Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort

[Tom Odom]

George and 120,

I disagree with both of you. Both of you are trapped in the dillemma of what was the objective of the war. 120, general officers I respect still debate the "hard versus soft approach"; the very debate is tied to the lack of a clear objective for the war.

George,

Simple slogans like all Muslims are liars are essentially worse than useless because they obviate the need for any thinking. As for Baath=Nazism, that is equally simplistic and that very vein of simplistic thinking led Bremer to make simply stupid decisions: disband the Army, purge all Baath.

I would question the statement All Baathists Hate All Jews, especially the statement before Israel became an independent country.

As for service in the Waffen SS or Wehrmacht; that itself is a long list. The Free Officer Movements in the Middle East--Iraq, Syria, Egypt--were more anti-British or anti-French than pro-Nazi. As for contamination by association, consider that Raziel one of the 2 founders of the Stern Gang actually went so far as to initiate contact with the Nazis in the fight to kick the Brits out of Palestine.

Best

Tom

[George L. Singleton]

Tom, I guess someone wishes not to have my factual, detailed reply that I entered here earlier today and which initially was posted?

Cheers,
George Singleton

[Shek]

Tom, I guess someone wishes not to have my factual, detailed reply that I entered here earlier today and which initially was posted?

Cheers,
George Singleton

Sir,

I think the mods felt that the posts were going off topic (i.e. were only tangentially related to officers with PhDs), and so they spun some of the posts off into a new thread here.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...=9743#post9743

Cheers,
Shek

[Jedburgh]

Tom, I guess someone wishes not to have my factual, detailed reply that I entered here earlier today and which initially was posted?

Cheers,
George Singleton

Your detailed reply - along with much of the discussion that has branched way off topic - was moved to another thread in the Adversary/Threat forum. The subject matter had strayed well away from Iraq and into discussion of broader GWOT threat perceptions. Although no longer focused on Iraq, that discussion certainly has value in itself, and deserved its own thread.

There was no intent of eliminating your response or shunting away your reply to be ignored. It was simply to move the emerging discussion into a more appropriate forum, and allow further discussion of the Petraeus' brain trust without this distraction.

[George L. Singleton]

Much of what I have read here so far tells me many of your posting folk have a pretty good grasp of things themselves.

I will say again, on the record, regarding the brain trust, that you cannot expect to successfully reason with disassociated tribes and variations of Islam folks who at the grass roots level view us Westerners as infidels.

No, I do not for a minute say or think all Muslims are extremists or nuts. However, the number who are such appears to be growing, which is unhealthy for civilization in general and our boys and girls in harms way.

Brain trusters are working a difficult problem that I would, as an ancient warrior, view as one of internal security and a policing nature.

Brain trusters missed the boat but could recover if they will reconsider airlifting in multiple divisions of Turkish troops to use in Baghdad, as a starter.

Cheers,
George Singleton

[Bill Moore]

I caught part of a story on NPR this morning about DoS's challenge in finding personnel for OIF, and the failure of the administration to get beyond words on the Civilian Augmentation Corp (something close to this phrase, where the President wants experts in various fields from civil engineering to electrical engineers to volunteer for service). I think it is a great idea, but I can understand why that will take time to implement.

I think our problems in Iraq are largely associated with our legacy industrial age management systems, where every worker, and every organization, has a defined box to work in, you do this and nothing else. You can elevate that to the national level, where we describe the elements of national power as DIME (Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic), or possibly emerging doctrine MIDLIFE (Military, Information, Diplomatic, Law Enforcement, Intelligence, Finance, and Economic). What I saw in Iraq at the end of Phase III was that the military leadership largely thought their mission was done, so we went through the painful pregant pause that led to the mess we're in now. Instead of waiting for DoS to step up to the plate, which still hasn't happened, I think we need to get away from the stay in your box management system, and realize that we as the military own responsibility for all the elements of national power (in a situation like Iraq and Afghanistan, where we're starting from scratch after a regime change), until we can outsource it to the appropriate the agency. Bottom line until we can outsource it, we own it. That implies we can't sit on our hands waiting for the other elements of national power to catch up, we need to keep moving forward.

Now when we talk about PhD advisors, we need centers of excellence (groups of experts on DIME and MIDLIFE (far beyond the capabilities of the POLMIL officer) at the appropriate levels in military organizations to facilitate planning and execution of what we're calling phase IV tasks in OIF) for DIME/MIDLIFE.

