Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures'

[Tom Odom]

Even better...

RH: The berm was an Iraqi idea?
PY: It was. We got that advice from Mayor Najim and Major General Khorsheed as well as from some Iraqi legislators whom we were in touch with. Although we didn’t quite understand it and it wasn’t something doctrinally that we anticipated doing, it was very good advice. One of the lessons I learned from this was to step outside of my Western skin and see the problem through the Iraqis’ eyes and take their advice when conducting operations because they have a perspective that we just can’t fully appreciate.

[Culpeper]

"As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war"...

I think the author has some gall. I actually know an enlisted Air Force Vietnam Vet that had to pay for a jeep he wrecked on some airbase in-country. I was shocked to say the least. I also used to know (now deceased) WWII highly decorated enlisted vet that served with the 82nd Airborne that complained bitterly about Patton making people wear ties on their shirts in the field. Nevertheless, I think it is a little unfair to hold generals to the same standards as a private losing his rifle. After all, all the private has to do is not lose his rifle, which is his own personal lifeline. A General losing a war is much more complicated with many aspects to review. With this in mind, a private publishing what this officer has published would be in a lot more trouble than the officer. So, would that make the enlisted man more courageous? I'm not impressed with officers and so-called experts and pundits venting their personal resentments. Truth be told, this officer probably saw some personal writing on the wall and this is his way of getting some payback. Revenge is a dish best served cold. So, if he gets disciplined than that is his own ass. What makes news are officers complaining. What doesn't make news are officers doing their duty, working around Catch-22 by improvising, and getting the job done in their immediate line of sight. Like the nameless C-123 pilot and crew that used chains tossed out the rear door to down a Soviet helicopter over Laos. The author's rant is nothing more than rancor that is getting attention. Very unprofessional and he deserves to get slapped no different than a private losing his rifle. I don't think he is very wise. For one thing the opportunity cost is too high and it is equivalent to some high school brat working at McDonald's and complaining at school about how inefficient the store is without even thinking that the corporation is one of the best in the world. The military is no place for quality circle management. Everybody wants to feel important. But that doesn't make it so.

[Shek]

Truth be told, this officer probably saw some personal writing on the wall and this is his way of getting some payback. Revenge is a dish best served cold. So, if he gets disciplined than that is his own ass. What makes news are officers complaining. What doesn't make news are officers doing their duty, working around Catch-22 by improvising, and getting the job done in their immediate line of sight.

This is an officer that is due to take battalion command in two months. While the article certainly anonymously implicates GOs that are currently currently service by association, it specifically talks about the GO corps in general terms so that people concentrate on the systemic failure of our personnel system, one that is based on equality and not talent and rewards officers who remain on a narrowly tactical path into positions where you must also understand the world and strategy. This is the skill mismatch that LTC Yingling is speaking of. So, you have an officer that has been deemed worthy by the very system that he is criticizing (EDIT: LTC Yingling does have a masters degree in Political Science from the University of Chicago, so he isn't the standard mold rewarded by the system).

I'm finding it hard to believe where the implication that this is payback can be found, as well as the implication that he's not doing his duty given that he's already served on three operational deployments, with his last one being a major cog in the wheel of the most successful brigade to have conducted counterinsurgency operations in Iraq as deemed by the Army itself.

[RTK]

Truth be told, this officer probably saw some personal writing on the wall and this is his way of getting some payback.

I'd recommend reading the rest of this thread on his background...

[Steve Blair]

I find it interesting that whenever an officer writes something like this that goes against the wisdom from higher, the immediate reaction is that he must have some personal ax to grind. We cannot in the same breath expect candor and honesty from our officers and then attack them when they provide what we expect. How can we on one hand look down on the commanders of Vietnam for not speaking out and then try to look down on another officer for speaking out?

From everything I can see, LTC Yingling has a good record. Perhaps serving with COL McMaster opened his eyes and gave him the confidence to put into words what he and other officers are thinking.

Sure, officers and enlisted men work around the "Catch 22s", but that doesn't address the major problem that Yingling and others have brought up: the failure of our personnel system (especially on the officer side) to produce the kind of officers we need to succeed in Small Wars. If those workarounds DID work, we wouldn't be seeing some of the same things we saw in Vietnam. If people aren't willing to put some things on the line when it needs to be done, you'll just waste more privates with rifles in the future. "Shut up and color" may work in some situations, but it sure as hell doesn't work when you're looking at a personnel system that has been broken for years.

