Getting Strategy Right

[Polarbear1605]

Please remember, the “Sins of Generals” letters were written to attack and attack at personal level by challenging something that should be important to generals …their leadership. The letters are an attempt to change their opinion. I also recognize it is an attack upon windmills. Where they support my argument about strategy vs command structure…they point out bad leadership and failure to follow the command structure.

The author claims the investigation was in violation of the intent of the G-N Act. I'm familiar with many cases where individuals were accused of violating regulations or laws while under COCOM authority and their cases were reffered back to their Services for the investigation (with COCOM oversight) and if guilty punishment.

Correct…however, Gen Chiarelli then sends the investigation to the in county MARFOR Commander and he then involves the service lead, the Commandant. Chiarelli did not probably refer the investigation before the Commandant got involved and violated the unified command structure. Yes, he has the right to refer but he must refer through the G-N command structure…after all…it’s the LAW.
Now another argument …and this has never been tested in a court martial (and IMO it is just a matter of time before a lawyer figures this one out) COCOM rests with the Combat Commander and cannot be delegated. G-N specifically provides the COCOM court martial authority. Haditha was clearly a combat action conducted by Marines properly deployed to Iraq with a unified command deployment order. (BTW I believe we cannot say the same for all of the 65 NCIS agents sent to Iraq, probably TAD vs deployment order, to conduct and complete Chiarelli’s investigation.) Do the services have the authority to prosecute actions resulting under COCOM authority when COCOM cannot be delegated? The unwritten leadership rule here is if you have an issue within your command … you handle it.
The battalion commander’s court martial is dismissed because of undue command influence by the I MEF convening authority, General Mattis. The military judge ordered charges against the battalion commander dismissed, citing unlawful command influence. That ruling determined that a legal adviser for the prosecution should not have had any role in the case. The adviser, Col. John Ewers, had investigated each of the accused Marines and was listed as a prosecution witness. The military judge concluded Col Ewers presence at the I MEF meetings with General Mattis overseeing the Haditha cases and prosecutors created an unacceptable perception of unlawful command influence. The short answer here is the lawyers forgot that I MEF and MARFORCENT are two separate commands, one with the traditional service chain of command and the other the unified chain of command. BTW I also think the Commandant forgot about the unified command structure opening him up for undue command influence charges.
The three above items are leadership issues because general officers did not properly use the unified command structure.

I don't think that is a violation of Title 10 since the services are responsible for the morale and discipline of their people.

Or have we not properly integrated Title 18 (War Crimes) into the unified command structure? Sorry, this is a distraction…just could not resist.

The COCOM on the other hand is responsible for conducting operations, and unfortunately by default for developing strategy. This is your field of expertise, not mine…

No offense to JMM here, but don’t do that. This was a leadership issue and not a legal issue…the general’s deferred to the lawyers and got themselves into a real mess. Again JMM …no offense intended here.

Regardless of real motives, and I don't see how this is relevant to the larger "getting strategy" right discussion? What am I missing?

Haditha is a case of “strategic legalism” and that is a symptom of bad strategy and not a bad command structure. The battalion operations and the squad’s tactic were excellent. The general’s strategy??? My opinion is fixing strategy is not a matter of fixing the command structure…it is a matter of fixing strategic leadership.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Polarbear,

Haditha is a case of “strategic legalism” and that is a symptom of bad strategy and not a bad command structure. The battalion operations and the squad’s tactic were excellent. The general’s strategy??? My opinion is fixing strategy is not a matter of fixing the command structure…it is a matter of fixing strategic leadership.

Flaws in military leadership exist, have existed and will continue to exist regardless of C2 structure. Lack of moral courage to change the criteria for becoming a senior officer (most important is character, is he is a self serving politician or a true warrior that believes in mission first, men next and finally him/herself) will probably continue, because as either you or Ken stated those who have the means to change the system are not about to do so, because they're a product of the current system.

I agree with most of your comments, and I am not going to pretend to have enough expertise in the legal arena to challenge either you or Mike. In that field I only ask questions and offer uneducated opinion. I think the Haditha issue was both a leadership and legalistic issue that turned into a national embarassment because of the way it was handled. It shouldn't have even been an issue, but again as either you or Ken pointed out the military tried to converge its values with civilian values. This was a war, not a police action and we can't afford to pause after shooting event where civilians die and investigate it. It will destroy us a fighing force. Can you imagine this level of control during WWII?

However, I still think you are intentionally avoiding the real issue of overall national strategy, which is the result of the national level command structure. Yes both Haditha and Abu Ghraib had strategic impact, but neither were part of a strategy. Let's not forget that civilian leaders like the Vice President and SECDEF openly endorsed enhanced interrogation methods, which probably clouded the perception of right and wrong by uniformed leadership at that time. Don't really want to go down that path, but it wasn't just military leadership that failed. There are numerous examples of leadership failures that had strategic impact, but few of these events (if any) were part of a coherent strategy, but rather the tragic result of human behavior when we're at war. We can't allow these events to derail us from the pursuit of the larger strategy (assuming it actually exists).

