956
invasion, Oman, and Aden. The British suppressed the Mau Mau insurgency
in Kenya in the short run, the same in Nyasaland (Malawi), but within a few
years had to grant Kenyan independence anyway. In Cyprus, the British had
to grant Cypriot independence and retained only two military base areas on the
island. In Oman they failed in the 1960s and had to go back and do it in the
1970s. I think this part of his analysis is very
significant, because if we compare his list of successes and failures with
ours, we come across as no worse or better.

4. The British were, in general,
not particularly prepared in advance for COIN operations, did not adapt
rapidly, and had enormous problems in transmitting sound operational analysis
to the field. Interestingly, in view of our recent discussion about
conscription and COIN, he cites the use of National Servicemen (two-year
draftees) as a real drag on developing effective COIN units due to huge
personnel turnover.

This book ain't cheap but it is well
worth the dough.

C'mon man! Meathead generals and some other things that are driving me crazy about life in this man's post-9/11 Army

By "Army of Anon"

Best Defense guest column

After ten years of war, the path to
general officer retains an extreme emphasis in two areas: Command and
staff assignments at the tactical level, and schmoozing on a general staff as
an aide-de-camp or executive officer. White, male, Republican,
Evangelical Christian, sole family income provider, poorly read, obsessed with
physical fitness, and extremely concerned about risks -- what a perfect recipe
for groupthink. C'mon
man!

We promote meatheads.
Too many officers are promoted who have already demonstrated limited intellect,
hyper-aggressive tendencies, and incompetence during their watch -- or on the other hand, extreme
subservience.  The Army that wisely promoted intellects such as
General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Dan Bolger also promoted Tommy
Franks and Ricardo Sanchez! In today's
Army, only general officers can screw up and move up. C'mon man!
The Division Commander of the 4th Infantry Division, who probably
did more to inflame the Iraqi insurgency than anyone outside Abu Ghraib, was
not only rewarded with command in Iraq again, but is now the Chief of Staff of
the Army. Why is the main culprit of the Rolling
Stone McChrystal debacle (Part I), Charlie Flynn a brigadier general? The
same battalion commander in OIF whose command shot down two friendly aircraft
and suffered the shame of the decimation of the 507th Maintenance
Company was also later elected for brigade command. His brigade commander
at the time was later selected to be a general officer. This would
never happen in the other services, particularly the Navy, where being in command
literally entails responsibility for everything your unit does or fails to
do.

Our officer corps doesn't read, and
isn't bothered by the fact. $500 in book purchases for each
senior leader may have saved the Army thousands of lives lost. Take the example
of General George Casey. According to David Cloud and Greg Jaffe's book Four
Stars, General Casey, upon learning of his assignment to command U.S.
forces in Iraq, received a book from the Army Chief of Staff. The book Counterinsurgency
Lessons Learned from Malaya and Vietnam was the first book he ever read
about guerilla warfare." This is a damning indictment of the degree of mental
preparation for combat by a general. The Army's reward for such lack of
preparation: two more four star assignments.
C'mon man!

For the tiny fraction of our Army that actually fights, we have made too little effort and taken
too long at reducing the soldier's load. The quality of the equipment
is superb, but why did it take so long to get lighter machine guns and
mortars? Close with and destroy the enemy under a minimum seventy pound
load? C'mon man!

There is no strategic
corporal in the Army, and the squad is an insignificant maneuver unit. Commanders are reluctant to employ squads on independent
missions because the squad is likely led by a soldier with too few years of
experience and contains too few men. Our platoons are not employed on
doctrinal missions because commanders doubt the leadership of their lieutenant,
the platoon lacks sufficient medical capability to handle massive bleeding and
stabilize wounded, and the platoon has insufficient communications. Commanders don't want to risk enemy contact with only eight to nine riflemen
with only one medic available to support a platoon.  Instead of Army
squads and platoons being a force to reckon with, they remain nearly equal in
firepower, medical capability, and communications to their predecessors
of the last thirty years. C'mon man!