[Culpeper]

I respect his background as well as his education. I just don't think his story brings anything new to the table to solve. Just another negative story complaining about the same old tired problems. Only this time it is some officer with a line command. I'm not impressed. We discuss these very same problems all the time on the SWC. And I'm always suspect of any expert that wants to compare Iraq with Vietnam. Vietnam was a bitch. Iraq is a pain in the ass. I suspect some sort of hidden agenda with the author. I realize he is highly respected and I can see how someone would be impressed. But not me. How would this officer handle one of his enlisted men doing the same thing under his own command?

Incidentally, laying his head on the Double E isn't going to solve anything. Getting promoted and changing the system as a career goal is a worthy endeavor. If this article happens to get him there than power to him. Other young officers commending him isn't going to put food on his soldiers' table. It's going to get him a job at CNN wearing a suit.

[Steve Blair]

If they are the "same old tired problems" then why isn't anyone fixing them? Sorry, but I just don't buy that reasoning. If people have to keep bringing them forward, that means that nothing's being done to correct the problem.

He's not alone, either. McMaster has mentioned this, as has Vandergriff and a whole series of officers from the Vietnam era. Still nothing's been done. "Self Destruction" was loaded with similar stories. Still nothing changes.

This sounds like shooting the messenger because you don't like the message. Maybe his personal agenda is that he wants to see the system change for the better and got tired of waiting for it to do it on its own.

I've compared Iraq to Vietnam before; not the ground war itself but the Army's response to the war. That is one comparison I think is valid. Granted the Army has done a MUCH better job adjusting to this war (but in all honesty it would be hard to do worse than it did adjusting to Vietnam), but many of the same institutional problems the Army faced during Vietnam are similar to what it faces in Iraq. The question of tour length, preparation before deployment, competency of the officer and NCO corps, troop levels, unit composition, and ROE all remain. Looking at the way the system responds to a conflict it wasn't prepared for is a valid process, and one that shouldn't be lost because the media wants to draw a direct comparison in all areas (which isn't possible).

That's why I think LTC Yingling's article is both valid and necessary. We may just have to agree to disagree here.

[Culpeper]

Steve

No problem. We just disagree on the major points. However, I don't disagree entirely with your arguments or anyone else's defense for this officer. If this officer is admired by his men, his commands have a good track record, and he is sticking his neck out for his men than what we have is a maverick. If the opposite is true and he turns out to be a shameful opportunist, as I have seen so often with officers that speak out, than what we have is a future pundit to be seen later during prime time on a regular basis. I hope I am wrong. I want to believe. Things are so convoluted these days that it is always the case that one man's optimism is another man's pessimism though each want to see the same goals accomplished.

As an aside, I don't mean that Vietnam should not be compared to the situation in Iraq. But it should be itemized or put into perspective when done because the casualty rates and destruction in Vietnam far exceeded what is happening in the Middle East. What would make a headline today wouldn't even have been reported during Vietnam. And the military was much larger during Vietnam and the problems with upper level officers was worse than it is today. With the exception of the good officers that fought during the Vietnam Conflict I would have to say that the abuse by officers at all ranks was epidemic. I just don't think people should use the Vietnam bug-a-boo to avoid having to write out a valid argument. Like Mr. Ricks has decided to do by quoting the officer as such in the Washington Post article...

"America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq," charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling..."

But when you read the actual article by the officer you see this is out of context. I may be guilty of contempt prior to investigation.

[DavidPB4]

As a civilian I am not qualified to comment on the aspects of the article related to military personnel matters. But on larger strategy Lieutenant Colonel Yingling wrote the following:

"An essential contribution to this strategy of denial was the publication of 'On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War,' by Col. Harry Summers. Summers, a faculty member of the U.S. Army War College, argued that the Army had erred by not focusing enough on conventional warfare in Vietnam, a lesson the Army was happy to hear. Despite having been recently defeated by an insurgency, the Army slashed training and resources devoted to counterinsurgency."

The above excerpt is not what I recall the late Colonel Summers having written. What I believe he said was that the United States should have extended the DMZ to the Mekong river, fortified the line with five divisions, and waged a defensive war along this front. The result he argued would have been (1) to shorten the front and thereby fight the war with North Vietnam on terms more favorable to the United States and (2) to seal off South Vietnam from outside infiltration and sanctuary. This dual strategy may or may not have worked but I do not believe Colonel Summers argued that counterinsurgency and conventional war were mutually exclusive.

In the 1980s, it was our side that was supporting insurgency and it was the other side trying to counter it. We need to study this period as well as the 1960s for guidance on what works and doesn't work.

I can appreciate the dismay of younger officers if US civilian and military leaders have again committed to a war on terms unwinnable or have exhausted the patience of the American people with an ineffective strategy. But I hope Lieutenant Colonel Yingling's article contributes to a serious and open debate of larger strategic issues and the responsibilities of civilians as well as generals.

