it is:  A Failure in Generalship.  Fascinating article with lots of very interesting points.  Would like to hear what the military types here think.

...and I'd like to see where it begins to go.  He's hit on some critical changes in the military doctrinal approaches to conflict, taken an odd view of others, and has gone off the deep end on some.  But overall, a nice look at a military in transition.  It's regrettable these changes are taking place in the middle of a conflict but that's typically where we find the shortfalls in exisitng doctrine as the article points out, i.e., a military that was designed, trains, and equips for combat is now being used as a police force and street cop or peacekeeping and peacemaking missions which has always been left up to the UN and aid agencies.  The change from state conflicts to wars against non-state actors (terrorits, criminal syndicates, cartels, insurgents, etc.) was always the domain of the Special Forces not the regular Army and Marine Corps.  State on state conflict is the first priority of the military in defending the nation--that mission has to come first because the failure to prepare for that is annihilation.  These other missions are going to take a heckuva lot more people (boots on the ground) and a significant realignment of training and doctrinal priorities below nuclear. 

will eventually get the military doctrine and mind-set straightened out, at least for the boots-on-the-ground level. They will be powerless to correct the neocon strategic delusions at the political level, of which the top generals are but a subset. Only ceaseless bombardment by events on the ground and election of a new group of civilian policy makers can bring the needed strategic change.

On a related note, it appears that next-in-line UK PM Gordon Brown is laying the groundwork for a post-Blair exit strategy from Iraq. My guess is that Brown will distance himself quickly from the Bush/Blair debacle and will begin a UK withdrawal by this fall. The UK followed us into Iraq; perhaps under Gordon Brown the UK can help us to find a way out. Here is a link:

http://www.guardian....

Oh, and PM, that's a great photo that you tracked down.

And don't you love the very proper names: Lord Ashdown, Sir Jeremy Greenstock

In early officer training (Service academies, ROTC, Officer's Candidate Schools), trainees receive lengthy sessions on teamwork, loyalty, ethics, and honor all rolled into elaborate models of leadership. Uncompromising honesty dominates the doctrine. 

When an officer becomes commissioned and goes on active duty, many soon learn that there is a new set of "reality" rules that were not in the textbook.  Competition among contemporaries for recognition, assignments,  good evaluations,  and ultimately speedy rank acceleration become new motivations.  Service ideals may still be there but personal advancement objectives tend to rise to the top.

So now, one is competing against "team mates" for recognition and teamwork gets compromised.  In the a huge bureaucracy, one can frequently be less than honest about a lot of things and not get caught. Loyalty works best with those who can help me and ethics mean little on the battlefield.  Honor can be situational and "What the hell, everybody does it". 

In Vietnam, the Army officer corps was damn near decimated, not by casualties but by compromise.  It took decades to recover.  In the early days, there was a phrase of advice that was not even whispered, "Go along to get along." Don't question authority, give the bosses reports that please them, cover up, and, above all, protect yourself.

Read David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" and Neil Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie" to learn more about how lies, deciet, and "sanitized" if not fraudulent reporting led to that 15 year tragedy.  The reporting was "sanitized" by the generals, not the lieutenants.

This is not an indictment of the officer system.  There are and always have been a cadre of thoroughly honorable and spotless officers but the system frequently abandons them.  It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the officer who wrote today's critical piece.  God bless him......

 

There's some of what you describe, I would think, in all bureaucracies -- certainly in the ones I worked in.  But I can see how it gets magnified 100x in a battlefield context, where the "games" are real, the outcome life or death, and the magnitudes on the negative side ranging to catastrophic.

As a career government lawyer, if one spoke out, the only consequence was maybe a mediocre performance rating. 

Hmm, I read this article and the first thing that came to my mind is, how often in this nation's history have we started a war with generals in the top positions who met these high standards? 

But I guess at any time there are always some of those kind of generals.  Ultimately the responsibility of installing the right kind of generals at the top falls on the Congress and the President.  I wonder who was most responsible for Gen. Marshall and Adm. King being in charge in WWII?  I'm guessing FDR, but there may have been some Senator or Secretary of War who really should get the credit.

