Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 212

Army promotion policies of yesteryear

Here's a Best Defense salute to all the 2nd  LTs
who recently got promoted to 1st LT. You know who you are.

From the Eisenhower Library's oral history of Lt.
Gen. John Leonard:

--

" … the law requires you to be examined, and they
examined. My first exam to be a first lieutenant, you went in and saluted.

'Do you want to be a first lieutenant?'

'Yes.'

'Get out.'"

(P. 25)

--

Why the Pakistani army is bolstering opposition to its most important alliance?

By Steve
Inskeep

Best Defense guest columnist

A few years ago, two friends took me out for a boat ride in
the waters off Karachi.  We worked our way around a coastal peninsula,
all of which was controlled by a single real estate developer. That developer
was the Pakistani army.

A row of McMansions lined the water. Several upscale
apartment towers clustered together, near a club that advertised "six-star"
facilities, and a golf course equipped with stadium lights so that players
could avoid the heat of the day and play in the evening in the ocean breeze.
And most of the land was still awaiting development.

This stretch of prime real estate, roughly the size of
midtown Manhattan,
was just one of many sections of property throughout the city to be developed
by the local Defence Housing Authority. It's so closely linked with the army
that the commander of V Corps, which is headquartered in Karachi, is also the president of the housing authority. This would be the
rough equivalent of, say, placing the current commander of the U.S. Army troops
at Fort Hood, Texas
in charge of downtown development in Houston.

That peninsula illustrates the way that Pakistan's army
has taken many of the country's prime economic opportunities for itself.
Military involvement in economic activity started in understandable ways -- for
example, soldiers had a chance to obtain plots of land upon retirement,
following a practice with precedents back to ancient Roman times -- but has grown
until the military operates factories and construction companies as well as
developing real estate in partnership with multinational corporations. When the
army, in the face of protests, allowed free elections and surrendered control
of the president's office in 2008, it held onto its economic power, just as it
maintained its grip on foreign policy.

The military has, in other words, kept many privileges that
it would be unlikely to have in a fully democratic state. And when I try to
understand the disturbing news from Pakistan in recent months, the
army's privileges come to mind.

The army, one of the world's largest with well over half a
million troops, maintains its pre-eminence less through violence than through
public opinion. It remains the nation's most trusted institution, and also
influences a great deal of the media coverage that Pakistanis consume. But this
past spring, after the U.S.
raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the army's prestige was tarnished. The army
faced rare public criticism -- if not for somehow allowing bin Laden to hide near
a military academy, then at least for allowing U.S. Navy Seals to fly in and out
undetected. Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who was the army's darling
long ago, repeatedly criticized the army and demanded inquiries.  Some of the pressure even came from within
the army itself: Najam Sethi, a distinguished Pakistani journalist, spoke of
unrest among junior army officers.[[BREAK]]

This is the backdrop for Pakistan's harsh responses to one
incident after another in recent months. When U.S.
Admiral Mike Mullen criticized Pakistan's
links with militant groups, Pakistani generals responded as if war was
imminent. A bizarre incident involving an unsigned memo to U.S. officials was
blown up into a national scandal. And when NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani
troops while apparently trying to target the Taliban, Pakistan
rejected all explanations, refused to join an investigation, and cut off NATO
supply routes. Even analysts who are sympathetic with the army have been
baffled by its escalation of tensions.

Pakistan,
of course, has many valid reasons to complain about the United States. People were deeply
suspicious when Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, was accused of killing two
Pakistanis in Lahore
early this year. The bin Laden raid was a shock and a humiliation. And the
tragic killing of two dozen Pakistani soldiers demands investigation. It's
important to know what happened in that cross-border strike in November. But
the Pakistani response to that strike fanned the flames. When a Pakistani
general publicly said it was "impossible" for the raid to have been a mistake,
he engaged in hyperbole. When I have met Pakistani officers, especially at
senior levels, I have found them to be smart, tough, and experienced, having
lost thousands of troops in recent years. They surely understand the fog of war.

