In illo tempore...

[John T. Fishel]

historian, but one who has studied Gettysburg for nigh on to 60 years (am I really that old?), I have to disagree with your assessment of Lee's strategy - and Lee as a strategist. Indeed, I am inclined to think that while there was no way the1863 invasion of the North could have succeeded in forcing a negotiated peace, IMHO Longstreet's proposal came closest. The Longstreet campaign plan had the possibility of tactical success; I don't think giving battle at Gettysburg as Lee did really had such a possibility. I am also inclined to think that even with Stonewall Jackson, Lee would have failed. The Union had tactical commanders who were as good - or even better than the Confederates. In Meade, they had an operational commander who was certainly up to the job. Meade had the advantage of terrain, of intelligence, of numbers, and of fighting on home ground. He also had tactical interior lines.
Over time. I have come to the conclusion that Lee was a good and inspiring tactial commander, perhaps even a good operational commander, but IMO no strategist. In many of his successes, Lee was an opportunistic gambler who got lucky. In the Gettysburg campaign Lee's luck ran out, in part because his "strategy" was flawed.
Well, I guess that will provoke a reaction from any "old unreconstructeds" and partisans of Marse Robert. Still, the point of the staff ride in this context was not so much to debate the historical example but to get folk to think about the kinds of problems that might be useful in present circumstances. You raise those questions. Is there an analogy between Lee's Gettysburg campaign and the Marine incursion into Helmand today? If so, is Lee's solution more apropos than Longstreet's or vice versa? (All with the caveat that - as Neustadt & May argue - analogies of all kinds are suspect and must be used with great care).

Cheers

JohnT

[marct]

Hi John,

Still, the point of the staff ride in this context was not so much to debate the historical example but to get folk to think about the kinds of problems that might be useful in present circumstances.

In all honesty, I'm still processing the staff ride experience in my hindbrain at the moment. Still and all, I suspect that while what you said was the stated reason for the ride, and it's justification, that it is not the underlying reason behind it.

The more I process the experience, the more convinced I am that the underlying reason was to pull people out of their current time and "selves" (social roles). Yeah, I know, I've spent too much time studying mysticism, but let's look at it in terms of effects (snort... I think I just created a new acronym for the military lexicon Effects Based Mysticism or EBM ).

Okay, 'nuff silliness. There is a serious organizational issue that GEN Dempsey faces that has two main, internal faces. The first is the hierarchical nature of the organization with it's concomitant restrictions on expressions of thought (see here for a good commentary by Bob King). The second is the bureaucratic imperative to map out and "understand" reality (see here for some of my comments on this in the IO context). When we add in the minor point that CYA appears to be a human universal that is accelerated and rewarded in such a system, we have some real problems.

One way to deal with this is to use another piece of human nature, our ability to "act as if" something were true. Actually, we do this all the time in organizational contexts as well as in daily life, but it can also be a mental "tactic" that allows us invert certain assumptions of our current belief / perception structures. Now the crucial part is not that we can act as if something else is true, but that we can become consciously aware that our beliefs are a form of acting as it they were true. This lets us stand back from them and opens our thought processes up to let us look at our current problems in a new light.

Enough philosophy.... Let me just also note that we can get the same effect on perceptions (i.e. that type of a shift) by using humour - a point well know to GEN Dempsey.

If I had to put its purpose into a sound byte, I would say that it is to use the past to free use from the present.

Cheers,

Marc

[William F. Owen]

Still, the point of the staff ride in this context was not so much to debate the historical example but to get folk to think about the kinds of problems that might be useful in present circumstances.

I agree. That is exactly what staff rides should aim at.

Problem is that the "new war brigade," keep telling us that "modern conflict" is so far more complex than in the past, thus the past holds limited lessons.

If your whole agenda is to denigrate traditional military force, and promote "something new" then Military history is a very uncomfortable body of evidence, and probably best avoided.

[marct]

Problem is that the "new war brigade," keep telling us that "modern conflict" is so far more complex than in the past, thus the past holds limited lessons.

If your whole agenda is to denigrate traditional military force, and promote "something new" then Military history is a very uncomfortable body of evidence, and probably best avoided.

Beautifully said, Wilf!!!! Have you been watching this ?

[Ron Humphrey]

Have however stayed in a few Holiday Inn's and whenever I do in a place where there are historic sites I always make the trip.

