When I first heard of EBO, I admit I had high hopes for it, that was until I was actually trained in it, and saw the seriously flawed concepts of SoSA, ONA, and worse, much worse, MOE and MOP. Then I noted every one assumed their actions (unilaterally) we're creating these magical effects. At first I thought it was intended to flatten the organization and harmonize the interagency actors by arming everyone with the objectives and the associated effects, thus if you didn't have guidance from higher, you knew what needed to be done on the ground. However, after studying it and watching it in practice in the real world and during exercises it is clear that GEN Mattis's memo is spot on in most aspects.

I was a small bit player in one of the most successful interagency and multinational operations in recent history and that was JTF Liberia in 2003. Fortunately, it didn't receive much press outside of Africa, so we had considerable freedom of movement. During this operation the multinational forces and interagency were successfully harmonized with clear objectives that resulted in orders with clear cut task(s)/purpose(s). In this case leadership was decisive (both State Department and Military). I think we would have failed miserbly if we used EBO doctrine.

Unfortunately, this EBO like process has manifested itself in other ways, where U.S. forces inappropriately apply a CARVER matrix to terrorist and insurgent organizations, which resulted in the failed network approach where one attempts to destroy an insurgency by killing or capturing its so called key nodes (important individuals). In limited cases this method will work, and most cases it is a key supporting role, but not at the expense of failing to protect the population. What worked in Iraq was large scale population control measures that the surge enabled, where the focus was protecting the populace. I'm confident history will show that the much bragged about approach "it's the network stupid" was actually a failure or at most a minor enabler. Like EBO this was based on faulty assumptions that an insurgency is a simple system or simple system of systems like an electric power grid. It isn't, and surgical actions won't when the fight anymore than surgical bombings. That brings me to the key question, is EBO entirely flawed or is our practice (based on faulty assumptions) of it flawed? I think the answer is both, and if we focused on the objective of defeating the insurgency, vice all the sub effects, we would have realized from day one we needed more forces (Iraqi or otherwise) to get control initially.

Prior to EBO, I think the most damaging concept to our military was the force protection bureaucracy which was an off shoot of GEN Downey's investigation of the Khobar Towers incident. Force protection was always an inherit responsibility, and there were several anti-terrorism courses long before force protection level I thru IV training. This resulted in an another cottage industry of contractors, wasted military manpower and in too many cases operational paralysis. Force protection is important, it has always been our second priority, which in order are the mission, the men, then yourself. Prior to 9/11 we let force protection (the men) trump accomplishing the mission as a priority. I would like to see GEN Mattis tackle this one, and while he is at it take a hard look at Information Operations. I'm not anti-IO, but it would be helpful for all to see some clarity here also.

EBO is not the only practice in our military that lacks common sense.