Time to hold the US generals accountable for Afg. and Iraq

[Ken White]

We really need more than introspection. A very thorough relook and recasting of effort is long overdue. That's a belief held by a great many inside and out of the armed forces. The real issue is what form such a deep look and recasting might take. The important question, around really since World War II, is why has such a deep look not occurred. The answer to that lies in part with the services but about 80% of the problem is blatantly political and predicated not on the defense of the US, not in relation to our foreign affairs but rather on our domestic politics. That factor means design inefficiencies for political preference reasons...

That said, what David Rothkopf has also done is write a well crafted political hit piece that touts all his beliefs. That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do though I suggest that a more honest approach would achieve better results.

He's been around enough -- worked for Kissinger Associates, the Carnegie Endowment and was in the Clinton Administration so he's being rather facile in gently and subtly blaming the Armed Forces for things 'they' have done or not done while not really doing more than aiming a few minor sideswipes at the many shills and ills of the politicians and of Congress who like the way things now operate. Those are the folks who established and support the current system -- and who prefer a degree of ineptitude on the part of the armed services. Mr. Rothkopf is correctly saying the service need to take a deep honest look and begin some fixing. He is quite wrong in not holding the several Administrations and Congresses accountable for not forcing such a fix -- a fix that will never occur unless it is forced. Why should it be otherwise...

Established is a good word. He's part of the Establishment -- they're 80% of the problem and he wants the 20% to do better...

[Fuchs]

Ken, some problems are about the president and the advice he gets.

I remember a recount from a WH meeting where (supposedly) the Biden plan and a 'surge' were discussed. Obama was undecided so far. He said (supposedly) something along the lines of 'either the military can win this in 18 months with a surge or it won't at all, so we'd need to leave'. Petraeus jumped in and confirmed exactly this; 18 months time to turn AFG around or else it would be the right thing to withdraw after 18 months. Obama accepted and pushed the smaller CT/TF Ranger-style plan aside.

18 months later Petraeus had left of the mess to his successor and the surge (or whatever it was; maybe "double down"?) failed (obviously!?).


The military is to blame for much on the political level (same in other countries), for it simply did not do its job at the high level. It did not advise well, it did not overcome its primitive 'can do' attitude, it did not overcome its bureaucratic instincts.


edit: It did not move quickly enough against its incompetent or even toxic leaders either.

[Dayuhan]

If we're going to apply scrutiny to and question the competence of generals who failed to achieve the objective of transforming Afghanistan, shouldn't we apply equal or greater scrutiny to the politicians and policymakers who elected to pursue that rather bizarre objective in the first place?

[Fuchs]

That is supposed to happen in about 4 year intervals.

[Dayuhan]

That is supposed to happen in about 4 year intervals.

One of those intervals approaches, so you can expect to see everybody who might be held accountable demanding that somebody else be held accountable.

[Bill Moore]

We gave our military virtually everything it asked for.

Yet, in the wars we have just been through, we are left with a troubling track record.

Some senior military leaders may have failed, but as others have pointed out our civilian leaders are the real blame for developing policy end states that were not and are not achievable through the application of military force.

The only people who speak positively about our current strategy are our senior leaders, so it appears our public affairs propaganda actually has more impact on our leaders than the intended audience and they have simply followed their own deception, or worse they're lying to the American people. Missteps are understandable and should be always be expected in war, and should be forgiven, but failing to learn and adapt is not. More stupid rarely works, recognizing something is stupid and then trying something else is more likely to succeed.

Leaders must be encouraged to generate independent ideas and then have the moral courage to voice them. Responsibility, moral courage, and competence are all intermingled and should be part of this discussion for both civilian and military leaders. I rarely see debates anymore, our leaders should deeply debate strategies and only salute and move out once the final decision is made, but now we're very quick to default to group think. Why? What has changed?

We have also lost our ability to judge our actions or their consequences with a critical eye.

The author may be right, but it is due more to a culture that prohibts being self-critical rather than having lost our ability to do so. Mistakes are common in war, that is why the credit belongs to the man in the arena, but the man in the arena is expected to be a thinking man capable of adapting, not something less than a man who blindly follows doctrine or a plan.

[JMA]

Leaders must be encouraged to generate independent ideas and then have the moral courage to voice them. Responsibility, moral courage, and competence are all intermingled and should be part of this discussion for both civilian and military leaders. I rarely see debates anymore, our leaders should deeply debate strategies and only salute and move out once the final decision is made, but now we're very quick to default to group think. Why? What has changed?

Because the moral courage to speak out and pension stability are incompatible. Soldiers who need/rely on their military pension will fold under pressure.

As is said, pension slavery makes (moral) cowards out of (physically) brave men.

