The NYT featured a guest editorial from a former US Army officer who described possibly the next revolutionary doctrine in military affairs: counterbureaucracy. Jonathan Vaccaro was going through the checklist as he prepared to helicopter assault into an Afghan village to capture a Taliban leader.
Taliban commander was back in the village. Our base roared to life as we prepared to capture him. Two Chinook helicopters spun their blades in anticipation in the dark. Fifty Afghan commandos brooded outside, pacing in the gravel. I was nearby, yelling into a phone: “Who else do we need approvals from? Another colonel? Why?” …
I spent hours on the phone trying to convince the 11 separate Afghan, American and international forces authorities who needed to sign off to agree on a plan. Some couldn’t be found. Some liked the idea, others suggested revisions. The plan evolved. Hours passed. The cellphone in the corner rang. “Where are you?” the villager asked urgently. The Taliban commander was drinking tea, he said.
At 5 a.m. the Afghan commandos gave up on us and went home. The helicopters powered down. The sun rose. I was still on the phone trying to arrange approvals.
During Desert Storm, the Air Force had a 72-48 hour OODA Loop. But in the cut and thrust war against terrorism, where targets are fleeting and minutes matter, forty eight hours is no longer a fast enough reaction time for anything. Minutes count. But minutes are elusive because the campaign in Afghanistan is managed through the convoluted lines of authority of a multinational coalition campaign fought on a joint basis. Here authorizations must cross international, interservice and cross-cultural boundaries with legal processes layered over everything. The wonder isn’t that the Army couldn’t catch this Taliban commander. The wonder is how they can catch anyone at all.
Don Vandergriff, who is an instructor at West Point quotes a RAND study to illustrate the sclerotic quality of administrative combat. If the Taliban don’t get you, the red tape will. In a blog post called “Portait of a Broken OODA Loop in Afghanistan”, Vandergriff describes “a horrifying portrait of an inwardly focused OODA loop that is seeing what it wants to see and is so clogged up by its own bureaucratic procedures that it brings to mind the madness of Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22.’” The RAND study in question was released in November 2008. Authors Russel Glen and Jamie Gayton describes the painful process of moving information from Point A to Point B in Iraq and Afghanistan. The RAND report was fully cognizant of the sclerosis and recommended that:
- the lower level, tip of the spear units receive and be allowed to act on intel rather than hoarding at the center (“the full value of these inputs can be lost when they are forwarded to higher echelons for analysis.”). This included the ability to make contact with population and develop information from them
- maintain a continuity among the intelligence people rather than rotating them around and destroying “habitual relationships”;
- “Improve database development through better sharing and insistence on compatible technologies and software. Transition intel communities from their need-to-know default to a need-to-share mentality.”
- develop an alias tagging system so that the intelligence users could see which informants were providing the tips without actually revealing their true names
- train people at every level to use intelligence and
- “Strive to retain habitual relationships during COIN deployments just as is done during conventional conflicts.’
In other words, they wanted to give the troops a chance against the bureaucracy. In that fight, the troop’s main weapon was the “habitual relationship”, a word which apparently signifies the informal networks that soldiers actually use to get around the bureaucracy. If done by the book most everything might actually be impossible. Only by performing continuous expedients is anything accomplished at all. This was the environment in which joint multinatonal and interservice planning, approvals and intelligence flowed — even before the legal people got full into the act. The RAND report cited many instances: here’s one.
Dutch F-16s would go out and fly missions [in Afghanistan], and after the missions they would ask for the BDA [battle-damage assessments], which were classified Secret U.S. They could fly the mission and drop the ordnance, but they couldn’t get the battle-damage assessment.
Attempting to utilize intelligence within multinational PSOs [peace-support operations] has created ludicrous situations, such as when Indian Lieutenant-General Satish Nambiar, commanding the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia was denied North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intelligence being provided to his staff. The intelligence-sharing situation was not particularly improved when the Force Command was transferred to NATO’s Lieutenant-General Bernard Janvier from France, because his senior intelligence officer was Colonel Jan-Inge Svensson, from non-NATO Sweden.
And since the Afghans aren’t in NATO either and may or may not speak English yet be the informers or exercise ultimate authority in action, the problem only gets worse. One way to imagine this problem in IT terms is that that of a polyglot user base, each reporting to different managers, using a dumb terminal to access a mainframe maintained by contractors, and not understanding the output it produced, attempting to catch ruthless serial killers. In the end people just forget the terminal and walk over to the next cubicle to talk things out. But that situation is far easier than one in a battlefield covering vast distances. One wonders what prodigious leaps information made across boundaries of agency, classification, service, language, nationality, command level and education to have finally reached poor Jonathan Vaccaro waiting in his helicopter to catch the Taliban commander sipping tea. Vaccaro describes his experience with red tape.
For some units, ground movement to dislodge the Taliban requires a colonel’s oversight. In eastern Afghanistan, traveling in anything other than a 20-ton mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle requires a written justification, a risk assessment and approval from a colonel, a lieutenant colonel and sometimes a major. … Combat commanders are required to submit reports in PowerPoint with proper fonts, line widths and colors so that the filing system is not derailed. Small aid projects lag because of multimonth authorization procedures. A United States-financed health clinic in Khost Province was built last year, but its opening was delayed for more than eight months while paperwork for erecting its protective fence waited in the approval queue.
Vaccaro’s suggested solutions coincided with RAND’s: delegate to the lower levels; assume the risk, empower the tip of the spear.
Curbing the bureaucracy is possible. Decision-making authority for operations could be returned to battalions and brigades. Staffs that manage the flow of operations could operate on 24-hour schedules like the forces they regulate. Authority to release information could be delegated to units in contact with Afghans. Formatting requirements could be eased. The culture of risk mitigation could be countered with a culture of initiative.
Mid-level leaders win or lose conflicts. Our forces are better than the Taliban’s, but we have leashed them so tightly that they are unable to compete.
Whether this assessment is shared in Washington is another matter. What may be empowered instead of the spear tip is the shaft. Bureaucracy is jealous of authority. If anything, a bureaucrat confronted with a plethora of i’s to dot and t’s to cross will add even more i’s and more t’s. Process will be layered on process; ceremony overlaid on ceremony in an environment where the process is sacred, because that’s how problems are solved inside the temple. The battlefield is a place where a man worries that he will die; the capital is a place where people worry about their careers. For some it is less important whether a war is won or lost than whether something was illegal or irregular in the process. A man might lose his life on poor intelligence but a politician can lose an election if he does something the press can criticize him for. Who will win the battle of counterbureaucracy? The smart money’s on the bureaucrat.
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The wages of micromanagement.
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
~William Tecumseh Sherman
Enough said. The military bureaucrats should be forced to repeat that three times before they start their day.
The culture of risk mitigation could be countered with a culture of initiative.
‘Could’ but what are the chances, as long as those in power higher up the chain of command perceive an overriding imperative to retain power through control?
We are witnessing the politicalization of war, taken to an extreme. I suppose even Patton and Rommel had to deal with it too, but does anyone doubt they wouldn’t have not only chafed but vociferously (and operationally) resisted?
Maybe it’s a testament to the extreme competence of our warriors–the ones actually doing the fighting–that they overcome this bureaucratic inertia as well as they do. But a day of reckoning will continue to approach, until it befalls, because the forces arrayed against us seem to be not nearly so bureaucratically self-limiting.
It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. It’s what I often did… or simply omit things. But I was enlisted and couldn’t care less about a “career”. Not like the USG is going to have the $ to pay pensions anyways. S/F…
In Viet Nam, the requirements to get supporting fires authorized got guys killed.
Best thing to do was figure out where you might need them in an upcoming op, get them authorized in advance.
Try explaining this cop to a WW II veteran.
Two COINs of the same side.
Someone described to me the process of bureaucratic decay that happens in Washington. A crisis emerges, a new agency led by swashbuckling entrepeneurs faces the challenges; the agency has a few great years and then it slowly decays into a parody of itself, in which people go through hallowed motions without remembering that these were often crafted on the spur of the moment, back when they meant something.
There’s a story that interwar British artillery units had two extra men who stood, apparently idle, while the rest of the gun crew went on with loading and firing the piece. Eventually someone asked what the duties of the two were. No one could say. It emerged that the two extra men were originally employed to hold the horses back in the day when artillery was horse drawn. The horses vanished but the men detached to hold them remained decades after their equine counterparts had departed.
We don’t things long after we’ve forgotten why. It’s easier to follow a form than think things through because following the form never gets you into the trouble.
I hope there is something wrong with the story, it is NYT after all.
I’m sure it’s bad, but I hope it’s not already that bad, cuz we know that Obambus and the democrats want to fight a legalistic, PC war and whatever the case today it will be much much worse in another year.
What do Petreus and McChrystal say about this? Saw McChrystal on Charlie Rose the other night, he strikes me as a sharp guy, but … but I don’t know if the but is him, or the environment he lives in, or POTUS, or what.
The Perspicacious Wretchard: “For some it is less important whether a war is won or lost than whether something was illegal or irregular in the process.”
