Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 205

Obama is on top on foreign policy issues, but unfortunately Americans don't care

This is the first presidential election in many decades, I
think, in which the Democrats have the upper hand in foreign policy and
national security. I have only dim memories of the 1964 campaign, but I recalls
Lyndon Johnson having an advantage over Barry Goldwater in that area. Hard to
remember that now, in light of how badly LBJ handled the Vietnam War in the
following four years.

Ironically, Obama is likely only to get a small boost in votes
for this, because -- just a bit more than a decade after 9/11 -- Americans frankly
don't give a damn about foreign policy, Scarlett. By a 81 to 9
percent margin, they care more about the economy. (Hey, imagine if we still
had all the money spent on the Iraq war to spend on domestic infrastructure,
which is crumbling…)

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Memorial for first female handler KIA

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

On January 12, a bronze plaque was
unveiled in front of the kennels at Fort Belvoir bearing the facility's new
name: "Sgt. Zainah "Caye" Creamer Military Working Dog Kennels."
It was a year ago to the day that Sgt. Creamer succumbed
to wounds she sustained in Afghanistan after her unit was attacked by an
insurgent's IED. She was the first "female working dog handler to be killed in
action during the Iraq or Afghanistan wars."

Sgt. Creamer and her detection dog Jofa had deployed to
Afghanistan in October 2010. Their job was to search for weapons, working ahead
of their unit to sweep for explosives. Jofa, who was across the road from his handler
when the explosion occurred and survived the attack unscathed.

The Belvoir Eagle
covered the memorial service held in at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and reports
that during the ceremony her fellow handlers remembered Sgt. Creamer with
fondness and respect as a "leader" who had the "ability to light up a room no
matter what the situation."    

It was a spirited disposition that, at 28 years of age, she seems
to have maintained with ease. Her headquarters battalion commander, Lt. Col.
Dwayne Bowyer, remembers
that Sgt. Creamer was:  

...Determined, focused
and happy the day she departed with her unit. 'Silently, we all knew that we
were sending them into harm's way but we never imagined that Sgt. Creamer would
make the ultimate sacrifice doing what she loved.'"

Reportedly after Sgt. Creamer's death, Jofa's loss was
visible. But, a year later he is still working and, according to Lt. Col.
Bowyer, the dog is doing "great" with his new handler.

In other war-dog news:
The United States Postal Service has finally issued a set of working-dog
stamps. Among the four canines featured are a guide dog, a therapy dog, and a
search and rescue dog, and what
reports are calling a "tracker dog." The yellow lab featured on the bottom left
of the four-square sheet is clearly a MWD. I would hazard a guess and say a
bomb detection dog, made obvious by the fatigue-clad handler's leg visible
against the desert-y background. I'll save the nitpicking and compliment the
original paintings, which are the work of John M. Thomas and they're lovely. It's
enough to make you want to put pen to paper for some good old-fashioned letter
writing.

The Air Force chief's 2012 reading list: A C+ for book selection, but overall a B+

By Lt. Col. Thomas
Cooper, USAF

Best Defense aviation
literature correspondent

Earlier this month the
Air Force released the Chief of Staff of the Air Force's (CSAF) Reading List
(CSAF). One of the non-flying things I've looked forward to in
the past 16 years of my Air Force career is the CSAF's list. Ever since
the first one from General Ron Fogleman in 1996,
the list has presented books about the Air Force and its history that I've
never heard of. Sadly, when I opened up this year's list, there were no
books that I hadn't already heard of or enough that reached back into Air Force
heritage and history like previous years.

"Every Airman an
Innovator" is the theme of this year's list, which captures some of the books,
but it doesn't emphasize "being an Airman" as well as I think it could. Although being an innovator is part of Air Force heritage, the lack of
organizing principles for the list (previous lists have used strategic context,
Air Force heritage, leadership, military history, etc.) makes it difficult to
connect back to innovation and Air Force heritage. The list jumps from
management theory to satire to science to historical fiction and doesn't focus
as well on what is important as an Airman as previous lists have done.

Unfortunately, heritage
isn't an Air Force strength as the service often spends too much time
justifying itself as a valued contributor to the Joint force. This past
year the Air Force has clearly stated its contribution
better than I've heard in my career and I think should be included in every Air
Force message. These purposes are the Air Force's heritage and would have
been a great thing to use to help organize the list. With an enduring
role to establish control in air, space and cyberspace, hold any target at
risk, provide responsive ISR, and rapidly move people and cargo anywhere in the
world, the Air Force has a strong foundation to build a reading list from.

