Loss and Accountability

Shades of LTC Yingling's famous article, I found this blog post a striking indictment:

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See, every time a soldier dies, the Army must conduct what’s called a 15-6 investigation (pdf). While AR 15-6 investigations come in a variety of shapes and sizes, when a death is involved a 15-6 is ordered by a general court-marshal authority. It is a very big deal. Even if the investigation not only clears but lauds the investigated, it is such an enormous hassle, and such a distraction from doing anything else for a very long time, that it is understandable to want to avoid them whenever possible (this is ignoring the moral and ethical side of having a soldier die under one’s watch). While discussing this, the LTC got a bit agitated.

“You know what, though?” He said, his voice rising a bit. “People die in war. It sucks, but it has to happen to get things done.” I was a bit taken aback. Even though I’ve spent years in military contracting, I’m not used to hearing people talk like this. He was right—basic tenets of counterinsurgency, like what I call “the lie of force protection” (i.e. force protection makes you less safe), actually do put people at risk and make them more likely to die. Effective counterinsurgency is a dangerous business. But then the LTC dropped a bombshell that got me to thinking.

“No one has ever gotten a 15-6 for losing a village in Afghanistan,” he said. “But if he loses a soldier defending that village from the Taliban, he gets investigated.”

As soon as he said it, we both paused for a second and looked at each other.

“I think you just explained why we’re losing,” I said, meaning every word.

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h/t Spencer Ackerman

It is interesting, to date, no senior leader has been held accountable in either theater for their AO getting worse on their watch.

I re-read Rick Atkinson's Army at Dawn recently and was struck again at how many senior officers, all "good men" were relieved for non-performance. Ultimately, the army sent the message it valued results over a "good try", even with limited assets.

Has LTC Yingling's article had any effect? Should it?

Thanks for the thread and framing it objectively. It's an emotional topic.

It's a challenging problem. As I've watched some of my friends and peers struggle in combat command, I always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's part of our culture to say well "he's a good dude." Thankfully, I only had to observed. In command, I was forced to fire one leader for incompetence.

I suppose our senior officers are the same way as far as relationships, friendships, and networks go.

When I initially read Rick's Fiasco, I was frustrated with the senior leaders portrayed in that book. Then, I had to remind myself that it was one account and I had not walked in their shoes.

Regardless, when it comes to firing someone for failure to perform or incompetence, that's called moral courage. If you want to command, then you have to seperate professional from personal. When mission and men are involved, there's no alternative.

It's not easy.

v/r

Mike

This lack of accountability was and is a major frustration to me. While I was in Iraq 05-06, the situation was not getting better, and the super FOB strategy was not working. BCTs did their best to control the AO's, but as we did convoys throughout, units only controlled their bases and the blocks they were standing on. As deployment continued, units rotated out, and leaders were told good job, promoted, or retired. Nobody was fired or chewed out. When my platoon messed up on convoys, I heard about it from my commander. If senior leaders were hearing about it, it wasn't public, and did not have much effect.

During a post-deployment OPD, we discussed LTC Nagl's book, and the BC asked if the Army was a learning institution. I thought about it, and my answer: Vietnam: GEN Westmoreland-things get worse, promoted to CSA. Iraq: GEN Casey=things get worse, promoted to CSA.

LTC Yingling's quote that a Soldier losing a rifle is punished worse than a general losing a war is dead on, sadly.

was so fierce that it forced folks to be cut throat and very self centered on occasion and that often translated into giving buddies a break -- particularly if said break was after an event that had removed that person from competition.

DOPMA and Congress are very much involved in this syndrome. In a misguided attempt to legislate fairness, they inadvertently created a process that says if it's your turn, you go into a slot -- whether the best person for that job or not isn't he issue. That often sets people up for failure (See Sanchez, R.) and the system knows it was not fair to the individual who may be perceived as having done the best he could with a bad hand (see Westmoreland, W.).

That, in itself is unfair and the Army jerks General Officers around in ways that are often hard to believe. For that jerking, the paybacks are the few perks -- and being almost impossible to to harm because the other guys know how much hassle you've undergone and will try to protect you -- and the institution. Make no mistake, protecting the institution is a big part of it. The current processes work against another DePuy or Paul D. Adams

Both of those guys were prone to relief for cause for eye blinks much less anything worse; that totally messed up the personnel system and set the Per trolls scrambling to find replacements (they hate that). So they changed the system to keep their workload steady, good of the Army and the nation regardless...