Hmmh. How nostalgic. It’s sounding like that old recipe used back in Vietnam, where nobody could bomb an outhouse without LBJ’s permission.
i blame journalists and democrats. perhaps someone should start a stealth terror campaign against journalists for a while. something needs to be done. they subvert us without even specifically intending to do so, institutionally speaking. must we really settle for this mediocre-and-getting-worse status quo?
if so, why? i don’t get it. it is past time to recognize that the information revolution is guillotining even the guy who owns the cheese shop now – it’s time for a little counterrevolution. or a lot. maybe someone should give that hilarious spaz michael ware a network or something.
Modern communications.
Up until Vietnam, the communications gear was “iffy” at best. Decisions had to be made on the ground, because it was impossible for the bureaucracy to stick their collective fingers in. Better comm, means more control.
And besides, bureaucracies need to justify their existence. No need for bureaucrats, and soon you’re not at a desk in DC somewhere, but humping up a cliff face in Afghanistan.
Once high level management is involved an environment of fear ensues and the risk management scenarios unfold full tilt. It is enough that every echelon evokes the power of the overseers but the smarter middle management with any authority at all inevitably maneuvers themselves into a posture to avoid responsibility. The eternal “what-if” game can put the kibosh on any and everything and no individual initiative is possible when chicken-sh!t policy colludes with committee approval . I think the problem is those responsible for agreeing to action are not responsible for the successful outcome of operations and even if so, there is no appreciable downside to doing nothing. Inevitably, the managers that wouldn’t authorize any action will come to call and ask, “Why aren’t you guys able to solve these problems?” There droll a$$ covering reports being taken at face value that things are more intractable than originally expected. Bureaucrats love sending even their own people to other bureaucracies for permission. See so-and-so. They need to sign off on it. This leaves one with a confederation of exceptional do-nothings that have risen to the top by outliving their predecessors. The proverbial good-‘ol-boy network is set deep into position and as much as they can forecast something cannot be done, by golly, they can oversee a self fulfilling prophesy when it suits them. Saying “I told you so” is as likely to bring great reward as “I made it happen”. You have to flow authority with the responsibility or nothing will work.
What would L.B.J do? Figure that out then do the opposite.
The politicians don’t think we are in a real war. They haven’t suffered any losses. I wonder how different a war we would have fought if flight 93′s heroes hadn’t heard, and the plane smashed into the Capital. It would have gotten the attention of those who survived and replacement Congress critters. Perhaps we would be more focused on victory.
Important note: Remember the Air Force, Army and Navy main enemy is the other branches. That is why the Air Force wants to control close air support, even as they don’t want to do it. Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies here and any fight for power.
In MASH, Frank Burns always represented the classic bureaucratic mindset, only concerned with process, with no sense of product. The spit and polish REMF in the flesh. This is nothing new. Lincoln had the same problems in the Civil War. Those only interested in being in charge, stealing resources from those who fight.
Staying a free people may require winning a war against the most dangerous of foes, those who feed bureaucracy. All bureaucrats should have a sign on their side of the desk, that asks: “Why are you doing this?”
I was just over at the bank, a clerk told me how they were being required to “be more friendly”, by following a script in what they said to customers. Yes, a “great” idea for customer relations. The robot school of public contact.
“My name is Sue.
How do you do?
Now you will die.
Good bye.”
The older I get, the more painful this paradox becomes: Civilization needs bureaucracy, yet bureaucracy can and will destroy civilization. The pit bull of bureaucracy needs a short leash, hopefully held by Sarah P.
wretchard @ 8: The horses vanished but the men detached to hold them remained decades after their equine counterparts had departed.
Is this anything like the story that our railroads today are the width that they are, because the British railroads are the width that they are, because the old Roman roads were the width that they are, because that was wide enough for two horses to pull a wagon?
One day at our office in the Pentagon the phone rang. It was a “retired banking executive” with a complaint for “the people who control the spy satellites.” Now, that did not describe our organization; we were not the NRO, which was an organization that officially Did Not Exist outside of suitably cleared channels. But one of the officers in our organization was listed as the USAF representative for the inter-agency weather satellite coordinating group, thus making our office the only one with the word “satellite” next to a phone number in the Pentagon phone book.
The retired banker’s compliant was that he wanted the spy satellite people to stop causing them to put voices in his head…
One of the most attractive aspects of Programs That Do Not Exist and other covert operations is that you don’t get calls like that. You don’t get visits from the GAO, the House Surveys and Investigations Staff, the IG, and all those other instant experts either. And you don’t have a chain of command that looks like a map of the Los Angeles freeway system overlaid with a block diagram of a radar set. Thus things get done more rapidly, and with much better efficiency, too.
The story is ridiculous from the get-go, but I simply burst out in laughter at the PowerPoint requirement, let alone its font and format requirements. Geez.
12. Mike Giles:
Modern communications.
Up until Vietnam, the communications gear was “iffy” at best. Decisions had to be made on the ground, because it was impossible for the bureaucracy to stick their collective fingers in. Better comm, means more control.
This must be a basic law of process decay, because the same pattern can be applied to many different scenarios. In my industry, publishing (morphed into web), The more sophisticated the means of publication production and its attendant communication technologies became, the longer the decision chain became because more people could insinuate themselves into the process. As a result, things these days usually don’t get done (published) any faster than in the hot-metal type days. Sound familiar? You can apply it to cell phones as well. In our younger days the only people who spent hours nattering on the phone were teenage girls; now all sorts of people do. Most of this is not necessary, but we do it anyway.
Once, when in an Air Defense Group HQ (Nike Hercules), I asked a field grade how come we had so many visiting firemen.
Turns out that with the old Nike Ajax, sixteen batteries were needed to defend Detroit.
With the Herc, we had six batteries and a BN HQ to defend the entire Detroit-Cleveland Air Defense zone.
Presumably, Cleveland had needed at least a dozen Ajax batteries.
So we had the middle and higher layers of command suitable for running at least twenty-eight batteries overseeing six. The command layers had not been pruned.
They had little to do, and much to worry about.
So they pestered us.
I have to conclude that there is a better than even chance that we will lose Afghanistan, because I can only see these idiocies becoming worse rather than better. The only question is: what form will losing take? Remember that the Bush folks were only more rational on how to conduct a war in relation to the imbeciles in charge now; the last administration was quite prone to bureaucratic and politically-motivated stupidities, just not as eggregious as the current bunch. This is why we had two battles for Fallujah, and why we have the DHS, and why Afghanistan is still a debacle. I recall that within weeks of driving out the Taliban, Pentagon higher-ups were demanding that special ops guys go back to wearing regulation uniforms and shave their beards. So with already entrenched mickey-mouseness in place to build on, the Obama folks can only do worse.
“a clerk told me how they were being required to “be more friendly””
I had a similar experience at my local grocery store. The checkout clerks were given a script too long for most transactions and they would mutter to you the rest of the script as you walked out the front door then launch immediately into it with the new customer without a pause. The irony was you couldn’t say hello or anything else because their “banter” mantra drowned out the moment and left no room in the script for the customer to play. The smarter checkers kind of foreshortened it and made it their own. The less creative souls clung to the literal script.
Drone Strike Kills Top al Qaeda Strategist The tip came from the pakis. They waited till he left the house and got in a car with a couple others.
“Mr. al-Libi has been one of the most sought-after terrorist targets since his escape from the prison at Bagram Air Force base in 2005″
fwiw this is the kind of war the cia wants to fight. Likely they had him on a big monitor in a big/small room in Langley.
imho this is the kind of war that LBJ dreamed of fighting. he just didn’t have the technology.
Where is the point of the spear?
Isn’t it actually with bureaucrats?
imho it had to have taken a lot of permissions to make this happen and yet they happened in real time. why?
that is why did the permission systems work in real time for al libi but not for the local commander.
that is, how could permissions system for al libi be mapped over to small unit warfare?
My betting is that the difference is that al libi was already pre approved. but the local taliban commander was not pre approved.
that is there was a standing order in some detail to take al libi but there was not a standing order in any detail to take the local taliban commander.
there for the way to make these takedowns happen in real time on the local level is get get the bureacracy to pre approve take downs on the local level. for example. there was a body of info on the local Taliban commander. A lot of reports had to have been filed on that taliban commander before the opportunity to take him presented itself. all of the reports on the taliban commander likely would have pointed to making it appropriate to take him. However, the actual standing order to take him was not in the files nor was the amount of risk/threat assessment leeway allowable–ie he’s so important you kill him with his family while you have the chance –as with Mehsud who the cia took out a couple months back….or he’s not so important so you wait till he comes out of his house and get in his car –like al libbi. or you want him for info alive like the taliban commander. or dead.
in any case all the important decisions all have to have been made before hand. threat value — take him/not take him; dead/alive; etc.
As it was, each of the american soldiers Major’s captains colonels etc had to go through the whole thought process. Some men can make those calculations in real time. Most can’t.
The way you solve that problem is to get pre approvals.
That way when the local GI has actionable info — he can go to his computer and check what’s allowed. If the bureaucrats have been following the trail of info the GI and his buddies have been filing for the last xxx months on the taliban–and they have been ordered to give approvals or not– then the bureacrats will have a ruling onscreen.