Why respond so harshly? There may be many reasons, not least
of which is the competition between the U.S.
and Pakistan to shape the
future in Afghanistan.
But it's hard to miss the domestic political
effects for Pakistan.
All of this fall's emotional incidents have worked to the army's advantage,
marginalizing the army's critics and creating awkward situations that the
U.S.-allied civilian government must help to clean up. (President Asif Ali
Zardari is now in a Dubai hospital, but whenever
he may return to Pakistan
he will he will have to answer questions about the mysterious memo affair).
It's a time-honored process, of course, for a country's rulers to unify the
populace by focusing attention on an external enemy. The only novelty here is
that Pakistan's chosen enemy
is also Pakistan's
principal ally.

In domestic politics, at least, the army has little to lose
by playing to anti-American sentiment, which has been present in the country
for many years. The flip side is also true: the army could lose a great deal if
the generals are tagged before their people as lackeys of America.

Of course, both countries still seem to need each other. So
this is a delicate game, and maybe a dangerous one. The army is bolstering
public opposition to its own most important alliance.

Steve Inskeep is host of NPR's Morning Edition and author of
Instant
City: Life and Death in Karachi, the story of the growth and struggles
of one of the world's largest cities.

 

The Air Force body parts problem: Someone at the top should go over this

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

Best Defense guest columnist

CNN
December 8: "Backtracking on initial information about how it handled
the remains of American service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Air
Force now says the cremated body parts of hundreds of the fallen were burned
and dumped in the landfill." The cremated remains of at least 274 fallen
service-members and those of 1,762 other unidentified body parts were
unceremoniously thrown into a county landfill as waste.

Two aspects of this mess bother me greatly. The first, obviously, is the
desecration of our warriors. Were an enemy to do this, we'd carpet-bomb them
into oblivion. But this is the U.S. Air Force, the practice may go back as far as
1996, and the only accounting so far has been administrative action against
three minor Air Force officials.



The second is that the Air Force is treating this primarily as a public relations problem,
dribbling out the information only after three whistle-blowers brought it public,
minimizing the scope until the facts ran them over, slow-rolling families
seeking information, bemoaning and refusing to do the work to account for the
individuals dumped in with last week's garbage, and perhaps, according to one report, even
fudging the truth on when the practice ended.



Astonishingly, Air Force now says, "I don't think there is another federal
agency in this town, I don't think there is another institution in this
country," that understands more about how to properly treat the remains of
fallen troops.

My view: this callous incompetence in the treatment of fallen warriors is
shameful, dishonorable, and unacceptable. It calls for the resignation of
either the Air Force Secretary, its Chief of Staff, or both. It's not a
colonel's problem.

Comrades, we're in a defensive arms race with Russia -- but that isn't a bad thing

By Brig. Gen. Kevin
Ryan (US Army, Ret.)

Best Defense kommissar
of old school Russian affairs

It appears that Russia and the United
States are about to embark on what may be the most peaceful and productive arms
race in history -- a defensive arms race.

Russia, the U.S., and NATO have been
unable to come to agreement over U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. 
Russia views the deployment of U.S. interceptors there as the first step to an
eventual capability to negate Russia's only remaining deterrent to an attack by
the West -- its nuclear offensive weapons.  Russia has basically three
responses it can choose: increase its offensive forces, increase its defensive
forces, or do nothing.  

On Nov. 29th, President Dmitry
Medvedev announced that the Russian made Voronezh-DM radar warning station was
moving to immediate combat readiness.  It will detect incoming missiles
targeted against Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad.  "I expect that
this step will be seen by our partners as the first signal of the readiness of
our country to make an adequate response to the threats which the (Western)
missile shield poses for our strategic nuclear forces," Medvedev said.