You said if a General Officer doesn't know how to execute counterinsurgency operations he should be told to retire? Another way to look at it is if he got to where he is by demonstrating competence in the required fields, then obviously COIN was not a required competency, and many before him should also be held to blame (I'll take it a step further, now we're raising a generation of officers that don't know anything but COIN, what will happen if they have to fight a real war?). However, I don't think it was the inability to execute COIN that was our strategic failure, but rather getting put in a position where we had to do COIN to begin with (in both Iraq and Afghanistan).

I don't want to cross any security lines, but I was involved in the initial planning for OIF and can state confidently there was clearly a strategic planning shortfall for what came after Saddam's regime fell. There was also a period of a few weeks/months after we occupied the major cities in Iraq where the military was largely operationally paralyzed in my opinion because we didn't know what our civilian leadership wanted. Out of necessity individual units started acting on their own, policing the streets, standing up local governments, etc. towards no particular end other than some semblance of stability while our national leadership decided on what next. Is that a failure at the General Officer level, or is the result of not having a national level strategy planning capability above the COCOM?

[Polarbear1605]

However, I still think you are intentionally avoiding the real issue of overall national strategy, which is the result of the national level command structure. Yes both Haditha and Abu Ghraib had strategic impact, but neither were part of a strategy.

Bill thanks for the comments and especially your time. I do not agree I am avoiding the issue...lol…with this many postings in this short period of time I think I have demonstrated engagement by trying to explain my argument. Yes, I agree, we need and we are not getting a national strategy. What I cannot see is how changing the military command structure will correct the deficiency. The current system with it current deficiencies could produce a national military strategy if the chairman wanted to step up to the plate or if the president told him to create it (of course that assumes the president understands what a national military strategy is).

… the initial planning for OIF and can state confidently there was clearly a strategic planning shortfall for what came after Saddam's regime fell. There was also a period of a few weeks/months after we occupied the major cities in Iraq where the military was largely operationally paralyzed in my opinion because we didn't know what our civilian leadership wanted. Out of necessity individual units started acting on their own, policing the streets, standing up local governments, etc. towards no particular end other than some semblance of stability while our national leadership decided on what next. Is that a failure at the General Officer level, or is the result of not having a national level strategy planning capability above the COCOM?

Yes, it is a failure at the general officer COCOM/CENTCOM level of strategic planning and execution. All of those deficiencies you mention are COCOM/CENTCOM responsibilities that were not fulfilled. Before OIF General Zinnie, as CINCCENT, ran a series of war games called Desert Crossing. Those war games resulted in a number of issues that were ignored and forgotten and they were very same issues we hit after the initial invasion of Iraq. COCOM is set up under the current command structure to avoid those political and strategic mistakes. I don’t see how moving those missed responsibilities to a national command authority would correct those issues. Four stars or five stars….general officers are general officers. We don't need to change the command structure we need to change general officers

[Bill Moore]

Polarbear, you're absolutely right you're not ignoring this issue, and I appreciate your intelligent input to the discussion. Where I accused you of ignoring the issue in actuality is simply disagreement. We have found a lot of common ground, but we still disagree on the causes of strategy failures in some cases, and the proposed structure changes (not sure you think a structure change is needed, and agree a structure change by itself will accomplish nothing).

If the civilian leadership told the military to plan an occupation of Iraq, and then CENTCOM leadership failed to plan to be an occupation force then I agree that would be a failure of the Generals and their staff.

While not certain, I don't believe our civilian leadership told CENTCOM to do that. I recall Rumfield (civiilan leadership) discouraged large troop numbers and actually implied GEN Shinseki was a fool to propose up to 400k troops to facilitate an occupation. Of course we know who the fool is now. Anyone correct me if I wrong, but I believe the intent/vision at the time in the White House was to conduct rapid decisive operations to throw Saddam out (and don't forget we assumed the Iraqi military would capitulate and join ranks with us), then DOD civilian leadership would put in their puppet leader in place and we would all go home. I know some Generals addressed this issue and were told to be quiet and row the way they were being told to row, since these issues were above their paygrade. If it unfolded that way can we really blame the Generals? If they resigned in protest a butt sucker would gladly step up to row the way he was told to do so.

Again if civilian leadership told CENTCOM they were responsible for occupying, stabilizing and then facilitating a transition to a democratic government in Iraq I'm confident that the Generals would have planned to do that. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think they would have blown that off.

I also recall quite a bit of bickering between DOD and DOS about the future of Iraq and how to get there. That all should have been decided by a stragetic planning body in my opinion prior to crossing the point of no return.

