a dozen or more Army generals are being ushered into retirement as the Army's new chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, takes overSchoomaker is the one who brought in that despicable program "Warrior Ethos" designed to awaken the sleeping "inner warrior" in every PVT Lynndie out there.
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Building a Better Occupation
The U.S. Army has made some smart moves in Iraq—and some blockheaded ones, too.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Dec. 8, 2003, at 3:03 PM PT
<snip>
The armored division's recent exercises suggest that at least some of the brass now understands this principle. This might be the first tangible sign of fresh thinking that's taken hold since
Gen. Peter Schoomaker (4 star general) was named Army chief of staff. Schoomaker, who had spent two years in retirement until Donald Rumsfeld lured him back into service, was a veteran of the "shadow soldiers"—rising to the post of commander in chief for U.S. Special Operations Forces—and thus spent much of his career cultivating the fine points of the sort of fighting that the Army is now facing.
Changing an institution's mindset is a long, hard slog (to borrow a Rumsfeld phrase). The question of the hour is whether the change will sink in deep enough and fast enough to bring order to Iraq. But at least the change is set in motion.
Or at least so it seems, until we look at the latest development that's actually happening on the ground. This is where the Army's getting stupid. According to a
remarkable piece by Dexter Filkins in Sunday's New York Times, roughly 50 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers are "wrapping entire villages in barbed wire." Iraqi residents can leave or enter town only if they show a specially issued ID card that's printed in English only. Another new counterinsurgency tactic, adopted in the area, is to bombard whole buildings where guerrillas have reportedly been meeting and to arrest suspects' relatives.
Both techniques have been employed by the Israeli army in its attempt to protect the settlements—with mixed results, at best. This is no mere coincidence. Filkins reports that American officers have recently traveled to Israel to be briefed on tactics in urban warfare.
This is bad business on two counts. First, it reinforces the myth, propagated by radical groups in the region, that the United States is waging a war against Islam. American officials showed they understood this danger earlier in the year—and during the first Gulf War in 1991—by going out of their way to keep Israel out of the conflict. Why are they so openly aligning with Israel—and emulating its methods—during the equally sensitive post-battlefield phase of this war?
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2092178/=========================================
Rumsfeld's New Man
The latest move to radically remake the Army.
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Tuesday, June 10, 2003, at 4:04 PM PT
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's reputed choice to be the new Army chief of staff—retired Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker—may be his most intriguing appointment to date, and confirms beyond any doubt Rummy's determination to foment a
radical restructuring of the Army.
The first unusual thing about Schoomaker—and I should caution here that it has not yet been confirmed whether he'll take the job—is that he is a retired general. He left the military three years ago. Usually, chiefs of staff are named from the ranks of active-duty generals.
The second, and most telling, point is that, from the early 1980s on,
Schoomaker served with the "shadow soldiers," rising in 1994 to be head of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and then, from 1997 till his retirement, commander in chief of the Army's Special Operations Forces.
<snip>
http://slate.msn.com/id/2084212/==========================
<snip>
"The Soldier is one of the focus areas the Army will be directing its resources toward in a systematic and deliberate way in coming years," said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker during October's Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting.
The warrior ethos statement contained within
the new Soldier's Creed -- "I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade." -- is a key aspect of the Soldier focus area, said Brig. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, chief of Infantry and Fort Benning's commanding general.
"This is about shifting the mindset of Soldiers from identifying what they do as a Soldier -- 'I'm a cook, I'm an infantryman, I'm a postal clerk' -- toward 'I am a warrior' when people ask what they do for a living," Freakley said.
<snip>
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/9_2/national_news/27068-1.html
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