My suggestion is that instead of borrowing billions from China to give to the Afghan kleptocracy who turn move it to Dubai (and other places)... why not look after your soldiers who have given the best years of their lives to the service and provide them with bullet proof pensions (safe from the despicable influence... and grubby paws of your politicians).

[Dayuhan]

Leaders must be encouraged to generate independent ideas and then have the moral courage to voice them. Responsibility, moral courage, and competence are all intermingled and should be part of this discussion for both civilian and military leaders. I rarely see debates anymore, our leaders should deeply debate strategies and only salute and move out once the final decision is made, but now we're very quick to default to group think. Why? What has changed? .

Are the debates not happening at all, or are they just not happening in public?

Because the moral courage to speak out and pension stability are incompatible. Soldiers who need/rely on their military pension will fold under pressure.

As is said, pension slavery makes (moral) cowards out of (physically) brave men.

My suggestion is that instead of borrowing billions from China to give to the Afghan kleptocracy who turn move it to Dubai (and other places)... why not look after your soldiers who have given the best years of their lives to the service and provide them with bullet proof pensions (safe from the despicable influence... and grubby paws of your politicians).

How many officers have lost their pensions for giving advice that politicians don't want to hear? Obviously generals, like (for example) ambassadors, are expected not to publicly challenge decisions, but are there really such severe repercussions for dissenting opinions expressed through accepted channels? If a senior officer had expressed the opinion that occupying Afghanistan and trying to democratize it was a perverse enterprise destined for failure no matter what strategies were adopted, would he have been stripped of his pension, or would he simply have been ignored?

Maybe the fault of the people who voted for him knowing well that his background was law theory and short legislature service (history science, as minimum some deputy governor service and a more versatile -thus necessarily longer- legislative track record would have been preferable)?

The policy commitments in question were made by the President before this one... and in both cases they were elected by people with very little concern for foreign or military affairs, which are generally not the basis on which elections are decided in the US.

[Ken White]

Ken, some problems are about the president and the advice he gets.

Yes to both. However, he has or should have (but does not -- that's another thread...) People who serve as a cross check to the military advice. If he or she accepts bad military advice, whose fault is that? The bad advisor's or his / hers for accepting it?

The military is to blame for much on the political level (same in other countries), for it simply did not do its job at the high level. It did not advise well, it did not overcome its primitive 'can do' attitude, it did not overcome its bureaucratic instincts.

I agree. That's why I wrote this: "He is quite wrong in not holding the several Administrations and Congresses accountable for not forcing such a fix -- a fix that will never occur unless it is forced. Why should it be otherwise..." (emphasis added / kw)

Instead of saying "why should it be otherwise" I probably should have written "We'd be foolish to expect otherwise..."

[Fuchs]

Yes to both. However, he has or should have (but does not -- that's another thread...) People who serve as a cross check to the military advice. If he or she accepts bad military advice, whose fault is that? The bad advisor's or his / hers for accepting it?

Maybe the fault of the people who voted for him knowing well that his background was law theory and short legislature service (history science, as minimum some deputy governor service and a more versatile -thus necessarily longer- legislative track record would have been preferable)?

Maybe the fault of more competent people who did not run against him in the primary?

Maybe the political system's fault which led to the aforementioned factors?


The military is a bunch of institutions / bureaucracies. You can identify duds, you expect that the institution / bureaucracy removes them.
The failure can more easily be diagnosed than in the political system.


edit: Of how many generals and colonels got Marschall rid of in WW2 because of their incompetence? IIRC it was about 500. In the midst of a huge force expansion (multiplication) with a huge scarcity of formally qualified officers.

[JMA]

Maybe the fault of the people who voted for him knowing well that his background was law theory and short legislature service (history science, as minimum some deputy governor service and a more versatile -thus necessarily longer- legislative track record would have been preferable)?

Maybe the fault of more competent people who did not run against him in the primary?

Maybe the political system's fault which led to the aforementioned factors?

Their own Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying “The government you elect is government you deserve.”

The military is a bunch of institutions / bureaucracies. You can identify duds, you expect that the institution / bureaucracy removes them.
The failure can more easily be diagnosed than in the political system.

In war time yes. Less so in peace time. The longer the peace the more the military 'adjusts' itself to the needs of peacetime at the expense of keeping the military at a constant state of readiness (or near readiness).

edit: Of how many generals and colonels got Marschall rid of in WW2 because of their incompetence? IIRC it was about 500. In the midst of a huge force expansion (multiplication) with a huge scarcity of formally qualified officers.

There lies the inherent weakness in most militaries (which have to rely on mobilisation in time of war). You can produce soldiers in a matter of months from scratch but not so with senior NCOs and senior officers. The inability in peace time to 'test' officers on the way up also contributes to those able to 'game' the system to get promoted to senior officer level.