However, I'll entertain your point that this was a CENTCOM responsibility. One problem we actually had was the critical issues with Turkey, which falls under EUCOM. CENTCOM and EUCOM had different views on how to proceed. Who is the final arbitrator in the current system?

I also want to propose a future scenario where we have another Axis like coalition that we go to war with that has allies in multiple COCOM AORs (kind of like Al Qaeda, but I'm now talking about States now, much more serious threat). We need a global strategy to deal with it, who prepares it? Who leads it? What COCOM in the current structure is responsible? Of course that is just DOD, so who compels the other interagency members to row with us? We talk whole of government approach, but that doesn't happen much above the PRTs in combat zones.

Maybe there are answers to these questions and the current system would work if we used it as designed. If that is the case I'm not aware of the processes. Rumfield made SOCOM the global synchronizer for the War on Terror, but they have no authority to compel anyone to do anything. Each COCOM does what they want, and the different government agencies do what they want. Hell of a way to fight a war.

I still think there is a valid argument for structure change, and agree that we need better Generals in some cases.

[jmm99]

The 2002 Iraq AUMF.pdf (attached) is long on "Whereases" and short on guidance for the use of military force:

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

This is the controlling policy statement for Operation Iraqi Freedom (passed by Congress and approved by Pres. Bush).

Of Bush Admin members, John Bolton is the only one I've seen on record (from March 2007) who asserts he espoused an "invade and leave" policy - see my post, Backgrounder.

3/25[/2007]
BBC Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman
.....
Iraq 4 Years On: A Neo-con Rethink?
....
Q. Is there not an American responsibility, having invaded a country, dismantled all the apparatus of government, to ensure the citizens of that country are not murdered?

A. I think it's the responsibility which we've tried to fulfill to turn it back over to the Iraqis... We made a mistake in hindsight not turning it over to them earlier.
....
But we don't have a responsibility to make the government of Iraq succeed, that's their responsibility.

Q. Do you have a responsibility to keep the peace or not?

A. I think that's their responsibility too. I think we're all agreed the sooner the Iraqis can decide whether they're gonna do that or not the the better off everyone is.

Q. You sound as if you're washing your hands of the whole affair?
...
A. What I would have done differently is much earlier, much sooner after the overthrow, given it back to the Iraqis, and I'll exaggerate for effect here, but given them a copy of the Federalist Papers and said good luck.

Any others known to our readers, please advise.

My earlier question, Question on "invade & leave", was generated in part by a comment from one Bill Moore in his post, This will stir debate:

Perhaps I'm bias[ed], but I sensed we could have won this war rather quickly if we were more realistic. The Iraqi people I talked to were expecting the invasion for years, and they wondered what took us so long. They wanted us to replace Saddam and then leave.

So, in the case of Iraq, unrealistric (actually non-existent) policy guidance - other than reference to enforcement of the UN Resolutions.

These posts are from Iraq: Pre-War Planning, a thread started in 2006 by Jedburgh. The first reference was to the New State Department Releases on the "Future of Iraq" Project:

Less than one month after the September 11 attacks, the State Department in October 2001 began planning the post-Saddam Hussein transition in Iraq. Under the direction of former State official Thomas S. Warrick, the Department organized over 200 Iraqi engineers, lawyers, businesspeople, doctors and other experts into 17 working groups to strategize on topics including the following: public health and humanitarian needs, transparency and anti-corruption, oil and energy, defense policy and institutions, transitional justice, democratic principles and procedures, local government, civil society capacity building, education, free media, water, agriculture and environment and economy and infrastructure.

Thirty-three total meetings were held primarily in Washington from July 2002 through early April 2003. As part of the internal bureaucratic battle for control over Iraq policy within the Bush administration, the Department of Defense's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), itself replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in May 2003, would ultimately assume responsibility for post-war planning in accordance with National Security Presidential Directive 24 signed on January 20, 2003. According to some press accounts, the Defense Department largely ignored the report, although DOD officials deny that.

The result of the project was a 1,200-page 13-volume report that contains a multitude of facts, strategies, predictions and warnings about a diverse range of complex and potentially explosive issues, some of which have since developed as the report's authors anticipated...

Of course, you can have contingency studies and plans up the DoS and DoD kazoos; but those ain't one iota of policy guidance from the NCA.

Regards

Mike

[Bill Moore]

Mike,

Thirty-three total meetings were held primarily in Washington from July 2002 through early April 2003. As part of the internal bureaucratic battle for control over Iraq policy within the Bush administration, the Department of Defense's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), itself replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)

in May 2003, would ultimately assume responsibility for post-war planning in accordance with National Security Presidential Directive 24 signed on January 20, 2003.

According to some press accounts, the Defense Department largely ignored the report, although DOD officials deny that.

