"There just wasn't certainty."

Posted By The Wolf

Here is an excellent article from Newsweek (MYRIH) about our actions in Afghanistan and the hunt for AQ.  Leadership, Leadership...

Article HERE

UPDATE:  To my comment about leadership, is this companion piece from the NY Times (MYBIH) that addresses some changes needed in how leadership is selected; it is further commentary on a recent article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled “A Failure in Generalship.” (HERE )  I'll comment further on these, and how they may tie together, in a bit...

NYT Article:  HERE

-W

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Comments

[Bart Hall (Kansas, USA)]

The Fifth Special Forces Group, including the best Arabic speakers, was sent home to retool for Iraq

Yeah, like Arabic would be all that useful in a part of the world where they speak Dari, Pushtu, and Urdu. I get so sick of the lefties' "action line" that Iraq has prevented us from getting OBL. Sorta discredits the whole piece.

[Deltabravo]

So what's everyone's real opinion on whether OBL has assumed room temperature? (Will he do it before Castro?)

I hear a lot from the rantages of the left-wing moonbats that Bush has failed because OBL is still "out there." Of course, just reading 'Lone Survivor' might persuade a few of them that going and getting him is easier said than done. And you wonder if we lost hundreds of people in the Hindu Kush chasing a mirage whether they'd be ranting that "one man isn't worth that." You can't ever please that crowd.

[21stCenturyMike]

Great Articles, they are a good starting point for this type of discussion. That is not to say they are correct or have perfect insight into the issues, but they are talking about the issues.

I can see why some a stuck on the situational facts, but the underlying issue is leadership, or lack of leadership that has imagination and the balls to act. We have a system that creates cookie cutter officers and heavily rewards service at the Pentagon (i.e. Washington DC) over service in the field. This creates a number of issues that are listed in these articles and a few that are missing. We had to promote an officer to take on the surge as no one was willing to take on a job that they all thought would be cast as a failure no matter how well it was completed (they were protecting a career, not fighting a battle in a war or dealing with an occupation in this case).

I do not support the need for more general officers with Arts (social sciences and arts) degrees and language skills as a requirement, but I am for giving points to those who have advanced degrees of any kind and for additional language skills. I am, also, in favor of giving points to those who served in command positions and more points for active combat command positions (this don’t mean you got a ribbon, it means you commanded troops, killed bad guys, and took casualties). It, also, seems to me that you should be downgraded for lack of failure, which means too much risk aversion is bad for promotion. This is tricky, but if you do not have officers that are willing to take calculated risks, then you can not take the initiative in the real world in real time. We need general officers that are willing and able to risk the loss of troops to get a job done. War fighting is not clean or easy or fun or nice, it is war fighting and it requires risk.
I am not an expert on every form of military operation, but I know that if you do not take risks you give away initiative to the enemy.

Another, issue that was discussed was getting Congress more involved in promotions of general officers. This is a BAD idea and should be shouted down. Can you imagine anyone who would want to remain an officer after Congress gave “advice and consent” as they do with current Presidential appointments? Hell, Bush could not even get a Republican Congress to approve appointments without a fight, how would we ever get general officers to sit through that kind of system? Better question, would we want the type of person that could sit through that much BS leading our troops in war; what am I talking about, I wouldn’t want them leading grandma across the street. The point is Congress does not need to be more involved in the approval process, but they should be looking for improvements in who is selected to those lists in the first place.

