Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
As a historian, I would think you would know better than to compare a 21st century infantryman to a Roman Legionaiire. The number and complexity of skills a modern combat soldier is required to master far outstrips any relevant historical example. It isn't marching in formation and swordplay or even musketry - there's a ton of highly technical, highly perishible skills that must be maintained. You hire an infantryman today to be a highly trained infantryman, not a generalist slave. There's barely time to keep guys proficient in all the core skills required.
I didn't compare anything. I simply offered an example of an alternate model where infantrymen were expected to do more than just the infantry tasks.

However, I do agree with Selil and think you're giving short shrift to what was expected of the Roman Legions as compared to what they had.


Here we disagree. There is a difference between "luxury" and "decent system". We had a decent system in both my tours. Our guys received 1-2quality hot meals, laundry service, mail, and other services daily in the COP. No one was deprived. All it took was a little effort on the part of the chain of command. If someone's not getting that, it's not a logistics/fairness issue, but a leadership issue. We got everything except for the shellfish that the guys on the FOB did.
Sometimes it's a systemic problem, as in, there is not a system in place to deal with the folks outside the wire.


Depends on excessive. Yes, there was some amount of overboard. That said, why live badly if you don't have to? I will also say the "bounty" is greatly appreciated by guys rotating off the line.
And it should be there for the folks rotating off the line. But nobody has touched the subject of the folks for whom this is the daily experience.


Separate argument. One can argue the main argument FOR the FCS system is that it will reduce the supply tail requirements immensely - common parts, smaller crews, better engines, and more reliability all will significantly reduce logistics tail if they work as advertised (different thread).
Same argument. You create a set of requirements and you incur a set of costs. Even if the system works as well as it can, should we be spending resources to run generators to maintain significant ice cream stores?


One can argue no one (organizationally) thought Iraq would last this long, and recruiting extra CSS to support what were envisioned as short term demands would carry higher cost than contracting someone to do it.
It doesn't make me feel any better to know that military planning starts from the premise that everything will work out just as we want it to. I'm sorry, I just don't have a lot of sympathy or patience for that argument. It suggests that there is a large deficit in professional competence in those running things. So, why should I feel particularly good about the ancillary decisions they've made?

On the other hand, it seems that there was always an intention to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq. So I'm not sure that I buy the argument that this was "just how it worked out when it had to be settled on the fly."


Units do eat together at the team/squad level often. Especially in a COP. You also seem to assume that there's a lack of bonding going on - trust me, the main thing soldiers desire is often a little privacy from their unit for awhile. However, operations are ongoing 24/7, so an imagined BN mess all happily passing the gravy is a little dream-worldish.
I understand that both needs - for together time and for privacy -- must be managed. My original response was to an example where only one side of the equation was potentially being addressed. Elsewhere, I've pointed out that one can use MREs and hot chow alternately, to give space when needed, and bring the group together when needed.

As I've never said anything approaching what you describe in the last sentence, it seems rather unfair to characterize my position in that way. That being said, while it might not be the norm for the BN to get together for a meal, there is certainly a value to doing just that on occasion. Call it a Warrior Mess Night.


Food is certainly not a minor issue - I could argue it's one of the most key components of morale. That's why I don't agree with your assessment of the problem or the solution - ensuring the guys get the best quaility of food possible in adquate amounts immensely contributes to morale. Nothing saps a deployment worse than constantly eating bad food. I never (organizationally) ate better than I ate while deployed to Kosovo in 2000-2001. Better than most all inclusive resorts. I know it significantly impacted my perceptions of the deployment, and made it much more bearable (back when I thought six months was a long deployment). Having high quality food is a morale multiplier. I wouldn't want to go to Army A's.
1. Yes, food (and dining) are important to morale -- that's the whole point of my dissertation. How it works is where it gets very interesting. I've got my President Bush Thanksgiving 2003 action figure to remind me of that.

2. Based on that, the gaps in the system concern me. You can shrug them off, and maybe it is personal to me, but I doubt that it was a one-off occurrence, and based on WHY it happened, it's liable to happen more in the future, and certainly in any future where we can't rely on getting most of our folks onto large bases.

3. Given the COIN objectives in Iraq, and given what my research has suggested insofar as disparity between groups is concerned, we are doing ourselves a strategic disservice with some of these quality of life systems. I may be a fan of gastronomy for morale, but I know that the biggest morale boost comes from being mission effective.

4. This is the least important, but I do wonder how it will play out -- what becomes of a treat, of a morale booster, if it becomes the norm? I AM NOT MAKING A COMPARISON, but this is the problem with spoiled children. Can we afford hyper-inflation of expectations? I also think there is a difference between feeding the troops well -- good, wholesome, healthy foods -- and giving them special treats. In that way both needs are met without blunting the edge of the gastronomy for morale tool.

I'm confused why you don't think we have the same ethos today - assigning a combat general to oversee a problem area just happened - look at Walter Reed. They took BG Tucker (a tanker) and made him DCO of WR to clean up the mess, which he did. Now he's headed back to the force that the WTU's and other reforms are underway. Shifting a general to oversee what were really leadership (not supply) issues is far different than taking an infantryman and making him pump gas.
It was not that there was a problem of leadership in the supply and logistics system during the Revolutionary War. It was that it was being handled by the private sector, it wasn't working, and General Washington realized that the only way to make sure it did was to make it a military responsibility -- and as such, he wanted his best man in the job.

Regards,
Jill