Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 94

The FP transcript (Xth and last): What the last 9 segments tell us about the state of the American confrontation with Iran

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on March 26, 2013.

[Here are Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

Ricks: We are
almost out of time. Speaking of mutually shared decisions, the U.S. government
is probably going to face one this year on Iran. How has everything we've been
talking about shaped how we are going to be thinking about Iran down the road?

First David, then Michèle.

Crist: Well I
think it's all interrelated -- issues in Afghanistan, issues in Iraq, all
affect how we look at Iran and how we are positioned to be able to do something
about Iran. I think it's all interrelated. Lessons I think have been
institutionalized at least within senior leaders on some of the problems we had
in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially second- and third-order effects. What are
the consequences of different actions we take? What are consequences of
conflict in general? Is regime change a viable option? Isn't it a viable
option? If not, then how do we...? I mean, all that is in the background of
all the discussions. And I think it's been very healthy in many ways.

Ricks: One of the
issues that we've been talking about is the quality of civil-military relations
and straightforward, candid, honest advice from generals to civilian
leaders -- for which we have apparently just seen General
Mattis quietly fired. [Ricks note: I should have said "pushed out early."]

Crist: On the
record I won't comment on General Mattis's views.

I will say and I can say this with a certain honesty since
I've helped draft many of the memos: He has been very candid on what his views
of what needs to be done. I haven't seen anything like the Rumsfeldian approach
to stifling alternative views, and so as a consequence while...And some
people in the U.S. military -- maybe the political leadership isn't as
receptive as they would like on authority issues and some other response...the
dialogue is there, and frankly a lot of it gets to these ideas of what I have
always thought of as one of the intangibles where you have breakdown in
discourse between civilian and military leadership is as you say trust. And a
lot of it is personality based. Just personalities of the individual players
and how they personally get along, as well as concerns of political leadership.

Ricks: And you
have seen a trusting, candid exchange?

Crist: I have
from my level, absolutely. And I've sat in many -- not as many as Michèle and
some of the others here -- but a number of meetings with senior leaders on both
sides of it. And I have seen it be quite candid.

Ricks: My
impression is that the Obama administration has been almost afraid of Centcom
under Mattis and Harward -- the mad-dog symptom with two incredibly aggressive
guys. But I see Michèle shaking her head. Michèle, jump in.

Flournoy: I would
say of all the issue areas that I was exposed to in the deputies committees
process, there was none where we took a more deliberate, strategic,
questioning, and very candid approach than Iran. And it really started back --
this goes a few years back now when it was started up when Gates was still
secretary of defense -- and I think the thought that was put into exactly what
words the president says to describe our objective in Iran: Is it "prevent"? Is
it "contain"? That was debated, the consequences downstream of choosing one
versus the other, multiple senior leader seminars, war games looking at
different options, going down the road of different scenarios, very close
partnership with the military in actually setting the theater so that we are now
communicating a degree of deterrence to back up the policy of sanctions and
negotiations.

So I actually think on Iran, probably more than on any other
issue that I've seen, it's been very strategic, very comprehensive. There's no
idea that you can't bring to the table. There's no idea that hasn't been
debated. And people may have very strong views and disagree. But this is not
one where -- this was one where there was a real constant coming back to what
are our interests? What are our objectives? How do we make sure we are applying
rigor and not just going down the road towards confrontation with no limits or
no boundaries or no sense of what we are trying to achieve?

Crist: I would
add one more point in having looked at U.S.
strategy for a long time on Iran. One thing that I found interesting that
has evolved over the last few years that I haven't seen earlier is looking even
beyond the nuclear issue. What is our long-term relationship with this country?
Are we long-term adversaries? If so, how is that going to play out across the
region? And how do we counteract that? And also, are there areas, I think,
which despite the engagement piece, seemed to have died off, there has been a
lot of thought given -- are there areas where there is mutual cooperation? And
what will that lead to long term? Can we have maybe not rapprochement but some
kind of détente with Iran?

Ricks: So can we
start to get Putin to be aggressive again and drive Iran into our hands?

Crist: Yeah, it's
tough because in my personal opinion we are for a host of reasons adversaries
in the region. We have two different strategic views of what we want out of it.

But the issue is bigger than just the nuclear issue. The
nuclear issue is a symptom, more than a cause, of our problems.