Like much of what you mention I also felt doing so helped me to "step" outside of the current wars thinking long enough to gain some perspective.

Went to FT Fisher NC a while back and it was really an eye opener when you considered that 4000 + died in the effort to close and or hold that place. In Strategic context for the north it was a must in order to close off a major port of the south . And it took a whole lot to do so. Naval bombardments, Troop ground movements under heavy fire, siege tactics and ambushes, pasage of lines, you name it. It really helped me to accept how very complex war is(in any given time).

Wilf, do they really say that war is more complex now or is the message and point rather that those complexities must be understood and dealt by lower ranks then ever and under much faster shifting of circumstances?

[marct]

Hi Ron,

Wilf, do they really say that war is more complex now or is the message and point rather that those complexities must be understood and dealt by lower ranks then ever and under much faster shifting of circumstances?

I've been hearing that line a lot, but I really think it's a proxy for "there's just too much stuff we don't understand" rather than any actual change in the objective "complexity".

[Ron Humphrey]

Hi Ron,



I've been hearing that line a lot, but I really think it's a proxy for "there's just too much stuff we don't understand" rather than any actual change in the objective "complexity".

Would it be a beneficial exercise if we were to use an example something like the thread Mike F had but with perhaps a non military problem and help differentiate between complexity both objective and subjectiveLink

then try to tease out why and how it differs
from actor to actor.

[marct]

Hi Ron,

Would it be a beneficial exercise if we were to use an example something like the thread Mike F had but with perhaps a non military problem and help differentiate between complexity both objective and subjectiveLink

then try to tease out why and how it differs
from actor to actor.

Might indeed be a good idea..... Hmmm, if you've got one in mind, why don't you go ahead and start it? Right now, I'm still trying to pull my perceptions on the entire process together, which means that a lot of my "thinking" is pretty incomprehensible on the subject .

Let me give you a vignette of where my thinking is running (well, limping slowly...).

I was watching the "new" case study video at TRADOC, and one of the scenes showed the commander of a reaction force up on a hill observing the operations of a police check point. The facilitators (who were great BTW), noted that some 300 civilians were leaving the objective. My immediate reaction was to think to myself "Oh, crap, there's an ambush coming...". No one else really seemed to think it or, if they did, they didn't say anything.

Latter on, I was asking myself why I had that thought, and it popped into my head that it was because all of what I "know" about war comes from reading and talking with people who have actually fought. Civilians fleeing an area in advance of combat is such a classic trope in the literature, that it had become ingrained as a sign in my mind (a "clue" in the Piercian sense) with a very high probability that the civilians knew an ambush was coming and were fleeing the area. Why couldn't the commander see this (and, BTW, he didn't - he got caught badly)?

Bringing it back, does this mean that our experiences condition our perceptions? personally, I would say yes, but in more ways than we would like to think.

One of the key tropes of the conference was on "adaptability" - a term I dislike for a number of reasons, but mainly because it is used incorrectly. Anyway, how could that commander have been trained to think "adaptively" and avoid the ensuing debacle? Where my mind is going now is towards what I'm starting to call the tyranny of lexicality. Thinking through long term effects, "taking the long view", tends to be defined as a matter of "strategy" and "grand strategy", which is the prvince of generals and politicians, not CPTs. This means that implicitly CPTs are supposed to fix their perceptual and interpretive lens on a limited number of "in the present" and "in the short term" stories of what they should be doing. If they don't, then they will get hammered by the organization (that's a general observation of probabilities). Indeed, a commanders intent actually serves to define the universe of discourse and, by implication, the universe of perception.

Anyway, that's where my brain is heading at the moment. I'll see what other neuronal drivel comes out later .

Cheers,

Marc

[William F. Owen]

Beautifully said, Wilf!!!! Have you been watching this ?

No. Been watching this and this..

Wilf, do they really say that war is more complex now or is the message and point rather that those complexities must be understood and dealt by lower ranks then ever and under much faster shifting of circumstances?

Oh yes they do. We have Complex insurgencies do we not?
Supposedly different from all the simple ones?
When was understanding by the lower ranks not required? War is an expression of society. War cannot be more complex than the world we live in.

[marct]

No. Been watching this and this..

Not my normal fare, but pretty catchy!