One of the issues addressed was that the Army did not adjust the force to meet the new threat of insurgency in the 1960’s and beyond. I want to defend the Army (and military as a whole) to a point on this issue. They were fighting a bigger War, the Cold War. You remember the Nuclear Standoff between then superpowers. The War that no one thinks was important, that no one got a metal for, that no one died during (wait, I guess they did, just not on the record), and I could go on. This was a bigger issue to the forces and insurgency was a very small issue at the time. This does not mean that they got it right, but that we need perspective in looking at the issue as a whole. One of the things that I think we need to consider is how the military trains and is organized for different types of conflict. The military must look at the risk of each type of conflict and budget for training and equipment to mitigate that risk. For nuclear war that risk is extreme and will damage the civilian population, so it will inherently have a high priority for military dollars. The problem then becomes how do you budget enough to develop other capabilities while maintaining a standoff? This has been the position the military has been in for over 50 years, and yes we are still in that position. Iraq was a conventional war to start with and it was quickly won by our military, then it became less conventional. I call it the occupation phase, you can call it insurgency, chaos, or whatever you choose, but it happened after the conventional war was over and civilian leadership became involved in daily activities. We had little or no capability to deal with occupation and we certainly did not have the available number of troops that many thought we should have. This was not because we did not send them into Iraq, it was because we have a very small military and did not have that many active duty troops in our whole military. This is because we have been reducing the size of our military for about the last 20 years as a peace dividend. What we need now is presidential, congressional, civilian, and military leadership in determining what our Military requirements actually are and funding those requirements ASAP. LEADERSHIP, not more oversight to tell us what is wrong; leadership to fix what is wrong.

I want to add one last thing; this is not only a Military issue. This is an Executive Branch issue and it is due to too much oversight by Congress. The President runs the Executive Branch and when the President wants something done it should happen. If it does not happen, the person or people that stopped it should be fired, yelled at, or whatever by the President end of story. The President needs to be able to trust these people to do the job and needs to be able to remove obstacles at will. This is true no matter who is the President and it is a real issue with how our Government currently does not work. Too many government employees do not think they can be fired and too many of them are allowed to keep jobs after multiple spectacular failures. You do not run any Government by committee in the end you need a strong central leader that can act. Our government needs to trimmed and revitalized by improving leadership and returning power and authority to the Executive Branch; the balance of power in our government needs to be restored by getting legislators out of the executive offices. (Notice that I did not mention any party, as they are all at fault)

I need a vacation, too much ranting, I hope some of that made sense.

thanks for the opportunity to reduce my stress,

mike

[Some Soldier's Mom]

Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border... As the Qaeda sentry watched the U.S. troops, the patrol started moving in a different direction. Bin Laden's men later concluded that the soldiers had nearly stumbled on their hideout by accident.

They make it sounde like our troops are stumbling around with exact intel... like there are addresses on the caves these miscreants are holed up in? Roger that... 30 miles into the mountains, turn left at the 4th babbling brook, right at the 34th cavern ... last cave on the right...

commanding his men to commit suicide with him in the bunker... hmmm... that has a familiar ring to it...

[chiropetra]

When reading the part about Rumsfield denying permission to go after OBL in Pakistan, keep in mind that we're getting one side of the conversation from someone who obviously felt strongly about it.

More generally, remember that any time someone leaks something to the media they are doing it for a reason -- which usually means serving an agenda of their own.

I'm no great fan of Rummy's, but I'm skeptical this conversation took place in the form it was reported.

[The Opinionator]

Read the NYT article. I was only a lowly sergeant so perhaps someone can explain to me HOW THE HELL H.R. MCMASTER WAS PASSED OVER, NOT ONCE BUT TWICE?????!!!!!!!! This is the commander of Eagle 2/2 ACR at 73 Easting, which is still studied by armies around the world as possibly the greatest tank victory ever by a company sized unit. He was awarded the Silver Star. He was a successful commander of 1/4 Cav, led the 3d ACR at Tal Afar (a success before the Surge) and is a historian to boot. Short of him molesting children, there is no reason he is not wearing a Star. My old battalion commander was a politician, not a warrior and he left with three stars. Shame on the army. What is with the leadership of my army? What is with the promotion board? McMaster should have been a below the zone pick for Brigadier. One more strike and he is out. Petraeus needs to drop a hint in someone's ear back at the Pentagon. What is this world coming to?

[liyak]

What kind of mindset uses that,for corrections?It's absolutely blasphemous.

[Brian H]

B5 -- your disclaimer still says "the Department of Defense and the Rumster". A bit out-of-date, doncha think?

Re: presidential authority: if Carter and Clinton had entirely had their way, the Armed Forces would have been even smaller than they were in 2001.

Opinionator: you're right, tho' I hear McMaster's plugged in at the core of Petraeus' planning group. Promoting him to a desk might not be real useful.