THE END... -- or is
it?

What Warren Buffett did in 1942: Doubled down on the future of the United States

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on March 7, 2013.

Early 1942 was the low point of World War II, at least for the American newcomers. Britain was running out
of men and arms. The United States had not really gotten in the game. Germany
and Japan were triumphantly expanding, and it was thought possible they might
link up in Iran or that region after Egypt and India fell.

Warren Buffett mentions in his new annual report that it was then that he began buying American stocks. He was 11 years old. "I made my first stock purchase in the spring
of 1942 when the U.S. was suffering major losses throughout the Pacific war zone," he writes. "Each day's headlines told of more
setbacks. Even so, there was no talk about uncertainty; every American I knew believed we would prevail."

Management tip: Buffett also gives his
subordinates plenty of autonomy. In an aside, he notes that he voted for
President Obama, but that 10 of the 12 daily newspapers his company owns that
endorsed a candidate instead chose Governor Romney.

Soldier poets of the Great War (VII): The enduring power of Wilfred Owen's words

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on March 5, 2013.

Of
all the World War I poets, Wilfred Owen stands up best, I
think (and yes, I do know I am far from alone). His words feel much more modern
to me, almost contemporary. "And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds." Great word control.

Here
are two other passages from him:

The
burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause
over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice . . . .

And
then there is this:

Happy
are those who lose imagination:

They
have enough to carry with ammunition.

And
of course if you haven't read his great poem about a
gas attack,
you should do that right now.

Hey, Chris Christie, I have some friends I want your widows and orphans to meet

By Jim Gourley

Best Defense
all-star commenter

New Jersey's governor has never been one to test the political waters
before diving in. If anything, he owes much of his popularity to his reputation
for taking cannonballs off the party platform with wild abandon. His unabashed
candor has always brought him back to the surface unscathed, even when going so
far as to praise the incumbent Democratic president mere weeks ahead of the
GOP's effort to unseat him. While many still blame him for sinking Romney's
hopes, his fearless honesty seemed to come up more buoyant than ever. But his
most recent plunge into straight talk provides a disturbing window into the
unspoken beliefs of a potential future commander in chief.

The remarks in question were issued
during a forum at the Aspen Institute last month. On the subject of domestic
surveillance and recent revelations of the extent of the government's data
collection, Christie fired off candidly at Republicans such as Kentucky Senator
Rand Paul, labeling their beliefs a "dangerous strain of
libertarianism" and calling their arguments "esoteric." He laid
a rhetorically-jeweled capstone on his comments
by literally bringing the point home:

Listen, you can name any number of people and
[Paul is] one of them.... These esoteric, intellectual debates -- I want them to
come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that
conversation. And they won't, because that's a much tougher conversation to
have.

The lynchpin of Christie's rhetoric is the fundamental assumption that
is ironically best characterized by more esoteric remarks
issued by President Obama when he responded to the initial reports of
government surveillance after the Snowden leaks broke.

But I think it's important to recognize that
you can't have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent
privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some
choices as a society.

Christie takes the hard line on the issue, taking security over both
privacy and convenience every time. The subtle overtones of "never
again" in his mantra are eerily reminiscent of Dick Cheney. It's a majestic
leap for a man who would be president of the United States.

But it finishes with a belly flop for a guy who'd go stand in front of
the armed forces. The final "go tell the widows and orphans" jab is
profane not as much for its overt melodramatic invocation of bereaved innocents
as for the implicit devaluation of servicemembers. The core ideology is that we
must not sacrifice the lives of innocent American citizens in the interest of
"esoteric" things like privacy or a rationally measured approach to
homeland security. Due process and habeas corpus cannot be allowed to stall the
swift hand of justice when countless lives are at stake. Anyone who disagrees
is a lofty-minded theorist who fails to grasp what's at stake.

Christie wants us all to understand that we are fighting for security,
here. Not freedom. Not honor. Not some abstract concept in a Lee Greenwood song
or whatever enigmatic principles Article VI of the Code of
Conduct might possibly be referring to. There are already too many dead
American civilians. Whatever freedoms must be sacrificed to prevent more, so be
it.