[MikeF]

Went to FT Fisher NC a while back and it was really an eye opener when you considered that 4000 + died in the effort to close and or hold that place. In Strategic context for the north it was a must in order to close off a major port of the south . And it took a whole lot to do so. Naval bombardments, Troop ground movements under heavy fire, siege tactics and ambushes, pasage of lines, you name it. It really helped me to accept how very complex war is(in any given time).

I would encourage everyone to visit Fort Fisher. That's close to home for me.

[marct]

I would encourage everyone to visit Fort Fisher. That's close to home for me.

So, is that, like, an invitation ?

[MikeF]

So, is that, like, an invitation ?

When all this war stuff simmers down, and I go back home, I'll host the SWJ staff ride at Fort Fischer. Nightly socials will include Jimmy Buffett, Firefly (sweet tea and vodka), and steamed shrimp.

Damn, that motivates me to go start a "Peace in the Middle East" Rally.

v/r

Mike

(Added to help). This helps to explain Fort Fisher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Fisher

[Ken White]

John T. Fishel. Without getting into the strategic discussion, I'd like to point out that Meade had the great fortune of having John Buford out front, arguably a far better Cavalry commander than many of the big names. That possibly had greater effect than did the loss of Jackson on the goals or the outcome...

marct:

I've been hearing that line a lot, but I really think it's a proxy for "there's just too much stuff we don't understand" rather than any actual change in the objective "complexity".

Absolutely. I'd point out that prior to and early on in Viet Nam, those 'lower ranks' were all over all the same sorts of complexities with absolutely no problems. NCO casualties during that war coupled with McNamara's Project 100,000 gutted the NCO ranks for 20 years and the Army is just starting to grow out of that. Destroyed trust takes time to rebuild. Said trust destruction was the fault of the Strategos as well as the Pikeman in about equal measures...

This means that implicitly CPTs are supposed to fix their perceptual and interpretive lens on a limited number of "in the present" and "in the short term" stories of what they should be doing. If they don't, then they will get hammered by the organization (that's a general observation of probabilities).

That happens when an organization loses sight of it purpose and become excessively concerned about the well being, appearance and reputation of the institution as opposed to concentrating as it should sensible and proper job performance...

Superfluous but I'll point out that if the organization truly does its job well, it will have no problems with its appearance and reputation. As for well being, Rommel said it well "The best form of welfare for the Troops is first class training, for this save unnecessary casualties."

Wilf sums it up well:

When was understanding by the lower ranks not required? War is an expression of society. War cannot be more complex than the world we live in.

Just so...

IMO, how an Army describes its problems, or fails to, is strongly indicative of how it does or does not understand it's profession.

Or that it is in denial as to what that profession is...

Could also be that it believes -- underline that, believes -- that it must cater to various constituencies to the extent that it bcomes convinced that it is required to purposely engage in self destructive behavior...

Marct again:

Heritability, in socio-cultural terms, actually requires reinforcement, so the perceptions and 'solutions" (and "problem definitions") will tend to come from the most heavily reinforces part of that training...In socio-cultural terms, the more you know and the faster you can flip through your options, the greater amount of adaptability you have.

Both very true, both well known -- and both disregarded for expediency's sake, generally on false grounds of cost (and some deluded tactical thinking by theorists as opposed to doers).

Thus my much overstated contention that:

We do not do our initial entry training, officer or enlisted, for an adequate length of time or at all well.

[Bill Jakola]

“I have to disagree with your assessment of Lee's strategy - and Lee as a strategist.”

John T. Fishel,

I agree we can view history in different ways, but our individual conclusions are not important for the lessons of this staff ride; because as you point out, “the point of the staff ride…[was] to get folk to think about the kinds of problems that might be useful in present circumstances.”

My deeper point is the need to acquire and instill the skills of these AWC historians into ourselves and more importantly into our junior leaders. The AWC historians possess an ability to view life (history) in great richness and detail. I understand that war today is no more complex than during other times; but our ability to perceive this complexity changes depending on many factors including who we are—education, training, and experience—but also how much we are willing to work at achieving a view that more closely approximates reality.

Therefore to develop more capable leaders it seems necessary to replicate in our training the complexity of actual operations. For me, this Gettysburg experience did exactly that. I have spent time here before, but never have I encountered this history in such vivid detail.

Major Bill Jakola