[Fuchs]

JMA, have your ever heard of the readiness of the East German NVA during the 80'S?


They had separate training and war equipment, the latter almost always at 100% readiness.

Their fighter squadrons prided themselves in full squadron alert launches (without early warning) within 8 minutes - with taxiing in excess of 60 kph.

Their army forces evacuated entire barracks within ten minutes of an unexpected training alert.

The extreme contrast in readiness was one of the big shocks of the reunification in 1990.


It IS possible to have an amazing peacetime military readiness, at least in regard to some easily measurable kinds of readiness.

[Bob's World]

This is what happens when one calls virtually every type of problem "war" and sends the military out to wage "warfare" to solve the problem. Yet one more reason why I believe "Irregular warfare" to be such a dangerous construct. To make the operations we were in make sense as war we had to invent IW; when in turn then led to this odd idea in current Army doctrine that what the Army does today in Afghanistan is as much "major warfare" as what it did in WWII, I or the Civil War. The military is chasing its tail and eating itself because senior leaders, as Bill Moore mentioned, lacked either the understanding of the nature of the problem they were tasked to solve, or the moral courage to stand up and say "hang on, let's talk about what this is really all about," or both.

If Ken is right (and he usually is on these things), that this author is a former member of the Clinton administration, I find that very rich indeed. They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Well, certainly Clinton played the sax and chased chubby interns while America's Cold War foreign policies for engaging the post Cold War world he inherited grew increasingly obsolete and inappropriate. To the point that when he handed off power to President Bush, the attacks of 9/11 were well into the planning and execution process.

When I developed my model for thinking about insurgency and transnational terrorism in a fresh light, it was based on a handful of fundamental concepts.

1. That the primary source of causation for political instability radiates outward from government, in domestic policies and actions for insurgency, and foreign policies and actions for transnational terrorism; and it is the perceptions of those impacted by such governance that matters most, not the intentions or perceptions of the governments themselves.

2. That these dynamics are a continuous process, that ebbs and flows, with most populaces being largely satisfied most of the time.

3. That the role of the military is not unlike the role of the military in other civil emergencies. Last in, first out; not here to solve the problem, but merely additional capacity to help a failing civil government bring a problem back within the span of their civil capacity. Also to provide time and space for that same government to identify where it is going wrong and make appropriate changes in policy and action so as to remove the causal drivers. Otherwise the efforts of the military only serve to suppress violence for some period of time, that will inevitable reappear in due time.

The US Civil political and policy leadership of the entire Cold War and post Cold War era by in large refuses to be truly introspective and self-critical. Sure, the Liberals will rip up the Conservatives and vise versa; and both will be quick to beat up on "the intelligence community" for not identifying the growth of the threats our policies were provoking, or upon "the military" for not simply making the problems go away.

The hard facts are, while Containment worked, it was not all hugs and kisses for those with the misfortune to be part of the ring of containment. A great discussion of this is in these two articles that look at the thinking of Walter Lippmann who was a loud, and wise voice for avoiding "excessive Western Fundamentalism" and other such flaws.

http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.co...eme=home&loc=b

http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.co...cle=1299&loc=r

Our Generals are not to be held harmless though. We are promoting a crop of senior leaders who have been "effective" but only at implementing long, costly, temporary suppressive effects. Those same generals, as Fuchs points out, have fired countless subordinates for not being "effective enough." Here is a news flash for the generals, in most instances, when one is working to help some other nation attain some semblance of sovereignty, legitimacy and true stability not sustained through massive internal security forces - efficiency and effectiveness of foreign military tactical operations are the enemy of achieving the strategic level effects one is after. But it is counter-intuitive, and certainly counter-military culture, to do less or be less effective in order to achieve better results.

Presidents Clinton and Bush both were big proponents of the idea that we "make America safer by making others more like us." The ideological roots of the Cold War are deep. To believe that the world yearns for US brand "democracy" or "universal and enduring values" or "leadership" is a mix of being a bit too full of what we see as our role in causing the Soviet collapse, and also buying into our own PSYOP narrative that we adopted in the early 1950s when we abandoned our historic stance on "self determination" in favor of a theme designed to compete with the Sino-Soviet theme of Communism as a vehicle for throwing off Western colonialism and attaining better governance.

Idologically we need to get back to our roots. Let others find their own paths, while ensuring we have access to the resouces and markets necessary to sustain our own economic well being. In terms of how we see the world we need to recognize the primacy of the role of policy in creating the conditions that produce the symptoms we send our military out to address, and we need to recognize the role and limitations of military effort in dealing with such symptoms and almost always counterproductive effect on the base problems.

I doubt we are ready for such a remarkable change of course. Certainly not judging by articles that seek to simply pin this rose solely on the lapel of the military.