The following thoughts stem from a recent article titled "Challenging the Generals" (free subsription required) by Mr. Fred Kaplan, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine on August 26th. The article covers a trip by Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s Vice Chief of Staff to address a group of young officers enrolled in the ‘Captains Career Course’ at Fort Knox KY.
During a Q&A session the General was asked about a recent article written by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled "A Failure in Generalship." This article was the subject of a post to the ASMBA Veterans' Blog back on May 1st of this year. The article by Lt. Col. Yingling is a scathing indictment that circulated far and wide, including Iraq, and accused the Army’s generals of lacking "professional character," "creative intelligence" and "moral courage." Yingling’s article, published in the May issue of Armed Forces Journal, noted that a key role of generals is to advise policy makers and the public on the means necessary to win wars. "If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means," he wrote, "he shares culpability for the results."
In response to the captains' questions, General Cody acknowledged, as senior officers often do now, that the Iraq war was "mismanaged" in its first phases. The original plan, he said, did not anticipate the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, the disruption of oil production or the rise of an insurgency. Still, he rejected the broader critique. "I think we’ve got great general officers that are meeting tough demands," he insisted. He railed instead at politicians for cutting back the military in the 1990s. "Those are the people who ought to be held accountable," he said. Hmm...ouch! Keep reading!
Before and just after America’s entry into World War II, Gen. George Marshall, the Army’s chief of staff, purged 31 of his 42 division and corps commanders, all of them generals, and 162 colonels, on the grounds that they were unsuited for battle. Over the course of the war, he rid the Army of 500 colonels. He reached deep into the lower ranks to find talented men to replace them. For example, Gen. James Gavin, the highly decorated commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, was a mere major in December 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Today, President Bush maintains that the nation is in a war against terrorism — what Pentagon officials call "the long war" — in which civilization itself is at stake. Yet six years into this war, the armed forces — not just the Army, but also the Air Force, Navy and Marines — have changed almost nothing about the way their promotional systems and their entire bureaucracies operate.
On the lower end of the scale, things have changed — but for the worst. West Point cadets are obligated to stay in the Army for five years after graduating. In a typical year, about a quarter to a third of them decide not to sign on for another term. In 2003, when the class of 1998 faced that decision, only 18 percent quit the force: memories of 9/11 were still vivid; the war in Afghanistan seemed a success; and war in Iraq was under way. Duty called, and it seemed a good time to be an Army officer. But last year, when the 905 officers from the class of 2001 had to make their choice to stay or leave, 44 percent quit the Army. It was the service’s highest loss rate in three decades.
Col. Don Snider, a longtime professor at West Point, sees a "trust gap" between junior and senior officers. There has always been a gap, to some degree. What’s different now is that many of the juniors have more combat experience than the seniors. They have come to trust their own instincts more than they trust orders. They look at the hand they’ve been dealt by their superiors’ decisions, and they feel let down.
The gap is widening further, Snider told me, because of this war’s operating tempo, the "unrelenting pace" at which soldiers are rotated into Iraq for longer tours — and a greater number of tours — than they signed up for. Many soldiers, even those who support the war, are wearying of the endless cycle. The cycle is a result of two decisions.
The first occurred at the start of the war, when the senior officers assented to the decision by Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, to send in far fewer troops than they had recommended. The second took place two years later, well into the insurgency phase of the war, when top officers declared they didn’t need more troops, though most of them knew that in fact they did. "Many junior officers," Snider said, "see this op tempo as stemming from the failure of senior officers to speak out."
I was especially moved by the following statements given to Mr. Kaplan as he gathered information for his article:
"I'm more interested in whether my guys can secure a convoy [dismissing complaints about troop shortages]. When you’re in a system, you’re never going to get everything you ask for, but I still have to accomplish a mission. That’s my job. If they give me a toothpick, dental floss and a good hunting knife, I will accomplish the mission."
-Capt. Ryan Kranc, U.S. Army
"You’re not brought up in the Army to tell people how you can’t get things done, and that’s fine, that’s necessary. But when you get promoted to a higher level of strategic leadership, you have to have a different outlook. You’re supposed to make clear, cold calculations of risk — of the probabilities of victory and defeat."
-Lt. Col. Allen Gill, U.S. Army
Kaplan goes on to say that the last time the Army undertook a "cultural overhaul" was in the wake of the Vietnam War. At the center of those reforms was an officer named Huba Wass de Czege. Wass de Czege (pronounced VOSH de tsay-guh) graduated from West Point and served two tours of duty in Vietnam.
In 1982, he was ordered to rewrite the Army’s field manual on combat operations. At his own initiative, he read the classics of military strategy — Clausewitz’s "On War," Sun Tzu’s "Art of War," B. H. Liddell Hart’s "Strategy" — none of which had been on his reading list at West Point. And he incorporated many of their lessons along with his own experiences from Vietnam. Where the old edition assumed static clashes of firepower and attrition, Wass de Czege’s revision emphasized speed, maneuver and taking the offensive. He was asked to create a one-year graduate program for the most promising young officers. Called the School of Advanced Military Studies, or SAMS, it brought strategic thinking back into the Army — at least for a while.
Now a retired one-star general, though an active Army consultant, Wass de Czege has publicly praised Yingling’s article (Yingling was a graduate of SAMS in 2002).
In an essay for the July issue of Army magazine, Wass de Czege wrote that today’s junior officers "...feel they have much relevant experience [that] those senior to them lack," yet the senior officers "have not listened to them...The crux of the problem in our Army is that officers are not systematically taught how to cope with unstructured problems."
Counterinsurgency wars, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all about unstructured problems. The junior and field-grade officers, who command at the battalion level and below, deal with unstructured problems — adapting to the insurgents’ ever-changing tactics — as a matter of course. Many generals don’t, and never had to, deal with such problems, either in war or in their training drills. Many of them may not fully recognize just how distinct and difficult these problems are.
Kaplan concludes with these thoughts to ponder - As today’s captains and majors come up through the ranks, the culture may change. One question is how long that will take. Another question is whether the most innovative of those junior officers will still be in the Army by the time the top brass decides reform is necessary.
As Colonel Wilson, the West Point instructor, put it, "When that moment comes, will there be enough of the right folks in the right slots to make the necessary changes happen?"
Epilogue: Colonel Wilson brings to light a common problem many of us have had to consider... but often didn’t have to face during our military careers...changing a culture...a daunting, but yet not an insurmountable task for some...( ex: BG Billy Mitchell, BG Wass de Czege, and now Lt. Col Yingling). Thank you for your service!
The Navy & Air Force are non combatatand sevice forces providing support from the sidelines. So in these two services, Leadership is not being challenged. Sailors and Airmen's war stories continue to be how they turned wrenches and spit shined for inspection. Even in the Army, there are horror stories about men getting written up for dirty uniforms and no shave upon entering the camp after a 3 or more day patrol. This so called "War" simply isn't big enough to dislodge the peace time pefumed princes.
Posted by: Bernie | October 01, 2007 at 11:43 AM