Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures'
27 April Washington Post - Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures' by Tom Ricks.
Quote:
An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there.
"America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq," charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "The intellectual and moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals."...
The article, "General Failure," is to be published today in Armed Forces Journal and is posted at
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198. Its appearance signals the public emergence of a split inside the military between younger, mid-career officers and the top brass.
Many majors and lieutenant colonels have privately expressed anger and frustration with the performance of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and other top commanders in the war, calling them slow to grasp the realities of the war and overly optimistic in their assessments...
Armed Forces Journal - A Failure in Generalship by LTC Paul Yingling.
Quote:
For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.
These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress...
Key Quote:
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"As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war"...
- They Ain't Fragging Officers
Yingling says, "Don't train on finding the enemy, train on finding friends and they will help you find your enemy". Fine, and as a dumb civilian, I ask, what does this friendship cost? What's the payback for them for helping to find enemies? Let me guess, they only want equal participation in Democracy, equal rights, equal opportunity, a purple finger and an Iraqi Thomas Jefferson. Of course they want security and I believe any cultivated friendship with a Sunni will have the payoff of identifying Shia' thugs and terrorists or anyone aiding said Shias. That should get the newly found friend first chance at new infractructure and jobs, right? Finding friends circumvents the dynamics of tribalism and religious sects but doesn't solve the problem, nor the problem of AQ playing each against the other. The cooperation of the Anbar Sheikhs is not a reflection of the democratic process or religious compromise. I can't be convinced to the contrary at this point in time. The selling point of COIN as a dynamic component in unifying Iraq into some homogeneous, cohesive, quasi-democratic entity capable of being a strategic friend to the US is still on the proving grounds. I want and hope it succeeds but you folks remain mission specific at this time and are not at the strategic table of foreign policy. I pray you are given a chair at that table. I presume Yingling will be talking to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who should be most receptive to him, and I'm not being sarcastic here either, just bitter.
I see that Yingling deployed again in March O5 for a another year's duty in Iraq. I'm wondering why it took such an obviously intelligent man another year to compile his thoughts and feelings into a report and said report manifests just as efforts are under the way to pull the plug on the whole shooting match. As a former L/Cpl and in going along with the format of openess and full disclosure, I would be interested in seeing a nice published report compiled by the rank and file of the Enlisted Men/Women on the Officer Corps in general serving in Iraq and Yingling in particular. They ain't fragging Officers, I know that much but not a whole lot more.