Never have so few been supervised by so
many doing so little. For the last ten years, the
terms "field grade oversight" and "adult supervision" have been used entirely
too often. Whether it be the Rangers blowing up a radar tower in Desert Storm,
the rescue of Scott O'Grady in Bosnia, the Ranger parachute assault outside
Kandahar in 2001, or the stereotypical deployment of the 82nd
Airborne Division commanding general to accompany even a brigade minus mission,
U.S. military commanders increasingly accompany the smallest elements of their
command in combat. There are times when a lieutenant colonel or above
needs to lead Hal Moore-style, being the first one on the ground. But the
overwhelming majority of combat situations do not warrant this senior presence.  Field grade officers do not need to be leading fire teams, squads
and platoons. They need to do their job, staying away from room clearing.
And ensuring subordinates are getting what they need. C'mon man!

Ten years into war and the Army still
treats combat deaths as potential criminal negligence. If losing soldiers in combat warrants always an official investigation,
then by all accounts the D-Day planners and the leadership on Omaha Beach
should have been sacked in 1944. The Army should stop formally
investigating American combat deaths immediately! Senior leaders should
provide cover for the operations they sanction. Does reading soldiers
their rights send a signal that they are potential subjects versus participants
in a small unit action? Reading anyone their rights never sends a signal that
you are on their side. C'mon man!

The United States Army focuses
excessively on demonstrating physical fitness over any other attribute. "PT is the most important thing we do all day," goes the maxim. Yes,
physical training is extremely important, but war skills like battle drills,
and marksmanship get much less emphasis. The U.S. Army has
arguably not lost a battle due to poor soldier fitness since the Chinese
intervention in Korea in November 1950, yet the Army appears to rewards commanders
for more for their running ability than their mental ability.  Too
often, officers who are mental wind tunnels get a pass because they can run
fast and do a lot of pull-ups. The reputations for general officers such
as Petraeus and McChrystal highlight their intensity and sharp intellects, yet
the overwhelming majority of their careers were defined by their reputation as
fitness fanatics and political savvy. Without a doubt General Petraeus
possessed the intellect and generalship we desperately needed in our combat
commanders, he was notorious for sizing up subordinates solely on how they
impress him on their ability to keep up with him on grueling runs. The
penalty for not being fast enough for General Petraeus was being held back
another year in a non-career enhancing job, rather than moving on to the key
developmental position. Yet when General Petraeus needed to
surround himself with extraordinary brainpower, the pool of senior field grade
officers meeting that criterion was limited. He had to reach out
for help to particularly smart Australian and British scholars. How many
quality officers failed a Petraeus "check ride" in the 1990s and were
professionally marginalized? Who would have been there to
advise General Petraeus that was no longer "competitive?" C'mon man!

Our non-commissioned officer corps
today is too political and focused on its own selfish promotion. We've
established senior non-commissioned officer positions at every level. The
senior non-commissioned officers have metastasized into a mirror of their senior
officer counterparts. I use the word counterparts because many officers
see their senior noncommissioned officer as an equal in command, someone
whose endorsement must be sought at every decision. In
our non-commissioned officers, there is an ever-increasing sense of
entitlement: change of responsibility ceremonies, inflated evaluation reports,
security detachments, demand for challenge coins, and their own senior
non-commissioned officer-specific in briefs. Note to those sergeants who
don't read history: It's not about perks! Changes of responsibility
ceremonies have no historical basis in the Army. Today's Army
non-commissioned officer evaluation report is far more inflated than the
officer evaluation report. Who would have seen that coming two decades
ago? C'mon man!

The Army's efforts to develop an
advisory capability remain half-hearted. The Security
Force Assistance Brigade concept is foundering. What ought to be the
brigade's decisive operation overseas is an afterthought. Could the Army just
be waiting it out for two more years? The Army belief is that the best officers
are selected to command battalions, brigades, divisions and corps. It
rewards what it values. The Army's golden boys are largely absent in the
advisory effort.  Too often our advisory teams were filled by those
who weren't politically connected enough to avoid advisory duty!
The combat advisor augmentees the brigade does receive are often parceled out
to be liaison officers. There is no effort Army-wide to look deep enough
at individual backgrounds, personalities, and aptitudes to ensure the right
manning. Our advisory team manning remains a mess: you might receive a
talented former light infantry first sergeant, and you might receive a former
Bradley Stinger air defender who has never led a dismounted patrol in his life.
C'mon man!

"Army of Anon" is an old infantry
major.

Gen. Marshall, southern Iraq, and strategy

"The Basra
area is of great importance."

-Gen. George
C. Marshall to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 
30 June 1942