Russian leaders have previously
promised to improve the survivability of their offensive nuclear missile force
as a means of ensuring that they would retain an effective nuclear deterrent,
and that will likely happen.  But recent events and announcements indicate
that Russia is also investing money in its own increased missile
defenses.  The Ministry of Defense is creating a new branch of service,
the Aerospace Defense Force, which will unite defensive forces stretching from
space-based platforms to land based systems, all intended to protect against
external attacks, first and foremost U.S. strategic nuclear attacks.  This
is an unexpected development given that most observers, and even some Russian
military leaders, predicted Russia would not follow America's lead in spending
billions on expensive missile defense technologies. [[BREAK]]

The new aerospace forces are the
Ministry of Defense's third priority according to a recent briefing by Russia's
Chief of the General Staff, Nikolai Makarov.  But according to some
security experts, the aerospace forces are really the ministry's first
priority, because they will receive the majority of the defense ministry's
modernization funds over the next decade.   So, this development has
a budget and people assigned: a good indication that it will actually happen.

Medvedev thinks a Russian defensive
system will be viewed as a threat by the US and NATO, forcing concessions from
them on their defensive plans.  But rather than forcing the U.S. and NATO to
constrain their plans, such a move might actually remove any reluctance to
deploy their systems.  If Russia can equalize the strategic balance by expanding
its own defenses, then the U.S. and NATO do not have to consider limiting
theirs. 

A defensive arms race like the one
unfolding is not a threat to the U.S. or NATO or Russia.  Instead, the
development of a more robust missile defense system in Russia will make Russia
a better partner in any future joint missile defense system with NATO.  It
will also generate more jobs in Russia and help strengthen a military that has
been habitually underfunded and abused by the leadership.  The best part is
that, like U.S. missile defenses, Russian defensive forces cannot attack an
enemy.  They only protect. 

It is true that Medvedev has also said
he will deploy Iskander surface to surface missiles that could destroy U.S./NATO
missile interceptors that target Russian ICBMs, but this is a meaningless
threat if the U.S. and NATO are sincere in their promise that our defensive
interceptors are not aimed at those Russian ICBMs. 

The missile defense situation is not a
volatile one, but it has thus far been a missed opportunity for improved
cooperation on nuclear and security interests.  Neither side is able or
willing to retreat from their current positions on deployments, threat
assessments, or cooperation.  However, Russian leaders realize that U.S.
missile defenses, especially for the next few years, do not yet threaten
Russia's strategic deterrent, and U.S. leaders realize that Russia is not likely
to increase its offensive nuclear power over the same period.  The result
will be a stable situation in which the U.S. can continue its missile defense
deployments and Russia can build its new defensive forces.  In both cases,
domestic budget considerations will probably keep the pace of deployment
slow. 

Sometime after Feb. 2013, when both
countries have decided their new presidents for the next few years, we can
revisit the missile defense cooperation situation and perhaps find more common
ground. 

Retired Army Brigadier General Kevin
Ryan is Executive Director for Research at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer
Center. He served as U.S. Defense Attaché to Moscow and Chief of Staff of
the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. 

Q&A: Jim Frederick's 'Black Hearts,' about a 101st Airborne war crime in Iraq

Here is a
list of books on the Iraq war. But it leaves out one
of my new favorites, which I finally got around to reading recently.  I liked it so much I decided to interview the
author.

Tom Ricks: This
is a terrific book. Was it difficult to report and write? I would imagine so.
Did it invade your dreams? How did you, and those close to you, get through it?


 

Jim Frederick:  … The book was
difficult to write, but not quite in the way you suggest. The subject matter
was dark, brutally so. But every time I started feeling oppressed or beaten
down by it, I just reflected on the soldiers I was interviewing and remembered:
They had to live it, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and focus on telling
their story. So it wasn't actually hard in that way. I tried to be
compassionate without letting the subject matter invade my personal life or, as
you say, my dreams.