That ruling can then be forwarded to all the support people the GI needs to do his job–who in turn — seeing the ruling are both covered and empowered to get the GI the support he needs.
You can make the system self improving by having the guys who rotate out of combat stateside play a part in the approval process for those areas they fought in.
further as part of their debriefing as they leave combat they suggest changes to the software that provided permissions.
Timely post. I just got a call today from an LT who got a letter of reprimand and his CO relieved for taking 8 men out on a dismounted patrol to counter ambush when the rest of the platoon followed in vehicles. He violated the 15 man minimum outside the wire rule, even though the whole time the mounted element was ready to go as a QRF if needed.
They are some very discouraged paratroopers. They are not going to sneak up on anybody with 15 guys.
Sapper6
A bureaucracy can be defined as “an organization (organism) that will absorb an infinite amount of energy without movement”
Here’s the solution: turn any of my former Navy chief petty officers loose on the situation and they and their buddies will have everything going right in about 6 months. All you have to do is look the other way and sign whatever they ask you to.
“how could permissions system for al libi be mapped over to small unit warfare?”
It’s called Rules of Engagement Charles and when you have to ask “mother may I? in order to take out an eminent threat the tempo of the conflict is bogged down like law enforcement. Law enforcement sits around awaiting shots to be fired and the bodies to stack up. If you are sitting around waiting to die, you will. That the man was a Taliban should be good enough to pay him “the old surprise visit”. If the guy reaches for his pen he is a bureaucrat, if he reaches for his AK47 he is a disciplined bureaucrat.
The rules of engagement could look something like this: “We are at war. Command hereby authorizes Coalition Forces to seek out, locate, and to kill the enemy where ever you find them.”
Eventually hiding behind the skirts of woman and children won’t seem like such a good idea.
Well, this is no surprise—a war run by lawyers and MBAs, what else would one expect?
Even after Vietnam, we never figured out how to deal with the fact that we need managers to build the force but warriors to command it in combat.
And lawyers, not at all.
But that would mean the politicians would have to give the military reasonable rules of engagement, delegate decsions within tose rules, and then support the military when they follow those rules even if there are unanticipated, embarrassing results at times. But pols like scapegoats, so that doesn’t happen when the problems can be brought to light (and sometimes exaggerated).
Our political class may think they want to win but they really don’t, they just want to not lose and definitely not be embarrassed.
Which isn’t war, maybe not even policing, more like public relations and marketing.
This applies to all political parties with only a few individual exceptions who “get it.”
Of course, we the people elect these clowns…
Gordon,
turn any of my former Navy chief petty officers loose
You have a point. When I was driving ships I was told that the difference between the Navy and the Army was that a Navy Captain can do anything until he gets in trouble. Messages sent up the chain of command were usually prefaced with UNODIR for Unless Otherwise Directed. They idea was called Command by Negation. You keep the boss informed but unless he has a good reason he gives you rope and lets you run. When on the Bridge and you have the Con you can move around within reason. It is a big ocean and unless you are keeping station in a rigid formation you get to drive around. I was told that in the Army everything demands the approval of all other effected parties for doing anything. The last time an army officer can tell the troops he commands to get up and join him on a 20 mile hike is at the CAPT (O-3) Company Commander level. Even there you needed to inform a few people but for most I gathered there was a junior officer’s freedom. Naval junior officers probably had less autonomy than the Army example in that they couldn’t take their troops, called a division, off the ship on a whim.
That Navy tradition of empowering the local Commander means that in combat you expect to make a decision. That may explain why the SEAL Commander gave the weapons free order when the Master of the Maersk merchant ship was held by pirates. One theory is that the current Court Martial for 3 SEALs accused of giving an al-Qaeda thug a fat lip is the senior brass punishing the Navy to bring it in line with current centralized procedures.
The traditional lore I heard from Army JOs was that the first thing you do in combat is shoot the radio, or at least give it to the Corpsman and make yourself unavailable. You won’t be able to get air support if you need it but the rear echelon won’t be able to micromanage you either.
From Yes Minister- The Writing on the Wall:
Bernard Wooley: What about a publicity campaign Minister, you know ADMINISTRATION SAVES THE NATION,
RED TAPE IS FUN, full pages ads in … in. Just an idea.
James Hacker MP: Red tape is fun?
Bernard Wooley: Well what about RED TAPE HOLDS THE NATION TOGETHER?
“Here’s the solution: turn any of my former Navy chief petty officers loose on the situation and they and their buddies will have everything going right in about 6 months.”
Exactly right. It will get done a lot more cheaply, too. The list of necessary stuff I was able to get done by the Navy for 3 lb. cans of Folgers would blow the doors off any budget bureaucrat’s cost analysis. Give those CPOs a good reason, a good cup of java, stand back and watch stuff happen!
Unfortunately this isn’t anything new. I monitored the conversation below over a field radio in I Corp; Vietnam. There were three actors:
A young Artillery Liaison Officer in the field with the grunts.
A Fire Control Officer assigned to an artillery battery
And finally an infantry battalion commander, (Probably a Lt. Colonel) I’ve forgotten call signs used but will always remember the gist of this conversation.
ALO: “Need an immediate firing mission grid XXXXXX:YYYYYY; HE fire for effect. Heavy, Heavy contact!!!
FCO: ” Roger understand grid XXXXXX:YYYYYY, HE, heavy contact. How copy?
ALO: “Good copy. Get it here quick!
(after about two minutes wait)
ALO: “Please get my artillery here!”
FCO: “Roger, we’re working it. Close proximity to friendly village.”
(after about another three minute wait)
ALO: “For G_d’s sake please fire my F_ing mission!!!”
Lt Col, (obviously irritated): “Young man, you won’t use that language on my net or I’ll see you court-martialed”
ALO, (after just a seconds hesitation): If you don’t get some F_ing artillery here there won’t be anybody left alive to court-martial!”
The Cost of Risk Aversion
Not all politicians are power hungry petty tyrants who believe their constituents too stupid to understand what they are up to. Michael Yon posted a white paper white paper from one who has consistently demonstrated sound judgment, professional leadership, integrity and an inordinate amount of common sense.
He is Adam Holloway;
a British MP who has made several trips to Afghanistan traveling both inside the official security bubble and outside the wire. Take the time to download and read the paper – it lays out exactly what we need to be doing and I suspect is just shy of 180 degrees out from the pablum we will be fed Tuesday night by our current President. Here are some of the key points;
—Afghanistan is just one area of confrontation in our wider struggle against political Islam, a struggle which we must win.
—Afghanistan is no more important to Al Qaeda than a half dozen other countries. But it is strategically useful for AQ in generating propaganda footage of “infidels” fighting Muslims and Muslims fighting back.
—NATO’s ill-conceived operation in Afghanistan is on the brink of failure. Support for UK and NATO forces is falling: only 45% of polled Afghans support a NATO presence in the south, down from 83% in the previous year.
—Much of what NATO is doing is aggravating the problem and is making attacks in the UK and other NATO countries more likely, not less.
—It is vital that Afghan territory is not used as a launch pad for future attacks; and that the Islamist minority cannot claim victory.
—This can be achieved with a much smaller allied force. There is always going to be some level of insurgency in Afghanistan.
One can only wish that somewhere in America there is a political leader with this much common sense. If there is an American politician who has even half the knowledge on the current situation in Afghanistan I have not heard about him. I suspect the current masters of Capitol Hill will be articulating some sort of weak ass cut and run strategy which will be folly.
Is it me or do any of you find it weird that we are now forced to get so much of our news about America from the British press?
—
There was never a need for the elaborate security which was foisted upon the reconstruction efforts by our Department of State when we started the reconstruction programs years ago.
There is now as we have fed the insurgency by failing to deliver meaningful aid while supporting GIRoA officials who prey upon the people they are supposed to serve.
The Afghans see us riding around in armored vehicles with truck loads of gunmen fore and aft and wonder what the hell it is we think we are accomplishing. I can’t blame them as I wonder the same thing myself.
The key to getting things done in a post conflict environment is to get things done. Using expensive large corporations who specialize on doing USAID reconstruction projects while relying on State Department Regional Security Officers who know nothing about the region and little about security to set the minimum operational security standards has proven to be a waste of time, money and lives.
Real soldiers don’t read OPLANs, they execute FRAGOs.
Decades ago I ran a tank battalion Tactical Operations Center with two high-sided Armored Personnel Carriers, two tactical and one admin/log FM radio nets, acetate-covered paper 1:50,000 topographic maps, metal folding chairs, field tables, canvas ramp extensions, and wooden floors. No computers. No display screens. Status boards made by hand with rulers and Magic Markers, covered with acetate and updated with grease pencils. Soviet Radio Electronic Combat capabilities kept idle chatter down.
If we ever fight anybody who can degrade our command, control, communications, computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaisance, will we have junior leaders capable of autonomous, distributed operations achieving the commander’s intent?
Where are they going to learn that?
On Catch-22;
McWATI’S VOICE (filtered, yelling): Help him! Help him!
YOSSARIAN (into mike, yelling):
Help who?
McWATI’S VOICE (filtered, yelling): Help the bombardier!
YOSSARIAN (into mike, yelling): I’m the bombardier. I’m all right.