Adhocery at its best, and real planning didn't start until May 03? 2-3 months after we invaded....outstanding strategy process we have. Also reinforces my point that CENTCOM probably wasn't given this mission, it was a tug a war between State and DOD for ownership, but then when it turned bad neither one of them wanted it.

We all know we can do better than this.

[jmm99]

am I making. Seriously.

Cheers

Mike

[Ken White]

...The current system with it current deficiencies could produce a national military strategy if the chairman wanted to step up to the plate or if the president told him to create it (of course that assumes the president understands what a national military strategy is).

I don't believe that's correct. G-N says the Chairman is the principal military adviser to the President but he specifically does not have command authority. He can direct the Joint Staff to do all sorts of things and make neat plans that the Prez approves but he cannot force the GCCs to accept said Joint Plans -- nor, really can the SecDef. That's why you're confronted with Schwarzkopf being visited by the SecDef and CJCS, Franks, Petreaus and McChrystal going to the WH (and Fallon getting his walking papers; that too is another thread). That is the issue with G-N -- it made the CJCS a fifth wheel.

With some of them, that's not all bad but with the wrong SecDef or President, its an invitation to stupidity at best or disaster at worst.

Yes, it is a failure at the general officer COCOM/CENTCOM level of strategic planning and execution. All of those deficiencies you mention are COCOM/CENTCOM responsibilities that were not fulfilled...I don’t see how moving those missed responsibilities to a national command authority would correct those issues. Four stars or five stars….general officers are general officers. We don't need to change the command structure we need to change general officers

For OIF, both the G3 of the Army and the Army War College produced detailed studies which specifically targeted the post attack actions. I have heard that J3 JCS did also. Franks ignored them.

CentCom has done more damage to the prosecution of the effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq than should have been allowed -- yet the system does not allow anyone to tell them they're wrong or force them to change their MO...

Changing the Command structure will not fix the problem of marginally competent FlagOs. That is a human frailty and personnel selection and management problem. Changing that structure will fix a chain of command that is awry and will delineate responsibilities and thus improve accountability. It will stop five and a half plus one geographically distantly located and focused Commands from doing it their way. As I said, the idea of decentralization was great. As you say, we do not have the FlagO quality to make it work.

To develop that FlagO quality will take years and major changes in the personnel, education and training systems. To improve C2 to lessen the adverse impact of less than stellar commanders who rotate through their jobs far too rapidly is a simple fix. Check their ability to do harm and balance them with a more powerful military adviser to the President...

[jmm99]

from PB
No offense to JMM here, but don’t do that. This was a leadership issue and not a legal issue…the general’s deferred to the lawyers and got themselves into a real mess. Again JMM …no offense intended here.

Accords with these rules:

McCarthy's Rule No 1: He who represents himself by being his own lawyer has a fool for a client even if he is a lawyer.

McCarthy's Rule No 1 (lots of Rules Nos 1): The leader (business or military) who defers to his lawyers to make substantive (business or military) decisions is a very foolish client - and probably a very CYAing one to boot.

Operational lawyers ("operational law" not having any origin in the operational level of war) should not be making either strategic or tactical decisions. They should advise as to the available legal alternatives under the law as it stands. Lawyers who are part of the prosecutorial or defense teams should not engage, or have engaged, in advising commanders re: the case.

Haditha et al (e.g., the underlying problem faced by CPT Hill) evidence a problem in integration of the Rule of Law and the Laws of War. That problem comes more from the civilian side ("National Command Authorities") and its unrealistic taskings; but also comes from the "Generals" who accept those taskings.

You don't see much from non-lawyer military officers on the problem (aside from Weimann). Pete Newell is the only other one that I've run into - for his thesis, see my post, LoW, ROEs & the ethics/morality of warfare ...

What I call "unrealistic taskings" permeate the structure from top down - one may start with Korea (as LTC Melton does), a "police action" - Ken, you still have your badge ? FM 3-24 is a modernized version of the same in some particulars.

I do believe in complete integration of the political struggle and the military struggle in all armed conflicts (yup, Mao and Giap - more Giap); with the realization that the political struggle will be of lesser consequence in conventional warfare, and of more consequence in unconventional warfare (that line of thought from Bill Moore a while back). So, my take is a bit different than Wilf's (he is more Brig. "Trotsky" Davies; I am more Envar Hoxha - my post, A fundamental divide).

Yet, even where most of the struggle is political (let's say 95%), you still have a 5% violence component that is not best handled under the Rule of Law. However, that 5% can be handled under the Laws of War - and the other 95% can handled under that specialized Rule of Law which subsists under Military Occupation or Martial Law. In short, you can have a very broad hunting license, but refrain from killing everything in the forest.

Nuff said for now. I speak when spoken to. Woof

Regards

Mike