Battle Drill

[Fred III]

I feel that a good deal of what you talk about in your second paragraph comes from the lack of understanding of military affairs by the political leadership. Did it start with McNamara? Now there is a situation where civilian leaders fiddle with operational matters - which is not their business, and on the other hand military leaders fiddling with political and strategic matters - which should be attanded to, but isn't enough, by the political leadership. Or in short, the civil leadership is out of touch and not up to the job.


And regarding DePuy: Isn't that more the answer to the questions of a (rapidly built) conscript army, not so much for professional soldiers?

Distiller--

I completely agree with you regarding the "lack of understanding" business. It seems to me we handled this a lot better in WWII than we have done since and I do not know if the breakdown began with McNamara; however, you may be correct with that, as well. What I do know is that it has reached epic proportions with the likes of Rumsfeld, Feith, et al. The Pentagon "intelligence-gathering" operation was the first "hint," but it ran into monstrous proportions-- I feel-- when Rumsfeld caved in to the Turks regarding sending the Ivy Division into Iraq, via that route. The decision to withhold the additional force was a major reason we are in the pickle we're in now. (At least, that is how I see it.) I am a huge believer in the employment of overwhelming force at critical junctures and the elimination of such a major element in one's planning is the utter height of arrogance. And stupidity! We howl about how the Turk's are such great allies, yet we allow something like this to happen. I think if we exercised a lot more diplomacy, we would have been a lot better off.

I do not understand what you mean about your DePuy comment. Are you speaking of the use of "battle drill"? If you are, then please allow me to say this: we all seem to get caught in the web of agree/disagree. Someone puts forth an idea or a policy, implements it, and the criticism follows. Much of that criticism is what I call "destructive." In other words, it tears down the policy, but never puts something else in its place. If "battle drill" is worthless, fine, I can fully accept that; but put something else in there to fill the void. You don't want to teach "fire and maneuver," you don't want to teach "skirmish lines," fine. What do you want to teach? What is the alternative? Don't just criticize and walk away.

That was always one of the big buggaboos I had about Vietnam. We did have a treaty called SEATO; we did have a perceived threat, especially in reference to the times and the so-called "monolithic" debate about communism. (George Kennan's theories were not yet fully accepted in 1964.) So what do we do? Send in troops or not? If not, then what? That is what I seemed to have missed. What do we do if we do not address the problem directly? Or... is there even a problem? This-- to me-- is a similar issue with Iraq and strangely enough, it feeds right back into your original point about civilians not understanding the military. Iraq was jammed down our throats and as far as I am concerned, the decision to go into the country-- some how, some way, in some manner, at some time-- had been made long before the WTC came down. Iraq was a seething blister for any number of years. My only question is, Why?

Best wishes,
Fred.