Books on Claire Chennault and the Flying
Tigers, B-29 operations in the Pacific,
and "flying the hump" would have all been
examples of the Air Force's enduring roles that would also help Airmen learn
more about the changing strategic context. The three examples also do a
good job of showing that no matter the conflict, the Air Force has always
strived to control the air, rapidly move people and cargo and strike targets
from great distances. Each example is also full innovative thinking by
Airmen that is an enduring characteristic of serving in the Air Force.

Although I am
disappointed by the books, the true innovation in this year's CSAF list is its
inclusion of movies, TED presentations and a wide range of internet
resources. As younger Airmen are raised with iPads for text books, these
other media will help achieve the purpose of a good reading list and provide a
broader set of learning tools. Unfortunately, these resources also do not
have much of a clear organization other than their source.

The inclusion of movies
will be a very useful tool for commanders and mentors and was the high point of
the list for me. Strategic Air Command captures the
challenges of the rapidly expanding new Air Force and the contribution of Airmen
serving in the early days of the Cold War. With real-life bomber pilot Jimmy
Stewart in the lead role this movie shouldn't be missed. I
would have linked the movie to 15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay
and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation under the caption
"want to learn more." I'd also have added Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb because it really is how many people see Strategic
Air Command and the recently released The Partnership to
fully loop from SAC to the future of nuclear weapons. I would have
also added War to accompany Restrepo since I was a bigger fan of the
book.

Using the TED
presentations is a true innovation that I think will become the most popular
element of the "reading list." I had never seen the Norden Bombsight presentation and enjoyed that
story. Again it could have been linked better to the books and
movies. Both Catch-22 and Memphis Belle being on the list would
have tied the story of this innovation better and another example of how organization
of the list disappoints and doesn't lead Airmen to broader learning.

And finally, the
diverse on-line options included in "RESOURCES" is a useful
and innovative way to help expand Airmen's set of learning tools. "Resources includes information on premier educational, think tank,
heritage, documentary, humanities, and scientific organizations" and
does a great job of improving an Airman's self-study tool box to expand how
they think. I will probably bookmark most of these and will wander
through them if I find the time. Linked to a book, movie or theme other
than innovation, to force exploration would have been a more useful way to
organize the resources.

Overall, I'd give the
books a "C minus" because they don't go far enough, in an organized manner to
build Air Force heritage. The grade is brought up to a "B plus" by the
inclusion of all of the other tools for learning that will be useful. As
the first use of diverse media on a "reading list" it is a great start. Next year I'm hoping will be an "A" when the entire list reinforces Air Force
heritage and links the different tools together so the whole team is gaining
the same knowledge, no matter the source.

Lt. Col. Tom Cooper is the Air Force fellow at the Center for a
New American Security. He is spending this year reading following a
career flying the E-3 Sentry, SAMFOX C-9s in the 89 AW and C-40s as
commander of the AF Reserve's active associate 54 AS. He has spent time
on the Joint Staff and Air Mobility Command staff. After his fellowship
he looks forward to getting back to leading Airmen and helping them pick books.

Gingrich: A variant on a drinking game

Every time the
grandiose one says the word "frankly," slap yourself in the forehead. In my
experience, it is a verbal tic that means he probably is stretching the
truth -- and knows it. (Another of his tics is the word "fundamental" -- every
time he does that, grab your crotch. Before he does.)

Paula Broadwell smokes J. Stewart in PT

Friend
of the blog Paula
Broadwell was on the Daily Show,
I think last night, and challenged poor Jon Stewart to a push-up contest. He lost. Her new
book on General Petraeus is out now. 

America: More a mission than a nation?

That's an offhand comment by Simon Montefiore's Jerusalem: The Biography, which I found at Costco (my favorite store -- if they don't have it, you don't need it!) and have been reading and enjoying lately. "America was itself a mission disguised as a nation," he writes. I suspect he may be right, and think that one reason we constantly re-define the nation is that our sense of the mission changes. Our politics to a surprising extent are an argument to define the mission.

As for Jerusalem, the subject of his book, I came away from the book thinking that it is the city of God only when Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims and Jews can mix there freely. As Montefiore puts it, "Here, more than anywhere else on earth, we crave, we hope and we search for any drop of the elixir of tolerance, sharing and generosity." But most of the time, I fear, the real Jerusalem is the one he describes as a mix of "prejudice, exclusivity and possessiveness."

Obama sings: Fulfilling the good book?

The other day President Obama did a pretty good one-line
imitation of Al Green.
As it happens, the next day, I read this in Judges 5:12: ". . . awake, awake, utter a song:
arise, Barak."

I wonder if the hidden message is that he will oust Biden as
his VP and replace him with Hillary.

The truth is in the TOE: What to look at to understand how the Army is changing

By Joseph Trevithick

Best Defense directorate of force structure history and
analysis

The U.S. Army has changed dramatically after a decade of
being involved in Afghanistan and Iraq. We will not likely know the true extent of this change for some time,
especially if there are more major conflicts to come.