Perish the thought that a single American civilian should die because we
hesitated to curtail their freedoms. But where does that leave the servicemember
who is repeatedly told that they advance into the jaws of death for the express
purpose of defending freedom? What are the people who suffered grievous injury
supposed to feel if the day comes that President Christie further encroaches on
civil liberties heretofore held as sacrosanct? For one who gave their legs to
the cause of freedom, is this not a second amputation?

Governor Christie gathers his army of innocents behind him and
challenges his libertarian detractors to muster the gall to "say it to
their face." If Senator Paul is either unable or unwilling, then I would
like to personally take Governor Christie up on his offer to discuss the issue.
However, please allow me the small indulgence of choosing the venue for the
debate. I would like for him to come to 1 Memorial Drive in Arlington,
Virginia. You see, if the standard I must meet is to be able to make my
arguments to his friends with a straight face, then it is only fair that the governor
do the same before my friends. I'm sorry if this is too much of a stretch for
him, but as the president said, we have to make some tough decisions as a
society about convenience, security, and freedom. I hate to inconvenience the orphans and widows,
but my friends were forced to make some hard decisions, and they no longer have
the freedom to travel beyond that address.

Jim Gourley is a
frequent contributor to Best Defense.

A Navy expert: 21st century leaders need to communicate by listening as well talking

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
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From a recent talk at the Naval War College by Rear Adm.
John Kirby:

The
whole debate over strategic communications ignores the reality that we live
increasingly in a participatory culture. People aren't waiting to lap up our
messages anymore. They don't want access to information. They want access to
conversation. They want to be heard. Ours is a post-audience world where we can
no more control the narrative than we can control the weather.

What
we can do is find ways to take part in that conversation, to inform it, even to
guide it at times. But that requires a certain humility that I worry we don't
always possess. It requires us to listen as well as to speak, to solicit as
well as to inform, to be willing to admit of our own shortcomings and accept
sometimes brutally frank feedback.

...
The point is that I know my credibility -- and that of the Navy -- is enhanced
when I endeavor to join a discussion rather than to lead it. That can be a hard
thing for us to do, letting go of leadership a little. But in this brave, new
world of instant communications letting go actually means getting ahead.

Top 10 books on U.S. interrogation

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 28, 2013.

By Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer, U.S. Army

Best Defense guest columnist

Most Americans do not realize the sheer
volume of literature that exists showing that torture is a great tool for
extracting false confessions but an extremely poor tool for collecting
intelligence. Here's my Top 10:

1. The
Black Banners, by Ali Soufan. From my review of the book in the
Army's Military Review: "Soufan
describes multiple interrogations in which he earned the trust and cooperation
of Al-Qaeda operatives, only to have psychologists and amateur interrogators
from the CIA destroy this rapport through brutality. He reports that once they
used harsh techniques, detainees stopped providing substantial intelligence."
Soufan, an Arabic-speaking FBI interrogator, dispels the myth that al Qaeda
terrorists are "hardened" to withstand traditional interrogation approaches.
Getting al Qaeda members to talk, he demonstrates, is rarely difficult for a
skilled interrogator who uses rapport-based approaches and who understands
their language, culture, and religion.

2. Stalking the Vietcong, by Colonel
(Ret.) Stuart Herrington. Although primarily known as a counterinsurgency
classic (this book is one of the recommended readings in the famous 2006
counterinsurgency manual), this memoir describes how Colonel Herrington
convinced a senior South Vietnamese official to use rapport-based approaches
rather than torture. The result was not only far more reliable intelligence,
but often, the "turning" of enemy soldiers so that they actively collected
against their former units. Incidentally, in a more recent essay, he writes
about what he learned from his 2002 and 2003 inspections of Gitmo and Abu
Ghraib, respectively. This essay, which is his foreword to my own book on
tactical-level interrogations in Iraq, is as important as any on the subject.
You don't need to buy my book to read it. It's available online here.

3. How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S.
Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in
Iraq, by Matthew Alexander and John Bruning. From my review of Alexander's
second memoir, Kill or Capture, for Military Review: "In his ?rst
memoir, How to Break a Terrorist,
Alexander described how he used the power of personal example to teach his team
that they could be far more effective if they convinced (rather than coerced)
their sources to talk. Thanks to his good efforts -- and to those he led -- his
unit quickly began to produce results. Most notably, his team coaxed
intelligence from sources that led to the successful U.S. air strike against
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq."