Now, that being said, the book was extraordinarily difficult because while I
have been a journalist my entire adult life, I had never felt such pressure to
Get The Story Right. The soldiers I spoke to (and it was well over 120 of them,
over several years, and I interviewed a core of about 20 or 30 main players
over and over again over that period) trusted me to a degree I have never
really been able to fathom. A lot of them claimed to hate the mainstream media,
yet they trusted me far beyond the degree I would ever trust a journalist. And
from their trust I felt just a massive, massive burden: that if I don't get
this right, it will not only be a professional and personal embarrassment, but
I will have let them down and confirmed all of their worst assumptions about
journalists and modern journalism. Not that I wrote the book to please them, of
course. I often told them that I had a professional obligation not to care
whether they "liked" the book or not when it was finished, but it was a primary
goal of mine to ensure those who were there thought it was accurate and
fair-minded and captured the spirit of the deployment. Thankfully, I have heard
from scores of the men in the book, and they have told me exactly that: that
they might not have liked everything they read, but they thought that it was
fair and accurate.



TR: I was down at "The Swamp," an outpost
near the power plant just west of your guys' AO, in February 2006, and saw some
of the unhappiest American soldiers I'd ever seen. I know that the Triangle of
Death was tough, but so were a lot of other places, like Sadr City and Ramadi.
Why do you think the 101st guys were so demoralized?

 

JF: I was not with, nor did I interview, the men of the 2-502nd who were in
that AO around the Swamp, so I can't really speak to their particular
situation. But if I can extrapolate from what I know about 1-502nd across all of
the 101st Airborne during that time, I would say a lot of it had to do with
them falling into a very muddled period of extreme strategic breakdown. They
were at the tail end of the seek and destroy era of terrorist hunting, and it
was not going well. This was the absolute darkest era of the war, when the men
knew in their hearts that what they were being asked to do was not working, but
there were no better alternatives at the time. This was a full year before COIN
really got going so I think those days you got a lot of the hopelessness from
the men on the ground who knew the current strategy was doomed a year before
the White House or the Pentagon were willing to admit it.



TR: You do a great job of showing why the
chain of command is in many ways to blame for the crimes that occurred. But as
portrayed, the chain kind of fades out above brigade. It would seem to me that
your argument is that the division commander, Generals Casey and Chiarelli, and
Secretary Rumsfeld above them, are also to blame for what happened. Is that
correct? Did you ever get a chance to interview them for this book? [[BREAK]]



JF: You are correct that I would lay blame all the way up the chain of command
and that, yes, my examination does pretty much cut out at the brigade level.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I assessed that there had been
many books already about the Iraq war told from the general, Pentagon or White
House level. And the more reporting I did, the more I became captivated by the
intimate, on the ground stories of men at war that I was collecting. And I
thought I had not seen a lot of books like that (Memoirs by soldiers? Yes,
lots. Journalistic accounts of a full deployment of men at war in Iraq? Not
many). So I decided that the focus was going to be platoon, company and
battalion. Second, having expanded my lens all the way to battalion, I was a
bit overwhelmed already by the reporting task ahead of me. To add several more
battalions' experience, let alone division command and on up the chain from
there, it was pretty easy for me, once I got going to say: that is just out of
scope. To keep the narrative lens focused and novelistic, I need to cut it at
battalion. (And I know, I have heard from many men who served during this time,
telling me that I thus let brigade and division get off "easy." I can see that,
but I simply had to cut the frame somewhere.) And finally, I was blessed by the
fact that a lot of men I interviewed, on up to captains and majors, and
sergeants first class and first sergeants were really, really rubbed raw about
their experience and decided, eyes wide open, that they were going to be 100 percent
candid with me. And I will be grateful to them until the day I die, since the
book lives on the back of their honesty. But when I started getting to the lieutenant
colonel and colonel level of my research, that's when I perceived that the Army
field grade officer mutual protection society started to kick in. According to
them, everybody was just a great officer, and everybody did helluva job, and
nobody was to blame for anything bad that happened. I just didn't feel like I
was getting candid, unvarnished, unfiltered accounts of events or people at
those levels. So that made it especially easy to say, okay, I'm not going to
focus on that level, because these guys are more interested in reciting the
party line than in telling me what they really think.