McWATT’S VOICE (filtered, yelling): Then help him. Help him!
Time was “responsibility” meant the ability to respond. The person is granted the authority to act within certain bounds on a certain set of issues. His performance would be judged in its totality. A certain number of unfavorable outcomes would be considered the norm and a person’s performance would be considered good if he kept at or below that norm while producing good overall results. In baseball getting a hit during one third of the at bats is considered good. Getting to the destination a third of the time in trucking, not so much. Back in that golden age when the question “Who is responsible?” was asked, it meant: who is a reliable person that I can trust to do an important task with a minimum of supervision?
These days the phrase “Who is responsible” typically means “Who is to blame.” Businessmen and administrators are judged on their mistakes, not on their accomplishments. So while trying to keep the power and prestige of the position, they also try to escape “the responsibility.”
These days the phrase “Who is responsible” typically means “Who is to blame.” Businessmen and administrators are judged on their mistakes, not on their accomplishments. So while trying to keep the power and prestige of the position, they also try to escape “the responsibility.”
This has happened in part because the constituencies have changed. Back in the day, a leader’s public was his men. They were his “constituency”. You gave them victory, kept them alive you were good. Today a commander’s constituency is sometimes a set of offstage judges and evaluators who are looking — because it sells — for an excuse to hang them. That’s how you get your Pulitzer, by getting someone in jail.
This change in constituency has certain thins to recommend it, but it also means we work for the audience in the capital cities, not the for the civilians and god-forsaken men on the ground.
Drone Strike Victim ID’d as Top al-Qaeda Strategist
Newser) – A drone missile strike in Pakistan killed a top al-Qaeda operative earlier this week, but the victim’s identity remains unclear. Earlier reports said the slain terrorist leader was Abu Yahya al-Libi, the organization’s No. 3, who escaped from US custody at the Bagram Air Force in 2005. But other reports say the dead man is the less prominent Saleh al-Somali.
Though Somali was lower in stature, his death may prove more beneficial to the US effort in Afghanistan: he was allegedly responsible for al-Qaeda’s operations in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region. His job was to take guidance from senior leaders and “translate it into operational blueprints for prospective terrorist attacks,” a US official tells CBS News.
It has been a long time coming, but the left has finally done it. The effectiveness of our armed services is finished. Army Ranger Michael Behenna has been convicted of murdering an Al Qaeda operative in the field after an IED attack and sent to the slammer for 25 years. And btw the prosecution withheld evidence that would exonerate him.
In a nine part series. http://bobmccarty.com/2009/12/11/the-michael-behenna-story-part-nine/
– Harry Truman, Leader of the Freeway –
In Truman’s time, things were quite different. When he retired, 10 years before the Kennedy assassination, former presidents had no Secret Service protection. Nor were they entitled to pensions. Truman’s only income was an Army pension of $111.96 a month, and he refused to “commercialize” the presidency by accepting lucrative business offers or extravagant speaking fees. Like his hero Cincinnatus, the Roman leader who forsook power to return to his farm, Truman believed he could easily make the transition from leader of the free world to, as he put it, “plain, private citizen.”
So, that first summer after leaving the White House, Truman and his wife, Bess, did what ordinary Americans do every summer: they took a vacation. For 19 days they drove around the country, from their home in Independence, Mo., to the East Coast and back again.
Harry and Bess Truman were frugal travelers. They ate a lot of fruit plates at roadside diners. In Decatur, Ill., they stayed at the Parkview, a motel on Route 36 where rooms cost about five bucks a night. (That motel is now a prison for work-release inmates.)
And like countless other road trippers, they crashed with friends.
—
I feel no one before or since the founders has had a keener insight into all the things that should go into rulebook for governing the country.
I shudder to think of any changes the trolls in DC, or the popular will would consider “improvements” to the Constitution.
We’ve already been given a pretty good show as BHO blithley ignores it to the cheers of the MSM.
A story about a real leader with both guts and perspective – President Ronald Reagan – is appropriate here.
Reagan was visiting a bakery in the midwest when he was informed a private staff meeting was needed. They went into the back of the bakery, and surrounded by pots and pans, the President was told that the terrorists who hijacked the liner Achille Lauro and killed a wheelchair bound American man, Leon Klingoffer, had been IDed as boarding an airliner. All was in place to intercept the airliner and force it down in Italy; they just needed the President to give the “Go.”
President Reagan thought for a minute and said “Go ahead and do it.”
His staff said “Okay sir, we will get you to a command center so you can monitor the operation.”
The president replied. “Me? You don’t need me. I can’t command a ship or fly a plane. You have people who know how to do that. Let them do their jobs. I’m going on with the bakery tour and the speech I am to give.”
These days the phrase “Who is responsible” typically means “Who is to blame.” Businessmen and administrators are judged on their mistakes, not on their accomplishments. So while trying to keep the power and prestige of the position, they also try to escape “the responsibility.”
So true. For years now I have been bemoaning the prevailing style of middle “management” in business, managers who never, ever ask to see their subordinates, never ask about progress in work, never attend working meetings. ALL their energy is engaged in “managing upwards”, and this seems to occupy everybody between president and the worker bees – typically seven levels or more in a typical Fortune 500 company.
Ghastly, isn’t it.
So am I shocked to hear of it in the modern military? Sigh.
RWE,
The president replied. “Me? You don’t need me. I can’t command a ship or fly a plane. You have people who know how to do that. Let them do their jobs. I’m going on with the bakery tour and the speech I am to give.”
The change is that now the public has been taught what is “presidential” by watching The West Wing and expects a leader to demonstrate he is in control by acting like the most obnoxious kid (I know because I was that kid) in a Junior High Social Studies class. If Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were hustled into the back room they couldn’t just say “Yes” because that would be bad television in the video running in their own minds. If it happened on TV, or with a wannabe on TV POTUS, it would be written so that they would turn to the 4 star General and the Head of the CIA, who would be traveling along with the President for no good reason, and he would say “Now hold on here and wait just a second. Aren’t you forgetting that the Italians are liable to turn these terrorists lose if we make the plane land in Italy? What is the Plan B that involves having Harrison Ford jump onto their plane in mid air and force them all to parachute into the middle of the 6th Fleet?” At which point all the Generals and super talent would look like 6 year olds caught in the cookie jar and blurt out “You really are the smartest person in the room Mr President.”
People are still going on about Bush (43) praising the head of FEMA after Katrina. The principle for real leaders trying to build an organization is to follow a few simple rules;
1) Hire the right people
2) Praise in public
3) Correct in private
4) Fire them if they don’t produce.
Reagan and Bush both learned that getting item (1) right is hard. So they fired people. Reagan assumed he had the right people giving him advice. If he didn’t then that moment in the back of the bakery was the wrong time to find out. Bush assumed he had the right guy in FEMA. When he learned he didn’t he got rid of the man. It is understandable that Obama hired a few duds. It is not understandable that he hired so many. It is inexcusable that he hasn’t started firing them en masse by now.
“It is not understandable that he hired so many.”
—
On the contrary:
His entire life has been spent choosing to surround himself with such people.
The only type sure not to expose him to the searing reality of his own hubris, incompetence, and lack of character.
…but you already knew that!
House approves sweeping, post-crisis bank reform
Probably the most important news this week, has anybody heard any discussion of this in the MSM?
OK, the crowd here will probably agree with the republicans that this is all anti-free markets and inappropriate government intervention. Sorry, I disagree. I entirely loathe and despise and blame the wall street and banking execs for the current situation and they have earned every restriction in this bill, and much, much more severe countermeasures than our sell-out of a leftwad POTUS nor the moonbat-controlled Congress seems likely to propose.
LifeofMind #42:
Is it not ironic that Reagan “The actor who pretended to be president” knew the difference between reality and acting and the Clintons and Obamas think there is no difference?
Reagan wrote and read extensively. Clinton had a Hollywood producer writing his speech scripts and really wanted to go to Hollywood and make movies after he got out of office. Obama is a step down from that level, like the archtype idiot movie star who can’t even recall his lines. They both are actors playing leaders and the real actor was the real leader.
Mullah Omar on the road
To Pak from Kandahar
A Predator with a full load
Caught sight of Omar’s car
Permission asked to fire, then
A longish strangled pause
As conference calls went out to men
To see if there was cause
To worry if collateral
Infliction might occur
And if there might the matter’ll
Be deemed to be no sir
So Mullah Omar got away
Not knowing just how near
He came to death that very day
From that Hellfire spear
And when he heard how he was spared
He closed his eyes and wept
So thankful that the Yankees cared
That civil norms be kept
He wept and bathed and went to bed
Alive and without sin
And thanked his God he wasn’t dead
And knew that he would win
‘Intellectuals’ by Thomas Sowell
Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance.
What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof.
That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.
As for reading the classics, President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him.
Yet intellectuals tended to think of the unpretentious and plain-spoken Truman as little more than a country bumpkin.
—
History fully vindicates the late William F. Buckley’s view that he would rather be ruled by people represented by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard.
How have intellectuals managed to be so wrong, so often? By thinking that because they are knowledgeable — or even expert — within some narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns, that makes them wise guides to the masses and to the rulers of the nation.