I feel a lot of insight, however, can be garnered from the organization of the Army,
both in terms of force structure and force posture. It had been very true over the years that one
could modify the old adage and say that "no unit structure survives contact
with the enemy," but how the Army organizes itself on paper is generally a
reflection of how it expects to or perhaps would like to fight. How it then adapts to a conflict becomes a
further comment on the institution.

When I saw Tom Ricks had written "My impression is that the
Army is kind of all over the place these days," I suspected he was more
right than he might know. The
changes in the structure of the Army are also, in my mind, a lasting legacy of
U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In many
ways the U.S. Army spent much of the time after leaving Vietnam being at war
with itself over its role in a rapidly changing world. It tried very hard to distance itself from
counterinsurgency on an institutional level and largely reoriented itself for a
traditional combined arms battle in Europe or Asia. When the Cold War in Europe collapsed, the
Army found itself in the midst of changes that were in many ways no longer
applicable.

The upheaval can be seen in force structure initiatives, of
which there have been many since the end of World War II. Between 1950 and 1975, the U.S. Army had six
major force structure initiatives (f you separate out the two variants of the
Pentomic force and the Air Assault Division). Three of the six were implemented in some form, although the Airmobile
Division that came in to being was dramatically different from the original
design of the Air Assault Division. Between 1975 and 2000, there were another six major force structure
initiatives (seven if one counts the embryonic elements of what would become
today's modular force structure). The
Army of Excellence is probably the only one that can be said to have been largely
implemented.

In many cases, the Army was clearly not sure what it
wanted. The Army experimented with a
High Technology Light Division and subsequently a Motorized Division during the
late 1970s and 1980s. Unable to define
the many of the major equipment requirements, the test units made do largely
with surrogates. The Army waffled so
much on these proposed rapidly deployable light division concepts that by 1990
it had left the test unit, 9th Infantry Division (Motorized), with
one of its three brigades converted to a motorized structure, one brigade half
converted, and the last brigade a mechanized infantry brigade from the
Washington Army National Guard, attached in an attempt to maintain its
readiness to deploy to an actual contingency.

Even when the U.S. Army finally inactivated the 9th
Infantry Division in 1991, it refused to make a firm decision on the
experimental motorized concept, re-flagging the Division's one fully converted
brigade as the 199th Infantry Brigade (Separate) (Motorized) before
finally inactivating the unit a year later. The rapid intervention mission was subsequently passed to the 7th
Infantry Division (Light), which was subjected to major modifications to its
organization before it too was inactivated in 1994.

The Army was moving so fast in the twilight of the Cold War
that even the force structure initiatives that were viewed as more conventional
could not be fully implemented. The
Force XXI concept was still being fleshed out as the Soviet Union crumbled and
in the end the decision was made to not fully convert all divisions to the new
structure. Instead a modification of the
previous Army of Excellence divisional structures was developed, which included
some of the elements of the Force XXI structure, and units were reorganized as
Limited Conversion Divisions.

The end of the Cold War also caused a reexamination of the
need for a rapidly deployable element to tackle hotspots around the world. This requirement eventually led to the
modular force structure and one of the biggest changes in the U.S. Army since the
end of World War II: the brigade-centric deployment concept. Prior to the modular force structure,
brigades were supported by a plethora of different elements assigned to their
parent division. Portions, or "slices,"
of divisional field and air defense artillery, military police, chemical, and
other units had habitual relationships with the division's brigades. Only separate brigades had these elements
directly assigned.

What was first known as the Brigade Unit of Action was
designed to change this entirely, with artillery and other support elements
organic to all maneuver brigades Army-wide. It was unclear what role, if any, the division as a concept would then
play or what size they would be. For a
time, there were plans to active two more brigades of 25th Infantry
Division and base them in the continental U.S. In the end, it was determined that divisions would adopt a four-brigade
or "square" configuration, even if they would not likely deploy as a complete
division ever again. The division headquarters,
as well as corps headquarters, have since become essentially deployable task
force headquarters, capable of managing a multitude of units.

The problem with all of this was that while the modular
concept was being explored and developed, a group of terrorists perpetrated
major attacks in the United States on September 11th, 2001. In an instant, the U.S. Army was called into
action and by the time the transition to Modular Force really got moving in
2004, it was heavily engaged. It was
also heavily engaged in conflicts that brought home the legacy of institutional
un-learning with regards to counterinsurgency over the better part of the
previous 3 decades. In short, as the
Global War on Terrorism (now supposed to be referred to even more broadly as Overseas
Contingency Operations) ramped up the Army was already in the midst of an
organizational transition and then found itself in another one.