[TROUFION]

The LTC took a big risk writing this. I give him credit there.

He has a lot of on the ground experience. His opinion is to be respected.

However, in my opinion, he should not have stated his belief that the war is lost. This was a mistake on his part as it detracts from his message. This statement places his arguments of mis-managment and failure beyond just a critical analysis and into the realm of politics. As an officer he should have stated his facts, his critique and then offered his educated opinion on what the next steps should be. At which point, he like a Dr could have offered his prognosis in an objective manner.

Further, while his commentary on personel assignment, evaluation and promotion is valid in many ways his assertion that congress should gain increased oversight is not. He claims that the GO selection and promotion process is tainted by what some call the 'good ol boy network' , well in some ways he may be right. But giving increased power to select to the Congress isn't the answer. Congress is a political organization we don't need to exchange one form of politics with another. I'll just leave it here.

-T

[Shek]

As a civilian I am not qualified to comment on the aspects of the article related to military personnel matters. But on larger strategy Lieutenant Colonel Yingling wrote the following:

"An essential contribution to this strategy of denial was the publication of 'On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War,' by Col. Harry Summers. Summers, a faculty member of the U.S. Army War College, argued that the Army had erred by not focusing enough on conventional warfare in Vietnam, a lesson the Army was happy to hear. Despite having been recently defeated by an insurgency, the Army slashed training and resources devoted to counterinsurgency."

The above excerpt is not what I recall the late Colonel Summers having written. What I believe he said was that the United States should have extended the DMZ to the Mekong river, fortified the line with five divisions, and waged a defensive war along this front. The result he argued would have been (1) to shorten the front and thereby fight the war with North Vietnam on terms more favorable to the United States and (2) to seal off South Vietnam from outside infiltration and sanctuary. This dual strategy may or may not have worked but I do not believe Colonel Summers argued that counterinsurgency and conventional war were mutually exclusive.

Dave,

COL Summers did argue that the Army failed to concentrate on conventional warfare enough. By concentrating on COIN (although COL Krepinevich's book The Army and Vietnam shows that this concentration on COIN was more lip service than substance), the Army and the nation was fatigued and therefore wasn't ready for the REAL threat, the NVA regiments that rolled south and seized Saigon in 1975. Given this, the appropriate action according to COL Summers was just as you described. In other words, COL Summers argued that COIN was irrelevant and actually harmful, and that the US should have pursued the conventional operations that you described from the start.

Shek

[PhilR]

The "real threat" that the Army had to be prepared for in the 1960's and 1970's were Warsaw Pact formations. Although, now in hindsight, its easy to fault the Army for not "getting it" in COIN, I think we to readily forget where the Army felt its primary duty to the nation (and the free world) lay.
I don't believe that the army set out to merely put Vietnam out of its mind because it was uncomfortable with the type of warfare or the results. I think it emerged into the early 1970s fully realizing that it did not have the training or capability to fight on the European continent. To bend itself to fight another Vietnam would have been to prepare for the last war, not the next.
I think that the Marine Corps faced a similar point in the early 1930s. After an internal power struggle, Marine leadership decided to put their eggs into the basket of amphibious operations, not Small Wars. One wonders what would have been the implications in WWII, and to the Marine Corps, if they had chosen otherwise. (I think its also worthwhile to state that the Marine Corps never went to a Small War with the Small Wars Manual in hand--it was written after the fact, and as Keith Bickel relates in his book, there were significant differences in the Corps about what would work).
The doctrinal and training reforms that were instituted by the Army were initiated by very smart general officers. Starry knew what he was doing (by the way, his official lesson learned on armor in Vietnam is till relevant to what we face today). The turn away from Vietnam was deliberate to allow the Army to face the threat it could not afford to lose to.
As to the general case of junior and mid-grade officers protesting, as a mid-grade officer (LtCol) I'm of two minds. Any criticism, if well founded and thought out, is valuable. Blaming a whole class of officers, however doesn't do much for me. The general officers he takes to task were the colonels and LtCols of the 1980s and 1990s. Maybe that's where the problem lay--in their inproper training and education by the previous set of leadership. I don't think his solution, Congress, will work. Huntington pointed out that one of the downsides of our constitutional seperation of powers is that we force military leadership to become political--they have to answer to both the executive and congress. While not good, Huntington also mentions that the overwhelming good to the society of this seperation probably outweighs the negatives in military matters. I think that getting Congress more into the nuts and bolts of selection would just further politicize the process. We're at war now and congress is starting to ask some of the correct questions. But when we're not at war, in the prep phases, they tend to focus on quality of life, and looking at the military's place in society, not as a warfighting entity.