Concerning Irag, General Zinni has talked and written about how years of planning in the 1990's by CentCom for an invasion of Iraq were simply discarded by Rumsfeld's team, in favor of a plan utilizing a much smaller force.

So maybe the problem isn't an institutional problem with the way generals are selected, but a problem with this particular administration. 

Finally, the article makes a reference to "the Long War."  I really don't like the sound of that.  Here's the Wikipedia definition of "the Long War:

"The Long War is one of the names for the United States' War on Terrorism. While President George W. Bush has referred to "a long war", others in the administration have referred to it as "the Long War", thus putting the conflict, at least terminologically, on the same level as the 50-year Cold War. It has also been criticized as a "perpetual war," without any clear ending."

Is the decision to have the Long War final, or can we still cancel it?  Don't get me wrong, unlike Mitt Romney, I think it is important -- non-negotiable -- to kill or capture Bin Laden.  But please, no Long War. How can we do anything about global warming and other problems at home if we are tied down in a Long War? 

...a single individual (bin Laden) or a single nation-state.  It's against an ideology that is growing in more than 52 countries around the globe.  We focus on the breeding grounds but the activities are far more wide spread since those trained there go everywhere.  You can follow what we're up against daily at:
http://www.thereligi...

"Iraqis aren't dying from war. They are being murdered by
  Islamic terrorists."  And sources to support:

"More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined."

"Islamic terrorists murder more people every day than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years."

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to seeing the on-going daily recap.  THAT's the "Long War" we're up against and we ignore it at our peril as we did before 9/11...

The U.S. has maintained a huge standing military ever since the Korean War started, and if all we are talking about is defending ourselves from terrorism, to me that's just business as usual.  I am all for that.
http://www.defendame...

If "The Long War" is something different, something more, I'm not sure.  The burden should be on those advocating it to explain it to the public.

Here's the graf from Yingling's article that I'm talking about:

"To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility. Some of the answers will be shocking, which is perhaps why Congress has not asked and the generals have not told. Congress must ask for a candid assessment of the money and manpower required over the next generation to prevail in the Long War. The money required to prevail may place fiscal constraints on popular domestic priorities. The quantity and quality of manpower required may call into question the viability of the all-volunteer military."

...it became clear the LtCol had never participated in Defense hearings (about 170+ per year) or endless Congressional queries to the DoD every year (about 500+).  Each Service and the OSD have a small army of people devoted to responding to Congress in their Congressiona Liaison departments.  Every dime the military spends, and is planning on spending for the next six years (FYDP) is layed out in mind-boggling detail for anyone to see.
http://www.defenseli...

I see nothing that calls the viability of the all-vol force into question.  Recruiting quotas are being met and standards for critical skills remain high.  The quantity is another issue and I think we agree the numbers are insufficient for the current assigned global missions.

...have been ham-fisted and inept since they're at an early stage. Half the country has disengaged intellectually from this because they simply want to deny it exists...that's scary.  The bottom line is that we have a tool (the military) and that tool is not configured for a growing part of the overall task at hand (national defense).  The military will continue to do well in combat situations--they haven't lost a force-on-force engagement yet. But the growing threat to our nation and our allies isn't something the military was ever designed or trained to face (again, Special Forces notwithstanding).  It doesn't matter if you cal it the "Long War" or not, it is a conflict that will last at least two generations.  You pick the name.

I enjoy that Defend America link and read it routinely. Those great men and women know what's at stake because they see it daily.  God bless and protect each one of them.

Perhaps the Lt. Col has some valid points, but ultimately the direction of the military comes from the Executive branch and civilian leadership.

This objectives of this war were not, and are not, clear.  Why are we there?  Why did we go?  None of the answers given make any sense.  You can't fight a war and achieve objectives unless you have a clear mission.

We stomped the crap out of those opposing us during the more traditional military-style war.  We failed miserably at nation building and keeping the peace.  The tough part of the war began after the President declared victory on that aircraft carrier.

I think a single bullet would have achieved the same thing.  In many aspects, it would have been better.  Enabling a coup or assassination attempt (indirectly if need be) would have been so much more affordable and spared so many lives on both sides.  Plus - we could have focused on the real threat who is sitting in some cave today.  Who knows, he may be shopping in a luxury mall by now.  It doesn't look like this government is still in pursuit.