Now pardon me if I'm pee in your neo-conservative corn flakes, but we need to be prepared to establish other forms of political structures beyond democracies for countries that never experienced democracy. We need to implement a structure that actually fits that society's culture, economic structure, and history. For those that can't let it go, DoS can "encourage" the development of democracy over the next 50 years, "after" that country is "secure" and functioning economically. That means we need political PhD advisors who can bring more to the table than our constitution, they need to understand how to stand up a variety of political systems, so they can advise the military on what we need to do to get the process started under martial law, so when we eventually transition it to another agency, we're already moving the right direction setting the right conditions.

[wm]

Long ago and far away in the Land of Ahs (the marketing campaign used by the Kansas department of tourism when I lived there in the mid 80s), the Army taught me during CGSC about a thing called the "country team." I guess that hummer is passé now.
One would think that DoD and DoS should be joined at the hip throughout the planning and execution process whenever the US gets ready to involve itself in some OCONUS adventure. Likewise, one would think that a similar relationship would exist between DoD and DHS for a CONUS-focused operation.
It is not clear to me that we need a bunch of Ph.D's in uniform to solve the problem in Iraq. Someone else on this thread masterfully described a Ph.D. as a person who has gone from a macroscopic grasp of knowledge to becoming an expert in a piece of minutiae (I admit I have wordsmithed that other post greatly). What we really need are people who can see that many folks are stakeholders and have a part to play in the solution; we need people without blinders on or otherwise afflicted with tunnel vision. We need some folks who are wise, not just smart. Solomon, where are you???

[Tom Odom]

Long ago and far away in the Land of Ahs (the marketing campaign used by the Kansas department of tourism when I lived there in the mid 80s), the Army taught me during CGSC about a thing called the "country team." I guess that hummer is passé now

CTs were my life and sometimes life was rather like the Hatfields and the McCoys as Stan and I encountered in our tour together in Zaire. Stan Reber was instrumental in identifying cousins and those who only claimed kinship.
Rwanda was a much closer CT. The team leader, Ambassador David Rawson, set the tone and that was cooperate, coordinate, and watch each other's back.

But I will also say the same kind of play occurred inside the Beltway; during Desert Storm it was much like Rwanda. Later when I visited from Rwanda, the inter-agency feud was in play like Zaire.

In another post on here by Menning, he put up George Packer's New Yorker article on Dave Kilcullen and Montgomery McFate. The article is an extract of Assassins Gate. Anyway Packer relates how Kilcullen came to the attention of Paul Wolfowitz because of Kilcullen's writings on irregular war.

I am glad that happened; I wish that in 2002 when Wolfowitz in speaking to Congress dimissed ethnic schisms in Iraq as trivial concerns when compared to the Balkans, he had stumbled across someone besides Ahmed Chalabi.

McFate is anthropologist whom Packer descibes as a missionary for the importance of cultural knowledge. An anthropologist, she had become a consultant for the Navy.

The Army and the Marines have long had a FAO program. The Navy and the Air Force started theirs in the 1990s when the JCS saw how important FAOs were to understanding the "New World Order" based on operations in the Middle East and Africa. I offer a quote on that very subject from 1994 I used to close my memoirs :

...I had two very important encounters with FAO’s during my recent trip to Africa and Europe:
...First, in Africa, I saw how important LTC Marley and LTC Odom are to their respective Ambassadors and to the CINC. They are both out in harm’s way using their unique skills to be invaluable eyes and ears in this crisis...
...As I go around the Army today, I find that the Marley’s and the Odom’s are as important as ever—maybe even more important when consider the role they could play in many of the crises we are facing almost daily.
Gordon R. Sullivan General, United States Army
Chief of Staff

The Army has long had Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and PSYOPs. Kilcullen's experiences have resurfaced what many of those forces along with FAOs have understood for decades.


In a round about way I am making three points:

a. Our decisions are often made without counsel when there are many Solomons at hand.

b. Sometimes it takes an outsider--because they are an outsider--to be heard.

c. And any reaction depends on who is doing the listening.

Tom

[120mm]

George and 120,

I disagree with both of you. Both of you are trapped in the dillemma of what was the objective of the war. 120, general officers I respect still debate the "hard versus soft approach"; the very debate is tied to the lack of a clear objective for the war.

Best

Tom

Tom, as usual, it is a joy to debate with you. Very few people on the internet come off as pleasant to disagree with than you. Thank you.

I don't agree with either the "hard" or the "soft" approach. I think there is "some" utility in discarding the "image" of the white hat when invading someone else's country. At the very least, claiming to oppose Saddam, and not Iraq, leads Iraqis to believe you are lying when your ordnance kills the wife and kids.

I would suggest there might be some merit to the "appear to be hard, when you are actually soft" method of operation.

Either way, what we did, didn't work.