But the ignorance of Ph.D.s is still ignorance and high-IQ groupthink is still groupthink, which is the antithesis of real thinking.
Is it not ironic that Reagan “The actor who pretended to be president” knew the difference between reality and acting and the Clintons and Obamas think there is no difference?
In large part generational as well, I think.
But, I might even defend Bubba here, a bit. I think Clinton père knew the difference, but Clinton mère not so much, as she’s busy playing Secretary of State and not winning any awards, not an oscar or even a nobel, for it so far.
#41 Josh,
At my last client they had a very different approach. Our dept.’s manager let us do our jobs. He convened a departmental meeting every morning in his office — usually no more than 15 minutes.
In that meeting he asked us a couple of questions. What was going on and what problems did you face? Perhaps a few key projects he would address specifically but other than that his intent was centered on helping us get our work done.
These meetings fostered communication among us and a number of problems were solved by others knowing the answer. The dept members were all on good terms with each other but sometimes you don’t know what others know.
Word was other departments were more focused on traditional management of whipping the staff into shape or power tripping on their reports.
Bureaucracy is often sold as an agency to monitor others and hold others accountable. However, all they tend to do is to murky the water like carp in a golf course pond.
Marceus @ 49: All I can say is, remarkable. I haven’t seen the like for over ten years, except when I’ve been running things!
… maybe a slight exaggeration, the local project lead at my last gig did believe in weekly meetings, but that was the lead, he’d already declined promotion to “management”, and the titular manager seldom attended. I guess that still supports my case.
… and don’t even start about the “project manager” function as it’s commonly done these days in IT. grrr.
Reminds me when I was a nurse. I worked foe a certain large hospital corporation. They had a policy that stated if a person was injured on the property, be it 5 yards or 500 yards from the front door, an ambulance needed to be called. On a lighter note, here’s a modern take on David vs Goliath
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/sports/articles/2009/12/10/20091210spt-mesa-football-finals.html
“…the Air Force had a 72-48 hour OODA Loop.”
Thanks for perpetuating an urban myth. The Air Force plans out 72 hours based on joint campaign objectives, presuming today’s (24 hours) and tomorrow’s objectives (48 hours) are met. Any plane at any time can be re-roled if something unanticipated pops up, such as troops in contact calling for CAS (perhaps you’ve run out of the day’s preplanned CAS sorties), or if a high-value target emerges. This actually happens a lot. The Air Force is VERY sensitive to meeting the grunts’ needs, believe it or not.
Sounds like it would be cheaper in taxpayer dollars and lives of US soldiers, to get all NATO and other non-US troops out of Afghanistan and put in another 20K US troops beyond what Obama is sending. And keep them there for several years beyond what Obama plans to.
It appears the ROEs are in direct violation of the law.
TITLE 10 USC, Subtitle A, PART II, CHAPTER 47, SUBCHAPTER X [aka Uniform Code of Military Justice], PUNITIVE ARTICLES
Art. 99. Misbehavior before the enemy
Any member of the armed forces who before or in the presence of the enemy—
…
(8) willfully fails to do his utmost to encounter, engage, capture, or destroy any enemy troops, combatants, vessels, aircraft, or any other thing, which it is his duty so to encounter, engage, capture, or destroy; or
(9) does not afford all practicable relief and assistance to any troops, combatants, vessels, or aircraft of the armed forces belonging to the United States or their allies when engaged in battle;
shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.
The most stupid thing about it is that public choice theory and the 5C framework which I’ve learned as an integral part of making bureaucracy more efficient emphasizes exactly this type of delegation to lower levels.
I can’t believe public bureaucrats are unaware of these theories. Or perhaps they are that incompetent and stupid. Which says something about the selection process.
Don51,
It appears the ROEs are in direct violation of the law
Nice try and I empathize with you but no cigar. The key phrase in the UCMJ Art. 99 sub (8) is “which it is his duty so to encounter.” If the orders to not engage were lawful, and orders to Hold Fire or observe strict Rules of Engagement are lawful, even if they put the troops in danger, then disobeying such an order could itself be a violation of UCMJ § 892. Art. 92. Failure to obey order or regulation, or if done in combat a violation of § 894. Art. 94. Mutiny or sedition, a Capital offense. In sub (9) it says “all practicable relief” and if a senior officer and the civilians are saying that it is not “practicable” then you can’t go.
That is where politics controls the operation. That is not all bad since the purpose of military action is to compel compliance to a political end. Suppose that you want to stage a raid because you hear that Sheik Bad Breath is in a village and you hear that he is planning to attack the Tuvalu combined Luge Team and Boy Scout Troop that the US spent $millions$ to rent for the Coalition. First you have to ask for permission. Unbeknownst to you Tuvalu is part of a secret operation to bring the Sultan of Halitosis over to our side, because he is nuts about the Luge. Or there is some 5 handed deal involving China and oil and opium that is way beyond your pay grade. Anyhow there could be valid reasons for senior command to withhold resources or place limits on military operations. That does not mean that I believe the reasons are valid in this case but the principle of civilian control is worth defending.
Lawrence of Arabia may ask for artillery but General Allenby and his civilian advisor may have other priorities.
To be blogged under the title “Riding the Whirlwind.”
Vaccaro said:
Powerpoint? Frakkin’ Powerpoint? That is the surest way to kill information. Powerpoint is the absolutely WORST way to convey information and that comes from experts in the field. Jesus.
wretchard @ 8:
Which is a perfect description of the state of affairs in the entire US right now. This is more true than you know. The Republic is on the downward side of the slide. Jefferson recognized the problem:
Josh @ 44: I am glad to see that when you do not like someone or what they have done you react as the tyrant. Nice. Let me have your boss’ number so I can tell him what I think you should be paid.
Supposedly, the real power of our military is that the guys on the ground are trained to adjust to the situations on the fly. When they can do that then they can get inside the decision loops of the bad guys and kill them. Like above, sometimes that is sneak uip behind them and snap their necks.
re: The conviction of Behenna. Look for mass exodus of the best and brightest form the SF’s. Sad.
I realize that this did not start on January 20, 2009. The Army and Air Force are, as has been noted above, dedicated to top down control at the expense of local initiative; SpecOps personnel excepted. The Navy and Marines have been happily forced by circumstances to traditionally depend on those on the scene to do what must be done.
However, some things can be said to have been emphasized since that date. First, almost all flag officers, and field grades who actively aspire to be flag officers are political creatures. Their antennae are constantly quivering for a hint at what will please those above them, and to avoid anything that hints at getting a bad mark on their record that will before the next promotion board.
What guidance [facts on the ground, not platitudes] has been given to these cockroaches with aspirations? What have they learned since January 20?
First, the National Command Authority, and his political minions really do not care about American casualties beyond their use as “photo ops”.
* His use of the arrival of the bodies of American soldiers killed in action for a public relations stunt tells the military much about what the administration thinks of them.
* The shootings at Ft. Hood and the deliberate ignoring of warning sign after warning sign that could have headed off the massacre has been noted. As has the primary concern of the upper levels of the chain of command with “Diversity” over getting at the facts. Finally, the non-reaction of the National Command Authority as the events unfolded has also been noted.
Second: The court-martial of the SEALS who are charged with splitting the lip of the terrorist who planned the killing and mutilation of the bodies of Americans in Fallujah has been a bright, glowing sign of what is to come.
Third: The decision by the National Command Authority to try captured Al Quada terrorists in civilian courts. With the prosecuting attorney being the senior staffer of Senator Charles Schumer, who is trying to prosecute anyone who captured or interrogated enemy terrorists as war criminals, there is no doubt who is really on trial. Further, both the prosecution team and the defense team are composed of ACLU attorneys who defended the Guantanamo detainees.
Think of all those layers of permissions at all sorts of staff levels. If you are ambitious for position [not command, position] having signed off to approved an attempt to capture any Taliban or Al Quada leader, if successful, would mean that you could be held responsible for the act in any politically convenient witch hunt that may come out of Washington. No one has ever been punished for failure to actively engage the enemy in this war. The safest course is to deliberately throw more monkey wrenches into operations. How much of our inability to get inside the enemy’s OODA loop is based on a series of deliberate prolongations of our own for career protection purposes?
This subject got me to thinking about the past. In the later Roman Empire, their army was really two armies. There were static forces, in outposts along the borders [Limes] whose job was to detect incursions by the barbarians, send word that they were coming, and fight to delay them until the regular field army of Legions arrived. Those same Legions were commanded by generals whose next career step up was to become emperor, by killing the previous emperor. Internal politics and power seeking governed the deployment of legions as well as strategic necessity.
The Rhine was one of the more certain and easily defended of Rome’s frontiers. It was deep, it was wide, and it was fast; precluding the Germanic tribes from crossing into Gaul. The winter of 406 is reported to be one of the coldest on record. History has it that on Christmas Day in 406, the Rhine froze solid for the first time in memory. And on that night it was as if every German in the world up to and including Hagar the Horrible, Brunhilde complete with horned helmet, and Arminius’ many times great grandchildren invaded Roman territory; walking across the Rhine.