TR: How has the Army reacted to this
book? I've heard that you've been invited to speak at West Point about it. Is
that right? Any other official reactions? Unofficial ones?

 

JF: The Army's strong positive reaction has been among the most gratifying and
rewarding aspects of this whole experience. Before the book was released, I was
a little worried that people might misunderstand what they book was about. I thought
they might think it was anti-American or anti-Army, when I viewed it as a
hugely pro-soldier and pro-Army. I always viewed it as a book about leadership.
Admittedly, this unit had far more examples of bad leadership than good, but
that's what I was outraged about, and I hoped that one of my audiences would be
a pre-deployment staff sergeant or lieutenant who might read the book and maybe
do something a little different or avoid a mistake or two. And from all the
feedback I have gotten, that's exactly how the Army at the very highest levels
has received the book. Not as something to feel attacked about, but as
something they can learn from.

The feedback from West Point in particular has been
extraordinary. I have been up there three times now to speak to cadets, and the
Commandant made Black Hearts the
inaugural book in his personal leadership development book club for cadets.
When he shook my hand and told me I would be considered a lifetime friend of
West Point, well that was a career high for me. Beyond that, I have heard about
numerous units that have put it on their pre-deployment reading lists and other
smaller captains and majors leadership classes around the Army have made it
required reading. And then there are individual soldiers. I have heard from
almost everyone portrayed in the book and their feedback has been, without
exception, positive. And many of the men in the book check in just with me
every couple of months, just to fill me in on what they're up to now. I value
those relationships very much. And then I hear from soldiers who were there at
different times, or near there, or new and newly deploying soldiers on a weekly
basis, and we're getting into nearly three years since the book was published,
so that has been very gratifying. And finally, a major constituency I hear from
is soldiers' wives, a lot of whom say: my husband doesn't talk much about his
deployments, but now I feel like I know a little better what he's been through.
I get a lot of letters that bring tears to my eyes, to be honest.



TR: How did the book do in sales? I feel
a bit guilty in asking -- I've had a copy since it came out, but could not bring
myself to read it until recently when a retired general more or less insisted
that I read it.

 

JF: Was it a bestseller? No. But it did respectably well, all told. My
publisher seems happy enough. And every time I'm tempted to get down about the
fact that the sales were not through the roof, I remember that it is about a
war crime, committed by Americans. Not really Band of Brothers territory. But
the book was better received critically than I ever dared dream. And then to
also have it embraced by the military the way it has as a leadership teaching
tool has been doubly gratifying. So I hope the book has a long tail, and it seems
to have a good shot of entering the Iraq/Afghanistan War canon, if not a more
general canon of war literature. I am very proud of all of that.



TR: Are you glad you wrote it?

 

JF: Absolutely. It was the kind of book I always dreamed of writing, and it turned
out exactly like I hoped it would. I hope I have the honor and luck to write
another one like it someday.

Gen. Dunford responds: I AM getting real

Here is a note from General Joseph Dunford, the assistant
commandant of the Marine Corps, responding to my post Friday saying I was
worried by how
the Marine Corps is handling the budget implosion.

--

"Tom: I believe your recommendation that we simply announce
that we are cutting the Corps to 150K misses the mark. Frankly, it doesn't make
any sense. What analysis supports 150K? As I very carefully explained in my
presentation, the responsibility of Marine Corps leadership is to recommend an
organizational construct for the Corps that supports our National Security
Strategy in the context of the future security environment. After rigorous
analysis, that's exactly what we have done. I can assure you that we're fully
prepared to refine our recommendations as refinements are made to our
strategy/budget. While you are "bothered" by the way we have attacked
the issue, we have attacked it the only way we know how. We have done due
diligence and told the truth. Another point you may have missed in both my
presentation at CSIS and our off the record session at CNAS concerns readiness.
I made it very clear that regardless of our future force structure, the
Commandant will deliver a capable and ready Corps of Marines to our Nation.
That's what we do -- and our track record speaks for itself.