4. The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns
Joachim Scharff, Master Interrogator of the Luftwaffe, by Raymond Toliver.
Nazis are invariably depicted in movies as cruel torturers. Historical reality
is different -- surprisingly so, in light of the Holocaust and how many Nazis
treated members of "races" they deemed inferior. The Nazis' most successful
interrogator, Hanns Scharff, "methodically and deliberately treated his
prisoners with dignity." Some eyewitnesses reported that Scharff never even
raised his voice in questioning. Instead, he enjoyed great success by building
rapport with captured Allied pilots. After the war, the U.S. Air Force paid him
the ultimate compliment by inviting him to America to teach their
interrogators.

5.
Mission: Black List #1: The Inside Story
of the Search for Saddam Hussein -- As Told by the Soldier Who Masterminded His
Capture, by Eric Maddox and Davin Seay. From the book's Amazon website: "Maddox's candid and compelling narrative reveals the logic
behind the unique interrogation process he developed and provides an insider's
look at his psychologically subtle, nonviolent methods. The result is a
gripping, moment-by-moment account of the historic mission that brought down
Black List #1." You will hear more about this book in 2014: It is being made
this year into a movie starring Robert Pattinson.

6. None of Us Were Like This Before, by Joshua Phillips. Phillips explores the causes
and harmful effects, not just of American soldiers recently torturing for
information, but of their abusing detainees in general. The book is
particularly important for those researching military suicides and "moral
injury," a PTSD-like condition that derives from the cognitive dissonance that occurs
when people see or do things that conflict with their own deeply held values. In one chapter, Phillips investigates the utility
of torture and, after a survey of literature on the subject, concludes that there seems to be no real evidence that torture
gathers intelligence well. In one of my favorite paragraphs, Phillips cites the
apparent "patina of pseudo-science" that was passed on by the mere presence of
psychologists at torture sessions, making it appear to others as if there were
a scientifically valid basis for torture (even if these psychologists often did
little to actually influence interrogation plans).

7. The
History of Camp Tracy: Japanese WWII POWs and the Future of Strategic
Interrogation, by Alexander D.
Corbin. Corbin tells the story of a remarkably successful interrogation
facility established during World War II at Camp Tracy, California, for the
questioning of Japanese POWs. Camp Tracy interrogation teams consisted of one
Caucasian and one Nisei, thus enabling teams to leverage language skills,
cultural knowledge, and physical appearance to build rapport. In making the
case that interrogators today should pay close heed to lessons learned at this
facility, Corbin describes the similarities between Islamic radicals today and
zealous Japanese warriors willing to conduct suicide attacks for their God
Emperor. From the foreword: "The use of torture or ‘physical coercion' was not
necessary; in fact, the opposite was true: Camp Tracy interrogators found that
courtesy and kindness overcame most Japanese reluctance and reticence."

8. Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey through Iraq, by
Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian. This book teaches interrogation through
counter-example -- what wrong looks like. As an impressionable new
interrogator, Lagouranis had the misfortune of being assigned in 2004 to two of
the worst places for interrogators in Iraq, Abu Ghraib prison and a facility
run by one of Petraeus's brigades that was nearly as bad. Lagouranis's
Kurtz-like descent into the heart of darkness is a cautionary tale for the U.S.
military interrogation community. He summarizes his team's failure to collect
intelligence through torture thus: "These techniques [EITs] were propagated
throughout the Cold War, picked up again after 9/11, used by the CIA, filtered
down to army interrogators at Guantanamo, filtered again through Abu Ghraib,
and used, apparently, around the country by special forces...If torture works
-- which is debatable -- maybe they had the training to make sure it worked.
But at our end of the chain, we had no idea what we were doing. We were just a
bunch of frustrated enlisted men picking approved techniques off a menu."

9. Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American
Intelligence in Vietnam, by Orrin DeForest and David Chanoff. This memoir describes
how DeForest, a CIA interrogation officer in Vietnam, employed the "art of
sympathetic interrogation" at the war's most successful joint interrogation
center. He also describes the critical need of interrogators for access to
robust databases and supporting analysis. The book makes the compelling case
that if intelligent rapport-based methods supported by robust analysis had been
the norm rather than simple, brutal, and ignorant tactics, U.S. and South
Vietnamese intelligence would have enjoyed far greater success in the war.