That makes future DePuys and Adams less likely. Unless there's a major war, then the rules go out the window. Based on the last big one, it takes about 20 years for the system to get completely back in the 'peacetime army' mode.

I don't think Yingling's article has yet had any significant effect -- it may, TBD. It should, no question because he was and is correct. I rarely interject myself in anyone's life but I sent him an AKO e-mail the day after his article came out and thanked him.

I'd be curious to know whether GEN Casey attempted the super-FOB strategy because...
a) he received direction from the civilian leadership that casualty reduction was the number one priority
b) he thought he saw the writing on the wall for a troop withdrawal and was attempting to make it less painful by consolidating us in preparation for a sloppy evacuation
c) he truly thought that consolidating everybody onto FOBs would accomplish something productive
d) something else

Until I know that, I'm hesitant to criticize. Options (a) and (b), to me, would seem forgivable and somewhat understandable. Option (c) seems unfathomably dumb, even lacking today's hindsight. But if I learned nothing else in the Army - and some would say I didn't - it is that lots of decisions that are very easy to criticize, from the outside, had a whole lot of complicated variables that most people are not aware of. And when people become aware of and understand those variables, they tend to view the decisions as slightly less stupid.

See also: this recent comment

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Originally Posted by Schmedlap

I'd be curious to know whether GEN Casey attempted the super-FOB strategy because...
a) he received direction from the civilian leadership that casualty reduction was the number one priority
b) he thought he saw the writing on the wall for a troop withdrawal and was attempting to make it less painful by consolidating us in preparation for a sloppy evacuation
c) he truly thought that consolidating everybody onto FOBs would accomplish something productive
d) something else

Until I know that, I'm hesitant to criticize. Options (a) and (b), to me, would seem forgivable and somewhat understandable. Option (c) seems unfathomably dumb, even lacking today's hindsight. But if I learned nothing else in the Army - and some would say I didn't - it is that lots of decisions that are very easy to criticize, from the outside, had a whole lot of complicated variables that most people are not aware of. And when people become aware of and understand those variables, they tend to view the decisions as slightly less stupid.

See also: this recent comment

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Schmedlap,

The super-FOB approach was being pushed pre-MNC/F-I. When my brigade RIP/TOAed with 101 ABN DIV, we tried to maintain company outposts and were shot down based on guidance reaching to CJTF-7 that mandated downsizing to enduring FOBs. I know from reading after the fact that GEN Abizaid felt that a smaller footprint and a reduced presence in the cities would help.

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Originally Posted by Shek

The super-FOB approach was being pushed pre-MNC/F-I. When my brigade RIP/TOAed with 101 ABN DIV, we tried to maintain company outposts and were shot down based on guidance reaching to CJTF-7 that mandated downsizing to enduring FOBs. I know from reading after the fact that GEN Abizaid felt that a smaller footprint and a reduced presence in the cities would help.

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I remember reading something to that effect in 2006 - I think it was an article about Seabees in Djibouti or something where he mentioned it. That is what was in the public domain. But if (a) or (b) were options, I doubt they would have been in the public domain, at the time. It seems unlikely that the decision was as simple as Abizaid's hunch regarding a reduced presence. If there wasn't more to it than that, then the decision-making was worse than the critics say.

Sounds like you and I RIP/TOA'd at the same time. We ran into the same problem, handing our AO over to 101st. We spent a year operating with good success from a patrol base. We weren't flipping tribes over to the coalition, but we had taken an extremist safe haven and turned it into an area where they had no sanctuary or freedom of movement and their operations were disrupted as soon as they initiated them. As thanks for our efforts, our patrol base was handed over to IA, instead of 101, and the locals were essentially left to fend for themselves. 12 months, 10 lives, and 10 limbs. Two months later, it was like we were never there (except for the absence of 200 or so jerkoffs whom we gunned down). Unfrickingbelievable.

CentCom to mess up anything...

Here's the link to that article, though it's not quite as I remembered: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115715866513352457.html

In particular, here is one passage that sticks out to me:

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The general's critics say such a strategy isn't bold enough. "The 'long war' is not a war to transform the Middle East -- it's a light hand and get out of there as fast as you can," says Thomas Donnelly, a conservative military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

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That's kind of what I was suggesting in "option (b)"