Semper Fidelis

Joe
Dunford"

--

Tom again: I dunno. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Not only do
I think it unrealistic for the Marine Corps to plan on shrinking to just
186,000, I think the larger question is whether the Marine Corps should focus
the discussion on the size of the force or the quality of the force. When asked
how big they will be, I think they probably should say, As big as we can be
while being a force in readiness.    

Navy says another CO doesn't measure up

The commander
of an EA-6B squadron, currently deployed aboard the USS Carl Vinson, was fired
by the Navy for "creating and condoning an intimidating, hostile and
offensive work environment in violation of policy on sexual harassment."

The scorekeeper says that makes 22 fired Navy COs for the
year.

Annals of the defense budget implosion (Pt. X): When will the Marine Corps get real about how much it has to shrink?

I wrote my
first book about the Marine Corps, and I like the organization. But
sometimes even old friends need a push, and it feels to me like the Corps is
going off the tracks here. 

The Marines will shrink
from 202,000 to 186,000, but it would be risky to go below that level, Gen.
Joseph Dunford, the smart assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, said at a
CSIS session on Wednesday. That line
worries me. Here is a fuller explanation of General Dunford's views, taken from
his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee about six weeks ago:

--

… when we went through the force structure review effort, we came up with a
size Marine Corps of 186,800. That is a single major contingency operation
force. So that force can respond to only one major contingency. A hundred and
fifty thousand would put us below the level that's necessary to support a
single contingency.

The
other thing I would -- I would think about is what amphibious forces have done
over the past year: humanitarian assistance, disaster relief efforts in
Pakistan, supporting operations in Afghanistan with fixed-wing aviation,
responding to the crisis with pirates on the MV Magellan Star, supporting
operations in Libya, supporting our friends in the Philippines and Japan. And
quite frankly, at 150,000 Marines, we're going to have to make some decisions.
We will not be able to do those kinds of things on a day- to-day basis. We will
not be able to meet the combatant commanders' requirements for forward-delayed,
forward-engaged forces. We will not be there to deter our potential
adversaries. We won't be there to assure our potential friends or to assure our
allies. And we certainly won't be there to contain small crises before they
become major conflagrations.

So
I think at 150,000 Marines I would offer there would be some significant risks
both institutionally inside the Marine Corps because we will be spinning faster
and causing our Marines to do more with less -- but as importantly, perhaps
more importantly, the responsiveness that we'll have to combatant commanders'
contingencies and crisis response will be significantly degraded."

--

Tom again: This just doesn't strike me as realistic. The
Marine Corps almost certainly is going to get much smaller than 186,000, or
180,000. And so to plan around those larger numbers seems to me to be planning
for failure.

I also am bothered by the way the Corps has attacked this
issue. It does not feel to me like the institution I wrote about in Making the Corps some 15 years ago. Back
then, as least, the Marines had a strong tradition of arguing hammer-and-tongs --
considering all sorts of arguments -- until a decision was made. Once a decision
was reached, everyone in the Corps, no matter which side they had been on,
would support that decision to the utmost. So as the budget crisis approaches,
instead of drawing a line in the sand at 186K, it would be a sign of health if
the Marine Corps Gazette were
carrying articles these days that asked tough questions:

--Should we loosen the tie to the amphib Navy and supplement
it with whatever shipping is available to move Marines? If so, what would that
look like? How could we do the same things cheaper?

--Should the Corps move to a two-division structure? (And
yes, today's Congress would go along with that, if asked to.)

--Should the Corps indeed move immediately to 150,000 -- but
all the while making its line in the sand that it will always favor readiness
over end strength?

Instead, I see General Dunford's public remarks as the
Marine Corps leadership effectively shutting down discussion. Myself, I think
it would be smarter for the Marines to announce as soon as possible that they
are cutting to 150,000 -- and then go on to say, they aim to be the nation's
small-but-ready force, able to go into a conflict early and buy some time for
the country, not unlike Korea in the summer of 1950. This is the time to get
creative, not the time to go into a defensive crouch.