The Roman troops on the Limes sent word back, and prepared to sell themselves dearly. I was just thinking it was likely that more than one Roman junior officer went into battle wondering if the politicians commanding the field armies would come to their aid, or abandon them for their own political purposes. And I wonder if our own troops will be wondering the same things soon, too.
Subotai Bahadur
Yes, we can (Reagan Remix) v2.0
Yes, thanks for perpetuating the 48-72 hour OODA loop (the ‘basic’ ATO cycle timeline).
True, the overall plan can run on a 48-72 complete cycle, but within the 24 hour ‘execution’ window, the plans have inherent flexibility built in – spare gas in tankers, a variety of ‘contingency’ assets specifically pegged for either ground or airborne alert to rapidly respond to fluid, situational requirements. The establishment of ‘kill-boxes’, with ready assets to respond immediately to FAC/JFAC requests for support.
The overall cycle has been shortened, but the assignment of assets for rapid, as needed response likely has not changed. And although the Ground pounders haven’t really gotten over losing their own assigned division level fixed wing airborne arty (or sometimes seem like it), the Flyboys do actually commit brain bits to serving up ‘supporting fires’ as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The mention of PowerPoint requirements outside of a sleep in a bed, have a real toilet environment is distressing. It appears to be a reversion to CYA-type experienced during the 90′s, stemming from the ‘who’s ass is gonna get fried even if it goes right’ mentality that a lot of people adopted during the last ‘law enforcement instead of military ops’ Presidency. The rule of thumb then being that the further away from the actual activity the point of decision lay, the greater the hand wringing, indecision, and paranoia of being the fall guy became. And it’s always the sign that ‘staffing’ actions have fully achieved glacial speed when the legal, finance, and medical guys are dragged into the approval/review chain.
Anecdotal – did several years of staff weenie purgatory at a mid echelon AF ‘campus’ very near a very large Naval Installation. One of our tasks was to echo deployment orders (basically slap them in the ass as they rolled downhill to the field units). The first year I was there, it was a fairly straightforward exercise – a message of a few loosely formatted paragraphs basically stating to take asset A and send it to point B. These depords would pass, almost unnoticed it seemed, without too much fuss, through a few cognizant Action Officers, with an ‘oh, by the way’ Staff Summary to the Director of Ops. In and out in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, what had been for a few years a relatively ordinary, efficient, and no frills process was noticed by several underemployed O-6s, who made the case to the Director of Ops that, well, they were underemployed, and their guys might have something brilliant to input to the process. This was, by the way, very shortly before the unpleasantness in the Balkans began. Which it did. And man, did the underemployed O-6s that were now insisting that nothing moved till they’d sniffed it and squirmed a bit act like they’d suddenly gotten an Alum enema – simply because NOW, their initials were going to be anywhere NEAR something that might actually come back and bite them in the ass. But instead of just announcing they were ‘out’ of the depord game, they then insisted that their brain surgeons (be they Force Protection, Medical, Finance, Legal, Civil Engineering – whatever) be sure to give it the once over and add their two cents to the process. Meaning – after an initial gagglecluster when people new to the process, who had very low SA about what was happening, threw the kitchen sink into the mix, the 3-4 paragraph depords grew into works of bullshit stacking art that would have made Tolstoy feel inadequate. And could take up to 4-5 days to whip through all the wickets, even AFTER the added material became semi-standardized cut-n-paste exercises.
I do have to say, however, that with 9/11, quite a bit of that headless chicken buffoonery actually abated, as people focused on mission over self. But that sea change was only possible, I believe, because of the attitudinal change coming from higher. Much higher. As in on the other side of the river from the five sided wailing wall higher.
It’s saddening to hear that the tide has changed so dramatically.
Well from what I’ve seen there are very few MBAs in the Obami group. There are some in the military chain of command though. The big problem seems to be the lawyers, poli-sci, and “soft” science graduates. Because the casualties are relatively low in comparison to past wars the pressure to clean the politicals out of the chain of command is just not there. Of course a heavy economic or casualty hit on the Continental US might change things.
Sen. (Hedly) Lamar Alexander (Rino) Tennesse:
“Why is there such growing public frustration with Reid’s bill? “Health care is not the only issue at work here,” says Alexander. “Health care has become a proxy for public restlessness and anger about bailouts, spending, and debt. All of these issues are tied up.””
The Obami apparently think they can survive Afghanistan becoming a fiasco. But it could very well be a “last straw.” Way to many blogs on the ROEs.
Since I am at the bottom of the thread I’ll make this short.
I believe that the Obama/Clinton Administration is purposely lawyerizing the Afghanistan war to cause it to become another Vietnam. They have almost done it (see 38/Unsk’s link).
They despise the military. They love lawyering, bureaucracy, and public adulation. They cater to their own dysfunctional base such as Code Pink, Kos, and Huffpo. The have many imps like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who share their views and can facilitate converting Warfare into Lawfare.
These entrenched yuppie idiots would like nothing better than to lose the war and humiliate the troops (just as in the late ‘60’s with John F. Kerry and his ‘Winter Soldier’).
Shockingly, these egotistical primadonnas don’t understand that war is the most serious business on earth. Failure can mean death and destruction on a staggering scale. The Obama/Clinton gang has turned America into a dysfunctional family. Losing a war is not an option.
Unfortunately, Gen. McCrystal and Sec. Gates are being played as fools. Obama has given the enemy a firm date of retreat. That jeopardizes the lives of our troops. These two military men have got to play hardball or get out of the game.
I believe the quicker Obama is legally removed from office the quicker America can heal from the damage caused by him and his minions.
BS: Well of course, these elements always exist no matter what the political stripe of the actors, but one must note though that the Left’s government funded Nomenkaltura is so far removed from any accountability for actual results that this now is at an extreme and alarmingly danger.
All that they are accoutnable to are their peers, and the metrics are wholly those used by of careerists amd ideologues in that Nomenkaltura.
Perhaps we will yet again muddle trough, but America is not the place it once was. Our “design margin”, a useful notion someone here keeps bringing up, is not very large. If One looks at academia or at places like California, one can see quickly were this leads. It is as though we are having our entire existence planned by the “Student Government” of a Marin County High School.
It cannot but end badly.
I must say, I am rather disappointed at the collective response of the American people to all of this. I thought that we were possessed of more common sense.
We are ruled by the worst people in our society, and on top of that they are complete lunatics. The only real talent and competence they seem to have is for treason. I truly believe that Obama and company will set us back 70 years. They will undo all the great accomplishments of the last century. America at the height of her powers undone by a pack of Boomer Commies. They mean us the depest harm.
Will we ever right it? It was not meant to be so. Something is broken, perhaps beyond repair.
What is broken, obviously, is the simple fact that they are the recipients of an ocean of government money but there only service is to support those wh toss it their way. Undeserved rewards and neglected duties. They possess the worst sort of characters.
Seriously, we are very close to the level of buffoonery and tyranny of the USSR. People do not seem to grasp this. In the world we live in today, this is deadly.
Josh, no the nation does not “deserve” unconstitutional presumption of powers over markets due to the shenanigans of a tiny group of (mostly democrat) politically connected wall street insiders. What a thing to say.
It is the Democrat Political machine that cause this mess and most likely did so on purpose just so they could eize more power. Curbs on congress (as in, stick to your constitutional powers, there buster) would be more like it. Tne nation and the congress both “deserve” this. These new laws are is just more of the same. They will just go back and have more shady shenanigan to fund government, this time with real direct coercion, and we will have much greater disasters down the road. It will be worse as there is now less market forces. These are actually commissars that they are setting up. Not “sort of like” commissar, but actual, real commissars. It is shameful and treasonous. No commissar in the USSR had more power than these Democrat commies.
It is absurd to think that this “solves” anything other than aid and support the Left’s lust for power and desire to destroy the weath of this nation.
We “deserve” it? Preposterous. And it is the rest of us that is getting it, not wall street. That is just theater. This is merely about “We are in power and have total control, do what you are told”. Wall street will soon go about jiggering instruments to fund the new tyrannical government and be just fine once they tow the line.
Here, as with the Iraq war, you buy into the Left wing, MSM narrative. Don’t.
A French Infantryman’s View of American Soldiers
http://tinyurl.com/yejchel
(This is the main area where I’d like to comment. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: ‘If your officer’s dead and the sergeants look white/remember it’s ruin to run from a fight./So take open order, lie down, sit tight/And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. ‘In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.’ Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other ‘incident’, the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.
the original blog doesn’t exist anymore, thanks to many readers the article was copied
also I read it when it was edited too, but what doesn’t appear here is that this frenchman also said that in french army the orders come from the superior hierarchy and can’t be discussed before the actions, while for american troops actions are discussed with the whole team, and when a decision is taken everyone does what is necessary to respect the decision, while for the french troops discussions happen after actions, sometimes it’s too late.
Lt: Stryker is that bunker I ordered you to take been neautralized?
Stryker: No Lt we got within 50 meter’s and then the enemy “lawyered up” we had to call in JAG and we are still waiting for the ACLU to sign off on the attack.
A few observations from my USAF career:
1. Individual initiative and innovation is strong discouraged from the official viewpoint – and is relied on very heavily to actually get things done.
