Active duty officer in Iraq slams the generals ... and failures of leadership

[jefferson_dem]

Friends, please file this one under "must read"...

A failure in generalship
By Lt. Col. Paul Yingling

"You officers amuse yourselves with God knows what buffooneries and never dream in the least of serious service. This is a source of stupidity which would become most dangerous in case of a serious conflict."

- Frederick the Great

<SNIP>

Having spent a decade preparing to fight the wrong war, America's generals then miscalculated both the means and ways necessary to succeed in Iraq. The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq's population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops. Alone among America's generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. Prior to the war, President Bush promised to give field commanders everything necessary for victory. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books such as "Fiasco" and "Cobra II." However, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win, these leaders did not make their objections public.

Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle. In 1997, the U.S. Central Command exercise "Desert Crossing" demonstrated that many postwar stabilization tasks would fall to the military. The other branches of the U.S. government lacked sufficient capability to do such work on the scale required in Iraq. Despite these results, CENTCOM accepted the assumption that the State Department would administer postwar Iraq. The military never explained to the president the magnitude of the challenges inherent in stabilizing postwar Iraq.

After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America's generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theory prescribes providing continuous security to the population. However, for most of the war American forces in Iraq have been concentrated on large forward-operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents. Counterinsurgency theory requires strengthening the capability of host-nation institutions to provide security and other essential services to the population. America's generals treated efforts to create transition teams to develop local security forces and provincial reconstruction teams to improve essential services as afterthoughts, never providing the quantity or quality of personnel necessary for success.

After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals." Population security is the most important measure of effectiveness in counterinsurgency. For more than three years, America's generals continued to insist that the U.S. was making progress in Iraq. However, for Iraqi civilians, each year from 2003 onward was more deadly than the one preceding it. For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq. Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation's deployable land power to a single theater of operations.

<SNIP>

CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY ---> http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198

[BOSSHOG]

1. WOW - me thinks the LCOL has stuck his dick in a food processor so to speak

While I thank him for his argument, such things are not expected of an Officer and a Gentleman. I wish him well. I'd like to be a scribe at his next promotion board.

I do disagree with one of his contentions:

THE MILITARY NEVER EXPLAINED TO THE PRESIDENT THE MAGNITUDE OF THE CHALLENGES INHERENT IN STABILIZING POSTWAR IRAQ.

- General Shinseki did that exact thing
- bush fired Shinseki (I love to say that, its the truth and conservatives like to whine about it.) Meanwhile our kids continue to die and conservatives have yet to take responsibility for enabling a mad man to cause it.

He also makes it sound like the "Generals" went into Iraq with too few troops. They exercised the plans of their civilian bosses. You know, those military experts wolfowitz and perle and limbaugh.

[BOSSHOG]

2. THIS SOUNDS INCREDIBLY ROVIAN

Its all the Generals fault and the military didn't tell bush about this and that.

One would never expect an O-5 to cuff about O-10's publicly and in print while still on active duty. I get a whiff of political chicanery here.