I was discussing my concerns yesterday with some Marine
types. One said, Don't worry, there's a Plan B. I think it would be more thoughtful
and, more importantly, more honest, to roll that out now. 

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Sgt. Rex's Tales from the Triangle of Death

By Rebecca Frankel

Chief Canine Correspondent

The first time I spoke to
former Marine dog handler Mike Dowling I asked him about his working dog, Rex.
He chuckled and declined; explaining the brief time we had on the phone that
day just wasn't enough to do Rex justice.

Next week the seasoned and still-working German Shepherd
will officially be given his due tribute in Sergeant
Rex: The Unbreakable Bond Between a Marine and His Working Dog. The
forthcoming book, written by Dowling, chronicles the team's tour in Iraq in
2004, most of which they spent in Mahmoudiyah, better known as the Triangle
of Death.

Dowling was one of the first of the initial 12 Marine
handlers sent with their dogs to Iraq in 2004. Prior to their deployment there
hadn't been a U.S. dog team on the front lines in a combat zone since Vietnam. They
were, as Dowling tells me, the guinea pigs. Neither Dowling nor Rex had seen
combat before. "I didn't know how unprepared I was until I got there."

While Dowling was confident in his and Rex's strong working
dynamic he had doubts about how quickly they would adapt to the unforgiving
working conditions and the chaotic violence churning around them. "I didn't know
how effective we would be in a combat environment, specifically in an
environment with 125 degree heat, with strays and shit and trash everywhere. I
didn't know what to expect so I didn't know if I was prepared or not."

Prepared or not, the pair was thrust into the thick of it almost
immediately. Dowling and Rex's first mission - which makes for one of the most
gripping scenes in the book -- was a veritable gauntlet through hell, replete
with a pack of wild dogs, razor-edged barbed wire (that would slice through
Rex's underbelly), and a Shawshankian ditch of human
waste.

Despite the unknowns of IED detection and patrol work in
Iraq and the aversion Rex had shown to firefights in training, that night was a
success. "Rex knew that it was training when it was training," Dowling told me.
"But when we were in combat, he knew we were in combat because he could read it
in my eyes and was very obedient. It gave me this incredible sense of calm and
confidence in us as a dog team to preform well."[[BREAK]]

In Sergeant Rex, Dowling
(along with coauthor Damien Lewis) make for an able storyteller who, despite
his plain love and affection for Rex, reminds readers again and again that Rex
is a working dog, and ultimately a
fellow Marine. A sentiment Rex, who Dowling describes as an "aggressive," "independent"
even "macho" dog, liked to reinforce.

"I really felt that Rex felt that he was one of us. He
thought he was a Marine," Dowling laughs. "He saw the bond between all of us
and he just gravitated toward that. He had never met those Marines [on our
patrol] ever, but he was protecting us. That was just his natural instinct."

Dowling left the Marines last year and now works with a
number of non-profits dedicated to helping disabled veterans. Rex is still
working as a patrol dog over at Camp Pendleton in California, but his days of overseas
deployment are behind him. Dowling gets out to visit him from time to time -- Rex
made an appearance
at a book signing on base with his former handler last weekend -- he's careful
not to step on the bond Rex has formed with his current handler.

When it came to working on the book, Dowling says he was initially
reluctant to put so much of his own life on display and that it took convincing.
Lewis was able to sway him by boiling down the motivation to one simple focus --
Rex.

"Lewis asked me, 'How much do you love Rex?' I was like, are
you kidding me I love him to death.  'Do
you think he's worthy of a story your kids can hear?' Yeah, I guess he is.
'When are you gonna get another chance to do it?' I was like, damn, I guess you're
right."

The following is a
brief excerpt from Sergeant Rex:

 

The crack
of boots splintering wood cuts the night, followed by sharp screams and cries.
Rex stiffens for an instant, then glances up at me. He gives me this look, a
half-worried gaze: What the hell's that?
And what do we do now, partner?