[[BREAK]]

If no force structure ever survives the rigor of combat,
then Army units in the field between 2001 and 2006 were compelled to seek out
expedients to expedients. For instance,
during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, Headquarters and Headquarters
Battery (HHB), Division Artillery (DIVARTY), 1st Armored Division
had taken command of what amounted to a provisional brigade combat team and was
tasked with securing the Al-Rashid District of Baghdad. Its attached units were largely artillery
units that had converted to infantry and operated as motorized task forces. When the 1st Cavalry Division
deployed in 2004, it added a level of formalization to this concept by standing
up 5th
Brigade (Provisional), led by HHB, DIVARTY, 1st Cavalry Division
and taking control of many of the converted units already operating in
Al-Rashid.

The improvised explosive device (IED) threat also provoked
changes as the US military as a whole started making huge investments into
various technologies like the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP)
vehicle fleet. For the U.S. Army, this
meant that in many cases its coveted heavy vehicles, or even its new
medium-weight Strykers, would be left on the sidelines. Last October, the U.S. Army announced
that 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division would
deploy to Afghanistan without its Strykers and would make use of a brigade package
of MRAPs already in theater. The jury is
still out on the Stryker family itself, a vehicle and associated concept that
was clearly a spiritual successor to previous motorized force concepts, which
received a similar level of support during its initial development.

Though the modular force has largely taken hold since 2006,
the Army continues to modify it, and as one might expect, there continue to be
exceptions. The change in focus to
security force assistance in Iraq caused the U.S. Army to develop an "Advise and
Assist" structure for modular brigade combat teams. For a period, 1st Brigade, 1st
Infantry Division had the mission of training units for this mission and even
deployed small groups as security force companies for Military Transition
Teams. Also, though likely slated for
inactivation in the near future, two "legacy" separate heavy brigades in
Germany are organized along the old Force XXI structure. The cavalry regiment, of which the Army has
two remaining with a combat mission, also occupies a unique place in the force
that would require an entire separate examination of the changes in the cavalry
branch over the years.

With the conflict in Iraq effectively over for the Army and
the one in Afghanistan winding down, the U.S. Army is looking toward a "Strategic
Reset," which will no doubt result in more upheaval as it tries to combine what
it had planned for the force prior to September 11th, 2001 with what
has been implemented since. To this end,
last February the Army Capabilities Integration Center's Future Force
Integration Directorate became the Brigade Modernization
Command (BMC). The Future Force
Integration Directorate had been established to support the Future Combat
Systems program, which was effectively canceled in 2008 (some elements were
subsequently spun out into their own separate programs). The BMC is now focused on broadly evaluating
technologies and tactics, techniques and procedures for the U.S. Army.

In closing, I would also like to make clear that I am not a
member of the U.S. Army or any other service or a veteran. I cannot speak to additional dramatic changes
in the areas of leadership or the significant subjects in the Army's recently
released Health
and Discipline Report. The Army has
changed in many ways and organization
is just one of them. I clearly think it
is an important piece to keep an eye on, but it is definitely only one of
many.

Joseph Trevithick is a
Research Associate at GlobalSecurity.org and a historical consultant for Ambush
Alley Games. He co-authored Ambush
Valley: Vietnam 1965-1975 which was
published last October by Osprey Publishing.

What do Army junior officers actually recommend reading?: Their own top 10

Everyone is always telling junior officers what to read, so
in the
February issue of Army magazine I
was pleased to see their
own list of favorites, compiled by "Company Command," with also-rans also
identified.

1. Once an Eagle,
by Anton Myrer

2. We Were Soldiers
Once . . . and Young, by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway

3. Platoon Leader,
by James Mcdonough

4. Taking the Guidon:
Exceptional Leadership at the Company Level, by Nate Allen and Tony Burgess

5. Black Hearts,
by Jim Frederick

6. Small Unit
Leadership, by Dandridge Malone

7. On Killing, by
Dave Grossman

8. Band of Brothers,
by Stephen Ambrose

9. Made to Stick,
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

10. Infantry Attacks,
by Erwin Rommel

Also-rans include The
Good Soldiers, by David Finkel (no. 15 with a bullet). At no. 25 I was
impressed to see East of Chosin, by
Roy Appleman. I actually thought that The
Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa, by Michael Burgone and Albert Marckwardt, would
be higher than no. 37, as would be the book on which it is based, The Defence of Duffer's Drift, by E.D.
Swinton, which came in at no. 20.    

I've heard one aging Army Ranger lambaste Once an Eagle as a cheap, melodramatic
novel. Say what you will, I don't think one can understand today's Army without
having read it. Which is why I dedicated by novel A Soldier's Duty (which is not on anyone's list) in part "to Sam
and Courtney."      

 

A challenge to Anonymous

My friend Michael  Yon comments from Afghanistan, "If Anonymous
were cyber heroes, they'd go
after drug cartels without blinking."