General McCrystal

I figured that I am going to get some folks wanting to know what I think about this so here it is.

General McCrystal was the POTUS' hand-picked commander on the ground in Afghanistan and he resigned today due to some remarks he made to a Rolling Stones reporter about the political leadership.

Short and sweet of it is that General McCrystal made the one mistake you CANNOT make when you are a general and that is make comments like this on public record. The POTUS is the boss and generals must obey the final orders or quit. You can disagree behind closed doors, you can complain, but when you get the word that this is what it is, that's it! Running down your civilian partners (the ambassador), your potential boss (he made some choice comments about the VP), and your boss' staff (White House Clowns was the phrase I believe) is NOT allowed.

This is a very solid rule and generals who have violated it have all been punished. McCellan and MacArthur are two of the big ones historically that come to mind but there are others as well. Generals must not cross into political realms, or if they do they must be doing so with the full backing of the POTUS (Petraus was doing this some in Iraq during the surge, but he had briefed the plan and the POTUS was on board along with all the other team). The bad thing about this is that with the Joint environment we now fight in, politics is becoming a bigger issue for generals. You are expected to deal with politics when overseas, but not with the US? Hard to keep the two separate.

McCrystal blew it, and he is gone. And that is the right thing to do.

Now, how does this hurt us? And hurt us it does, there is no silver lining to this.

First, the man with the plan who was hand picked to fight the COIN strategy and the mini-surge and had planned and overseen it and was to fight it all the way through is gone. That will hurt. Second, we are pulling General Petraus out of CENTCOM Command to take command in Afghanistan. That is actually a demotion for him as he goes from combatant commander to theater commander and furthermore he now will not be finishing off Iraq and running other things that need attention. Third, it effects the POTUS. He did the right thing, but McCrystal was HIS handpicked choice for whom he removed someone ELSE in order for him to take over. That doesn't help the POTUS' image in terms of things military and Joint (getting the Civilian/Military Team working together). Fourth, the Afghans liked McCrystal, and he was about the only guy over there that they did like and could deal with (dumb comments or not, the ambassador is not exactly high on Karazi's list).

This really brings home a major point, the US Army just doesn't have a whole lot of bench when it comes to COIN operations (Counter-Insurgency Operations). We have to demote someone to fill the gap because we have no one else who can step up. But we could do worse than Petraus so I can't complain about that.

Things just got much harder for us. Not impossible, just harder.

Book Review: The Echo of Battle

The Echo Of Battle is written by Brian McAllister Linn. Its topic is simply a in depth discussion of the US Army Way of War, or more accurately how it rotates between three focal points. Mr. Linn holds that there are three "traditions" in the army that influence how the army thinks, prepares, fights and reviews its conflicts. These three traditions are the "Heroic" (man is the key), "Guardians" (Fortress America types who focused on looking inward versus overseas), and "Managers" (bring order to the battlefield, science can remove the grey area and men are merely parts of the whole).

This book is a great look into how the US Army has thought strategically for its entire existance and how it has gone through changes, often painfull. The US Army has rarely been ready for the war it actually ends up fighting and it is pretty clear in this book. But the intersting part of this book is how the Army then veiws its lessons from the war and what it takes away. Linn's main thesis seems to be that the army usually gets it wrong, or somewhat wrong and then runs on the fly to fix and overcome (which seems to be a major strength of the US Army).

This book is not a light read. Parts were somewhat dull, and there is practically no "action" to relieve the discussion of army theory and strategic thought. I am not sure that I agree with all that the author says and I think he does a bit a shoehorning to make people and ideas fit into his three major traditions. But he does give a good run down of how the Army thought about doing its job and how the three traditions have morphed over time.

A couple of other items that this book brought up. First, the author makes a great point that I don't think he quite realizes. The Army, despite its mistakes and its muckups, still has always been able to pull it out when push comes to shove (with one exception). When the shooting starts, the learning curve explodes. The biggest thing I have seen out of this is that one can't seem to replicate the conditions for the "explosion" except during war. In some cases you can come close, but not perfect. So you could argue that while being prepared for war is a good thing (it certainly is) it might be better to be an organization that can learn fast once the shooting starts.

Second, he points out that in the 1990s the US Army had poor senior leadership. The major threat had gone away, the world was changing and the Army failed to change with it. In 2000, I did an NTC rotation and our training was a stand up Fulda Gap Force on Force Scenario. Why? Who was going to try and fight us like that ever again? While our senior leadership was focused on Berets, we should have been trying to figure out how to fight in a failed nation state.

His third point is an interesting one. The current wars have been going on for quite some time now. What that has brought about is something very intersting. Just about every officer and soldier has seen combat. Instead of having a service dominated by a "clique" of officers (such as what happened after Desert Storm) who had been in the fight, EVERYONE has been in the fight. You can't just bring in an expert and expect them to not get questioned by people who can say "I was there and this is what I saw, why are saying different?" This is VERY good for the army. Everyone feels that they have the right to pipe up and provide input. A debate where just about everyone is taking part if you will.

And that is good stuff.

Ok, overall an okay book, but a tough read. Unless you are really wanting to dive into a historic focus of how the army has learned over time, this one is not for you.