Rex is
three years old, and during the last year-and-a-half we've spent barely a day
apart. He has become my life. He's at the peak of his fitness, and he'll never
be sharper or quicker than he is now. I hope that as long as I stay calm and
collected, my dog will too. [[BREAK]]

The noise
is deafening as the first of the insurgents are bundled out of the door, hands
over their heads. I stroke Rex and talk to him, cooing and soothing him softly:
"It's okay, boy, it's okay ..."

I spot a
flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. A lone figure sprints from a
side door to our left. I can't see a weapon, but I know that Rex has spotted
him the same instant that I have. ...

As one we
turn our heads very sharply to the left. But it seems to take an age to do so.
In the adrenaline rush of combat I'm hypersensitive to everything around me.
Each second seems magnified one hundred fold, each movement playing out in
ultra slow motion.

I grab
Rex's thick collar and mouth into his ear: "Watch him! Watch him! Watch
him!" ...

Just as
soon as he's heard the command watch him,
it's like a light's been switched on. A low growl echoes in the depths of Rex's
throat, and he's up on all fours, alert, tense and ears down ready to go. He's
straining at the leash. As for me, my adrenaline's pumping bucket-loads, for
I'm about to release my dog.

The
figure reaches the open street. I release both leash and collar: "Get him!"

Rex
powers away like a bullet from a gun. His bunched muscles are firing him
forwards, his legs flashing through the thin grass, his leash trailing like a
whip behind him.

Rex is
fast. He's closing on the target, sprinting through the bush to get to the open
road. But as the figure passes under a flickering street lamp I see that it's a
kid. No way can I live with myself if I set my dog on an innocent kid. No way.
I don't want that playing on my mind, and especially as this is the first time
that I've ever sent Rex after a live human being for real.

Above the
deafening noise from the target building I start screaming at the top of my
lungs: "OUT! OUT! OUT!"

Rex
slows, to show me he's heard me, but he keeps moving forwards. He's been shown
the target and he wants to do his stuff now. It's a battle of wills, and Rex is
as stubborn as they come.

"REX -- OUT!"
I yell again. He turns to look at me, glances back at the running figure, then
back to me again: oh come on, daddy, let
me get him.

I respond
by giving him the 'sit' command, and reluctantly he lowers his rump onto the
dirt. I follow this with the 'heel' command, and slowly Rex returns to my side.
He's got his head held low, eyes down: oh
man ... did you have to? I grab Rex's collar and praise him for being such a
good boy.

I see the
kid running off down the street, and he seems oblivious to the fact that Rex
was after him. If I'd used my rifle and taken the shot the kid would now be
dead. If you fire and realize it's the wrong target, it's too late by then. A
dog is like a bullet you can call back again.

Blog comment of the day: PGMAN25 on more of the 'safety' weirdness at Bagram

From a comment
posted yesterday by PGMAN25, who says he recently returned from Bagram:

--

 

I
would like to add some other jackassery I saw while I was there. While at the
DFAC, I saw a group of Army Rangers in PT gear walk in with their M9 pistols
with inserted magazines in hand. They did not have holsters. They proceeded to
flag each other and everyone else while they got ketchup and drinks. One of
them placed the pistol between his legs while he opened the cooler.

I spoke to them (where I discovered
they were Rangers) and asked why they didn't have holsters. They had their
hands full eating and the pistols were on the table pointing at each other. An
Afghan DFAC employee was standing just behind one of the soldiers.

I was told that they were rotating
through Bagram and their individual weapons had already been turned in. They
were given pistols so they could comply with the order of always being armed. I
mentioned how unsafe their weapons handling was and was told not to worry since
they weren't given any ammunition."

-- 

Check out I love Bagram for a responsible
opposing viewpoint: "2569. When the 11Bravo's come to BAF and they bitch
at us or call us pogs. And ask how do we live with ourselfs. I reply 1 hot
shower a day."