[jcustis]

A pretty darn insightful post Phil.

[Shek]

Phil,

Thanks for the cogent post. However, I do have a few quibbles with some of your points.

1. I totally agree that the services must make sure that they prepare for the next war and not the last. Thus, the decision of the Army to make Fulda Gap the focus of its rebuilding efforts in the 1970s was right on target. However, the issue that I have is the fact that the Vietnam experience was deleted from the hard drive as if it were a virus. No more Vietnams! You can see this in the catharsis that COL Summers' book provided, as well as the Weinberger and Powell Doctrines (ODS was an opportunity as well to try and eliminate the pale of Vietnam, with Bush 41's pronouncement that we've slayed the Vietnam demon).

Heck, how many officers were happy when Governor George W. Bush became president elect in December 2000 because he had stated "we don't do nation building" (I know that I was happy that we would jettison the Bosnias and Kosovos and get back to what we should be focusing on, which was warfighting - a reaction that I think was a product of the professional sentiment that we didn't want our jurisdiction to include the low end spectrum of full spectrum operations). So, I think that the decision to prepare for the Fulda Gap and to delete the institutional memories and lessons should be separated into two separate actions.

2. I think the criticism of actions many of the generals Vietnam is on target. This falls into the fight the war you have and not the war you want. I still agree that the concentration should have been on the more immediate risk to the national security, the Soviet threat, but if the policy makers decide on committing US forces, then we need to make sure we fight the war we have to the extent possible.

I think the following quote is quite interesting on the ability of the general officer corps to adapt to the COIN environment of Vietnam, http://www.wooster.edu/history/jgate...-ch5.html#fn16

General James L. Collins, Jr., has been quoted as saying that, "had we had an organized body of literature" dealing with the Philippine campaign, "we would have saved ourselves a good deal of time and effort in Vietnam." General Bruce Palmer, Jr. made a similar comment in 1989, saying "I wish that when I was the deputy chief of staff for operations at Department of the Army in 1964-1965, we had studied the US Army's campaigns in the Philippines during the insurrection." They may be correct, but one suspects that the availability of such a history would have made little difference, for it would have told Americans no more about successful counterinsurgency campaigning than the literature already available in the writings of the 1950s and 1960s. Palmer claimed that a 1988 article about the Philippine war in Military Review "would have been of tremendous help to us in sorting out our thoughts [on the situation in Vietnam]."[16] Palmer apparently had no knowledge of an excellent 1964 article on the war, also printed in Military Review.[17]

The American problem in Vietnam was not a lack of information, historical or otherwise; it was the frequent failure to act upon the sound information, useful ideas, and valid suggestions that were readily available. A detailed and candid study of the French experience in Indochina seems to have been totally ignored, for example.[18] One suspects that nothing one might have written in the mid-1960s about the earlier war in the Philippines or the ongoing war in Vietnam would have convinced U. S. Army leaders of the importance of the non-military aspects of irregular warfare and the counterproductive effects of the use of massive firepower. People in high places rarely listen to what they do not want to hear.

3. You are totally on target with the following statement.

The general officers he takes to task were the colonels and LtCols of the 1980s and 1990s. Maybe that's where the problem lay--in their inproper training and education by the previous set of leadership.

However, this only highlights the fact that the problem is the GO corps as a body, as they are the ones making the decisions and grooming these leaders. In other words, as a body, the GO corps in a sense is "the system," and this is the dynamic that needs to be transformed.

To close, let's separate Congress from the equation and look at his proposals and whether they have merit.

1. A 360 degree evaluation system.
2. Advanced Civilian School and a foreign language.
3. The need to publish to demonstrate one's intellectual prowess.
4. The need to talk means, ways, and ends during confirmation hearings, akin to an oral examination.
5. Retire GOs at the rank at which they last demonstrated competence (you're promoted based on potential and then demoted based on performance).

(Given that #4 and #5 must involve Congress since they hold the necessary hearings, I understand that we can't fully separate them out of the equation)

So, what are the merits of these proposals. If we deem that there is merit, then the question becomes why hasn't the Army adopted those proposals with merit within the profession, as they have been on the table as options for at least a decade. If we can't adopt the proposals, then who outside should get involved to make sure that improvements in the system are adopted?

[emjayinc]

PB4 - Good job. The thread here seems to ignore that it wasn't the VC we fought at Easter 1972, nor was it the VC who rolled into Saigon -- nor was it the VC who governed the RVN after April 1975. My opinion, we and the south Vietnamese won the COIN/IW, but lost the strategic center of gravity, US public opinion, certified by Congress in 1973 and 1974, and hence lost to conventional forces in a very conventional way. Regards, Mike