2. Avoiding blame is always a bureaucratic priority, and this got worse in the 1990’s.
3. Personal integrity went downhill in the 90’s.
4. The massive downsizing of the 1990’s led to a great many people in the wrong jobs and many examples of the “horse holders for nonexistent horses” situation.
5. It is entirely possible for a single relatively low ranking officer to stop things, if for only a while, even at the National level – and this is not always bad, since in the 90’s a lot of stupid things were attempted. The reason this is possible is that the higher ups wish to avoid work as much as anyone else.
6. Senior officers who display the “Exact PowerPoint Format” mentality are never good at anything of any kind.
First Thing We Do, Kill All the Speechwriters
Mark Steyn channels the President:
“There are those who say there is no evil in the world. There are others who argue that pink fluffy bunnies are the spawn of Satan and conspiring to overthrow civilization.
Let me be clear:
I believe people of goodwill on all sides can find common ground between the absurdly implausible caricatures I attribute to them on a daily basis. We must begin by finding the courage to acknowledge the hard truth that I am living testimony to the power of nuance to triumph over hard truth and come to the end of the sentence on a note of sonorous, polysyllabic if somewhat hollow uplift.
Pause for applause.”
The worst (best?) part? Steyn’s parody was so pitch-perfect, I heard it in my head in Obama’s voice. Read the whole thing
here.
RWE: precisely.
We really need to beef up the Armed Forces back to Cold War levels, and increase the powers and authorities of the NCO ranks, clean out the dead wood in the officers corp, and in general, shrink the size of the officer’s corp relative to the enlisted ranks. (Of course we should do this realignment in informed by the gains in technology and tactical knowledge of the last two decades. I am not suggest a return to Cold War organizational structure.) If we shut down the Commiecrat’s monstrosities we could well afford this.
Ironically, much of this Rumsfield was after (excepting the bit about beefing up the size), and he got a lot of flack for it. One might have some problems with the Furture Combat System from a standpoint of technological hubris, but the FCS approach pointed in this direction in its organizational and command structure. It was modeled after the USMC deployment structure and gave combined arms capability integrated right down to the company level.
If America is to recover her position as a economic and military powerhouse, we will have to reject and reverse the Clinton era draw downs.
It is clear that the Peace Dividend pays little returns to anyone but Democrat clients and their patrons.
“Ironically, much of this Rumsfield was after (excepting the bit about beefing up the size), and he got a lot of flack for it. One might have some problems with the Furture Combat System from a standpoint of technological hubris, but the FCS approach pointed in this direction in its organizational and command structure. It was modeled after the USMC deployment structure and gave combined arms capability integrated right down to the company level.”
—
Had Rummy been at the helm, instead of Powell/Rice, we would have been out of both Iraq and Pakistan years ago.
(or Paakistan, as POTUS says it)
Doug: Roger that!
When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000. USA Today
The bureaucratization of every aspect of life is well underway. Why would the military be any different?
These centralizing trends do not bode well for the Citizen whose productive life will be spent supporting a mandarin class whose only purpose will be taxation, regulation, and enough vote buying to keep the game going.
I don’t see it happening yet but the last refuge for those of us who believe that personal freedom actually contributes something to the quality of life will be self-sustaining communities that exist off the grid and beyond the reach of the tax man.
1. Individual initiative and innovation is strong discouraged from the official viewpoint – and is relied on very heavily to actually get things done.
Like Catch-22, where they have to decide whether to give Yossarian a medal or court martial him for going around twice at Bologna.
2. Avoiding blame is always a bureaucratic priority, and this got worse in the 1990’s.
As you say, always. Also, military always gets worse in peacetime, and with Clinton POTUS it was always sunny, yet there was always blame.
3. Personal integrity went downhill in the 90’s.
Generational. And with POTUS Clinton setting the (negative) example.
4. The massive downsizing of the 1990’s led to a great many people in the wrong jobs and many examples of the “horse holders for nonexistent horses” situation.
This can be intentional if it is felt the downsizing is temporary, needs to be restored to actually fight. Hey, you and I are still walking around with appendixes – although there is some thought that it is actually functional for something or other.
5. It is entirely possible for a single relatively low ranking officer to stop things, if for only a while, even at the National level – and this is not always bad, since in the 90’s a lot of stupid things were attempted. The reason this is possible is that the higher ups wish to avoid work as much as anyone else.
Like the HQ staff in Catch-22 (ex-PFC Wintergreen).
6. Senior officers who display the “Exact PowerPoint Format” mentality are never good at anything of any kind.
Well, it’s pre-powerpoint, but like the General Peckem in Catch-22 who is in charge of special services, and thinks he should be in charge of bombing, too, because isn’t that a special service. Or the ex-supply colonel in Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge, who berates Sgt. Highway (Eastwood) for having taken the initiative and the objective – and is then himself berated by the combat general in charge.
ledger@62,
Warfare to Lawfare. Hopefully that mean that lawyers become the primary targets.
Visa your “legal removal from office,” I heard of an interesting poll (on Rush IIRC) – 20% of the population already wants the Once impeached.
Why aren’t the Repblicans, in concert with any remaining non-traitorous Congresscritters shouting this necessity en masse & 24/7? nonstop? Where’s the outrage?
Apparently, all recourse is illegal now.
To quote many others here: We’re so screwed.
Reading these comments is like listening to learned adults. So much to think on.
OODA loop is one thing. Will is another.
Subotai Bahadur
Children in DC and
heroes in the field.
Lumbering beast that it is, our military has accomplished far more than we easily recognize. Credit goes to leadership and courage at all levels.
Of all the people I know I am the optimist.
I think we are on the way to winning this War on Terror (Overseas Contingency Operation). Look at Columbia, Indonesia, Philippines, Kashmir, Sri Lanka. Terrorism is having a tough time. I was in Peshawar (NGO medical aid stuff) in the 80s in the dark days of the Soviet Invasion. I see no reason to fail now.
Peace grows slowly between India and Pakistan. Pakistan confronts its own demons and their military fights the Taliban; for the first time really. Al Qaeda is hit and hit again. Obama’s son, now their #3, killed. Marines are in Helmand. Nuf said.
My friends in Afghanistan have been rocketed, suppressed and killed by the Taliban. They will fight before they allow the Taliban control of the country again.
It is our own greedy, squabbling, perverted, corrupt children in DC that are the danger.
Give our generals even 80% of the tools and let them work.
#72 Peter Boston : “…communities that exist off the grid and beyond the reach of the tax man.” . You mean Texas?
Ask me someday about the Driverless Tractor Driver?
I work for a large Federal agency (non-military). One night several of my fellow mid-level managers (while partaking of adult beverages) dicsussed our frustrations with some of our executives.
The vents can be summarized:
-why is nothing done with do nothing executives?
-why do peer Teflon managers continue to get promoted to the executive level?
We discerned the following:
-Avoiding embarassment and second guessing takes precendence over risk taking and initiative.
-Results are less important than following the approved process.
-There are no failures in the executive ranks (we are that good!)
Even though frustrated and sometimes disheartened we decided to follow Kent Keith’s Paradoxical Commandments.
http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/
Revolutions don’t start with the Generals. They come from the Colonels.
(PREVIOUS THREAD)
173. Mongoose:
“No, the cat is saying, “well now you obtuse human, it is t;me for me to have some milk. get the lead out!” Whoever think that a cat is saying “dependency” has never had one. They are just as likely to go next door and get their drink if one’s response is not quick enough.
Seriously.
”
But, but!…
Bateson was a GENIUS!
#10 & #31 and Richard:
This has happened in part because the constituencies have changed. Back in the day, a leader’s public was his men. They were his “constituency”. You gave them victory, kept them alive you were good. Today a commander’s constituency is sometimes a set of offstage judges and evaluators who are looking — because it sells — for an excuse to hang them. That’s how you get your Pulitzer, by getting someone in jail.
Back in the day, long ago and far away.
(I like to begin my war stories that away, my grandkids love it)
We were LURPS, or if you want to put it another way, Grunts sent out (way out) to find and identify NVA troop concentrations, convoys or supply trains.
The mission was locate, identify, destroy. NOT engage or be detected.
Seems simple but it never was. Along with commo problems, normal patrol problems (hordes of insects, snakes and terrain problems) it appeared that there were multi-layers of idiots that were tasked and determined that we would fail in our mission and that they would do their best to make that happen in order to get promoted.
I won’t go into the details except to say that they almost got us killed several times and let the enemy go scot-free more times than I could count.
So. This malfeasence in Afghanistan is not surprising. Just Sad to think that in over forty years the “Brass” still doesn’t get it.
Believe it or not…Wars are won by the enlisted, not the officers.
If they let them, that is.
Papa Ray
60. Wind Rider:
I do have to say, however,
that with 9/11, quite a bit of that headless chicken buffoonery actually abated,
as people focused on mission over self.
But that sea change was only possible,
I believe, because of the attitudinal change coming from higher.
Much higher. As in on the other side of the
river from the five sided wailing wall higher
………
The upside of this is that that there is evidence health care bill may stall
out in the senate.
81 Charles “As in on the other side of the
river from the five sided wailing wall higher”
It also has many walls inside. Blocking not only communications but common sense.