10. Field Manual 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations,
which can be downloaded online. The accumulated practical wisdom of generations
of U.S. military interrogators has been collected into the latest iteration of
this book-length manual. Here's what they have to say: "Use of torture is
not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable
results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to
say what he thinks the HUMINT collector wants to hear." Not the most exciting
reading, but indispensable if you want to understand how the vast majority of
U.S. military interrogators really think.

Lieutenant
Colonel  Douglas A. Pryer   is a military intelligence officer who has
served in various command and staff positions in  Iraq , Kosovo, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States,
and, most recently, Afghanistan. He is the author of the Command and General
Staff College Foundation Press's inaugural book,  The Fight for the High Ground: The U.S. Army and
Interrogation During Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003 - April 2004 . The views expressed in this article are those
of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the
Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The response from Tom Ricks that ARMY magazine declined to carry in its pages

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 26, 2013.

You'd think ARMY
magazine would welcome a free piece about Iraq from a best-selling author. Apparently
not -- they have declined to run this response I wrote to their two articles
about my new book, The Generals. I
even said they could run it as a letter to the editor, but no. They didn't say
why. I am sorry to see them turn away from what might have developed into a
good, vigorous debate about what the Army should learn from its time in Iraq.

Make up your own
mind -- below is the letter apparently too hot for them to handle.

Sirs:

Thank you for carrying articles about my new book, The Generals: American Military Command From
World War II to Today, in both your January and February issues. I appreciate
the attention. However, I think that Brig. Gen. John S. Brown's commentary, "Do
We Need an Iraqi Freedom Elevator Speech?", requires a response.

General Brown makes several questionable assumptions in the
article.

The first is that in 2003 the Army did in fact understand
unconventional warfare in Iraq. Sure, there were isolated instances of
individuals, such as the one he cites. I interviewed many of these people and
wrote about many of them in my 2006 book Fiasco.
But one swallow doesn't make a summer. General Sanchez and other senior leaders
did not act upon such instances, and instead focused on large-scale
indiscriminate roundups of "military age males." The fact that they did not
take advantage of those moves underscores the point of my new book that the
troops did not fail in Iraq, but that
the Army's leaders at the time did.

Also, throughout General Brown's piece, there runs an
assumption that having more troops would have made a major difference during the
initial year of occupying Iraq. This is an unproven point. In my opinion, given
the poor leadership of Lt. Gen. Sanchez, having twice as many troops on the
ground in 2003-04 might well have resulted in having twice as many angry Iraqis
driven to support the insurgency. Given the indiscriminate roundups and
associated abuses that occurred that year by the units at Abu Ghraib, by the 82nd
Airborne and by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Anbar Province, and by the
4th Infantry Division in north-central Iraq, such a result seems
more likely than not. In addition, those roundups stuffed thousands of people
into the detention system, overwhelming the system and clogging the
interrogation of suspected terrorists, as well as helping provoke riots inside
the jails.

Did the Army really give a good account of itself in Iraq,
as General Brown asserts? If so, I would counter, why did it take the Army
until early 2007 to begin operating effectively in that war? The preceding
period of maladaptive operations, from 2003 to 2007, lasted longer than the
U.S. Army fought in World War II.

General Brown depicts the Army as a surprisingly passive
institution. Things just kind of happened to it. For example, in passing he
mentions Lt. Gen. Sanchez. But who selected Sanchez to command in Iraq? Who
thought that he was the best person for the job? Did that just happen to the
Army, or was its leadership simply a group of bystanders? The Army had a
responsibility to provide
the very best of leadership, talent, resources, and priorities to the fight in
Iraq. Did it?

Yes, I understand that the relationship between the defense
secretary and the Army's leadership was toxic in the spring of 2003, a crucial
period that shaped much of what followed. But this does not excuse the failure
to have an adequate Phase IV plan for Iraq, or for Army generals to say that
they had all the troops they needed if they indeed believed they did not, or to
insist that things were going well when it was clear to anyone on the streets
of Baghdad that they were not. All this cannot be blamed on Ambassador Bremer
and other civilians. At any rate, I would say that part of the duty of generals
is to speak truth to power, even with it makes civilian overseers
uncomfortable. It is not clear to me that the Army's generals did this in
2004-06.

The bottom line is that General Brown's commentary could
only be written by someone who never actually witnessed our war in Iraq.

The issue here is more important than someone simply
misunderstanding my book. I worry that a narrative is emerging in today's Army
that holds that the military pretty much did everything right, but that the
civilians screwed things up. Certainly, the Bush administration made huge
errors in invading and occupying Iraq. I've written more than one book that
looked at those.

But the military also made mistakes, and I don't see those
being addressed. This should be a time of sober reflection, not of hunkering
down and refusing to listen to reasonable criticisms. Why do we not see now
reviews akin to the Army War College's 1970 study on the state of the officer
corps? Until we see such hard, probing analysis that does not spare the
feelings of our generals, the accounts of the Iraq war that capture the
attention of the public and the Congress are indeed likely to be written by
outsiders.

Sincerely,

Thomas E. Ricks

Washington, DC

Soldier poets of the Great War: Hodgson's nobility vs. Sassoon's realism

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 26, 2013.

William Noel Hodgson
prayed ambivalently in his poem "Before Action":

By all delights that I shall miss,

Help me to die, O Lord.

At about the same
time, Siegfried Sassoon's thoughts were running colder as he marched
past a corps commander:

‘Eyes right!' The corpse-commander was a
Mute;

And Death leered round him, taking our
salute.

Deterring indiscipline by generals: A proposed code of conduct for flag officers

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 22, 2013.

Everyone has a good
idea of what discipline looks like in an enlisted soldier. He takes care of himself,
his gear and his comrades, he trains diligently, responds quickly to orders,
looks you in the eye when he speaks, keeps a good lookout.

But I don't think we
have a good idea of what discipline looks like in a general. I would begin with this list of
characteristics or rules of the road for flag officers:

Thinks of himself
as a steward of his profession, rather than as a member of a mutual protection
guild.




Rewards success and
relieves incompetents in his command after giving them a fair chance.




Enforces standards
for his peers as well as his subordinates, and is transparent in these efforts,
explaining what he is doing and why, and not just on a "need to know" basis.




Understands that it
is his duty to speak truth to power (in a respectful manner, and mainly on
matters of importance, rather than as a constant burr under the saddle) but
then, when the decision is made, executes lawful orders without griping to subordinates
or leaking to the media.




Seeks to surround
himself with officers and other advisors who can think critically, but
understands that it is his job first to think, and that the task cannot be
farmed out to "the 50-pound brains."




Strives to ensure
that he is not only trained as a general, but educated as one. (Training
prepares one for the known, education for the unknown, which is the bulk of
what a senior officer must deal with in the chaos of war.)




Doesn't do his
subordinates' jobs. Turns off the Predator feed after a few minutes. Focuses on
his level, and pushes decisionmaking down as far as possible. Only does the
jobs that only he can do.




Doesn't complain
about lack of "bandwidth" because he realizes it is part of the job of a general
to manage his time and inbox in order to give himself time to think.
Understands that if George Marshall could run World War II and still leave the
office by 5, he can run Camp Swampy without burning out subordinates -- or
second-guessing their every move.




Doesn't abuse his
power. Watches himself on that account.




Welcomes loyal
dissent, and cultivates an atmosphere of trust that rewards subordinates for
expressing doubts and concerns




In retirement,
doesn't drag his service into politics, but is free to be involved in politics
if he doesn't use his former rank or service affiliation.




In retirement,
doesn't go off to work in the defense industry and sell stuff to his former
subordinates.




In retirement, if
commenting as an expert on TV, learns to say "I don't know," if he doesn't.




When in doubt, he asks
himself " WWGMD ?" ("What would George Marshall do?")

'More Salvadors, Fewer Vietnams'

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 19, 2013.

That's the title for
a study I'd like to write about the future force structure of the U.S.
military. The military would be relatively small, and it would be told to focus
on having two capabilities: To quickly provide long-term, indirect,
small-footprint support in irregular conflicts, but also to have a cadre force
that could, given time, expand conventional forces. It would be designed to
avoid attempts to fight insurgencies with large
deployments of conventional forces.

Now the thing just
needs to be written.