Papa Ray
“Believe it or not…Wars are won by the enlisted, not the officers.”
As someone once said — this battle can be lost here in the General’s tent, but the only place it can be won is out there on the front lines.
65 ans de la bataille des Ardennes à Bastogne. http://bit.ly/7ufftX
the 65th anniversary of the Ardennes battle are fested in Bastogne
Mongoose,
In order for this to come about, don’t we need to greatly increase the number of those who realize we’re really at war? And barring another successful mass-casualty event here in the US (God forbid!) what are the chances of that?
Josh #:73
In fact in response to the downsizing of the 90’s, the USAF followed a practice of “parking pilots” – putting them in non-flying positions until a cockpit became available. The problem with this is that the chances of finding a qualified pilot to do certain jobs is essentially nonexistent, either due to lack of aptitude, lack of undergraduate training, or due to lack of relevant experience. In fact, the CSAF used to berate Space Command for not providing what he thought was the command’s fair share of slots in which to park pilots.
This not only created some serious problems but also indicated a basic attitude that was incompatible with success. Traditionally the most technology-oriented of the services, in the 90’s the Air Force literally developed an anti-technology attitude. For example, back in the early 90’s the USAF and NASA launched a joint space mission to test and space qualify advanced new semiconductors. One general officer in the Pentagon was enraged by this saying “I could operate a wing of F-15’s for a year for the cost of that satellite!” But, in fact, history showed that operating another wing of F-15’s in any given year in the 90’s would have been a complete waste of money, while the new semiconductors were needed for our space capabilities. They did not want new technology if the result was keeping them from flying what they had.
And relative to Mongoose’s #69 assertion about reducing the number of officers, the problem with that is that certain tasks require a much higher percentage of officers than due others. For example, go to a construction site and find out the educational levels of the people there. Then go the firm that designed the building and do the same thing. Would you conclude that the educational levels of the A&E firm were too high compared to those of the construction company? Well, due to the excessively egalitarian attitude of the U.S. Military, if you cut back the number of “construction workers” you would also have to cut back the same number of engineers, just to make it “fair.” This would be like getting rid of the useless “horse holders” in the artillery unit and then getting rid of an equal number of actual gunbunnies just to make it equitable.
The USAF is very probably large enough to handle anything that it must. But the service is not large enough to Think about what it is going to have to do and how that must be done. As a result it has horse holders in charge who conclude that we have a shortage of hay and horsehoes.
2. Tarnsman:
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
~William Tecumseh Sherman
——————–
Came to this thread late.
I’ve been researching Sherman for the last 15 years, and never came across the above quote. If you have a source, I’d appreciate it. Bye-the-bye, the stylistic look of the statement is definitely 20th-century, and could be a paraphrase of something Sherman said. “Easy and safe” doesn’t have a Victorian stylistic smell. He said a lot of things “about war,” but the question of “easy and safe” I don’t recall coming up for him.
67)RWE,
“1. Individual initiative and innovation is strong discouraged from the official viewpoint – and is relied on very heavily to actually get things done.”
What I saw in the Navy is that “initiative and innovation” was encouraged, on paper. They loved having someone write up a paper and send it up the chain-of-command. Unfortunately, it rarely accomplished anything, because someone higher up didn’t want to bother making changes, or didn’t bother taking the time to really consider it.
86
“The USAF is very probably large enough to handle anything that it must. But the service is not large enough to Think about what it is going to have to do and how that must be done. As a result it has horse holders in charge who conclude that we have a shortage of hay and horseshoes.”
Your 110 percent correct. And if you will notice over the last year six of the highest ranking Generals in the Air Force have been fired along with several underlings.
And they are not finished yet. Gates and other AF Generals are cleaning house and they are using shovels instead of spades.
My middle grandson is in the Air Force and he has many tales to tell. One of them is that the Air Force is pissed at taking the brunt of cuts and not getting any glory or credit in the Wars, even though they have killed more enemy than the grunts have.
(and I might add, several civilians also, but war is hell and the Taliban like to hide among the innocent, just like aQ does.)
Even tho they used to be an active participant in those wars before the last ROE change by Obama and his Generals. Now they must fly four times as long, burning up four times as much fuel in order to deliver less than half the ordinance on the enemy.
Over the next year they are also letting go over three thousand troops from the AF, mostly (about 2/3s officers). This “early out” with all bennies is looked upon by most AF as just politics. I really don’t know myself, but I do know that the idiots in the Pentagon still…still…don’t know what the hell they are doing and are too submerged in politics to ever find out.
Oh well, it’s been that way for centuries, We keep making the same mistakes over and over.
Argumentum ad ignorantiam
Papa Ray
Parker: Well I really think it is a matter of going public at the highest levels with what is the real game of the Left and the Democrat Party and keeping the focus there. That and calling forth the real America, the traditional American civilization and identity and all the values, history and legacies that go with it. Perhaps that America still exists. At least I pray it does.
If they and their agitprop arms can be marginalized or silenced, and the educational system cleared up, I think that it can happen. We might be surprised at how quick the turnaround would be.
Ironically, Obama may be the vessel by which the liberal establishment finally is exposed and rejected. This is not outside of the realm of possibility.
Certainly a mass attack could change matters, but then again, look at where we are now only a few years after 911. Look at the suppression of the Ft. Hood killer, or the various Lawfare attacks on honorable servicemen.
What has to happen is that we really have to utterly expose the American (and international) left for what they are and make this a constant kitchen table topic. Along with that, they need to be marched to jail.
Impossible? A real investigation with some real federal bucks and drive behind it into the reality of the so-called “financial crisis” of last year that results in putting all the culprits behind bars I think might really cause some scales to fall from the eyes. I truly believe that the Democrats are in the pockets of enemies and competitors, nations such as China, Iran and Russia, and perhaps the rest of the BRICs too. If that can be proven, well, that would greatly set back the left. A president that every weekend in his or her address articulating what actually goes on in our schools and university, or articulating the real corruption would help.
Then there is the very real election and contribution fraud that has gone on.
Uncontroversial evidence of this will destroy the Left. If some Republicans have to go down, if the reason why this all has not been done heretofore is because someone as the goods on the GOP, well let the chips fall were they may. The point is not to save the GOP but save the nation.
If the Feds actually went after political machines like that of Daley’s Chicago mafia, and put the big men in jail, it would radically change the tone of this politics in the nation.
Prosecuting some criminal liabilities in the AGW fraud could help too.
So it is a matter of calling out and marginalizing the Left and then retaking the culture,
Things looked pretty bleak before Reagan took office too you know.
All it takes is putting brave conservatives into power in the next few years.
It is not impossible. It may take strident and persistent grassroots activism on the right. But we tend to forget the glory days of the Reagan revolution activism. Those was pretty heady days back then. You know things look pretty bleak for conservatism up until Reagan too.
Granted the democrats were not openly driving us to Communism, and were not as outrageously open in their corruptions and power grubbing, nor was the nation so at risk then as now, but nonetheless it was quite hard to be optimistic about changing anything prior to the 1980′s. It was easy to feel despair. I do not know your age, but people how came of age after Reagan’s presidency perhaps do not know how bad it was. We had real wage and price control regimes. Unions were extremely powerful. There was not real alternative media and conservatives were quite isolated and fearful.
People forget that the big tech pushes in the late 1970′s and 1980′s were not big Democrat affairs nor were the firms and institutions solely democrat fiefs. It is was nothing like web tech firms now which are wholly taken over by moonbats. It was much more profitable too and the opportunities much broader than now. Bring this back, or something like it, and make it clear just how America returned to herself, and we might tip the scale.
A radical scale back of government, an radical reduction of taxation would result in a great boom, and another wave of technology advance and whole new industries falling into place.
But again, what is crucial is to call the left out. Reagan managed to do this in a way appropriate to his times. It was less strident in rhetoric, at least so far as domestic politics goes, than perhaps is required today, but if the “code” was understood” it was really pretty aggressive and focused. That constituency, I do hope, is still out there. I recall being both moved and shocked by the nation’s reaction to Reagan’s death and funeral. It was really am unofficial day of morning, and quite deeply and broadly felt. My take on it was that the response was more profound that JFK’s funeral. And it was pretty much impromptu, bottom up affair. Try as they might, the MSM could not tame or suppress it. I had no idea that the Nation felt so deeply about Reagan. This all surprised me, but what really shocked me was the age of some of those people. They obviously where children or teenagers during the Reagan years. They must have understood more than I imagined they had, and he must have had a profound effect on them. Perhaps that is still out there in the body politic. At least I hope it is.
Though I do get what you are saying. It almost seems like an act of God is required. Perhaps we will get one.
I had an old friend who was special forces in Viet Name back in the mid-sixties who used to insist that the safest place to be if the Russians ever attacked would be the Pentagon becuase if it survived a first strike the bureaucrats there would finish the job.
When times are good the bureaucracy grows and prospers and when they are bad it grows even faster and prospers even more. Bin Laden should have been easy to defeat, after all by attacking the Pentagon he proved he didn’t understand the nature, disposition, and intent of his enemy. Or maybe he did… Think of all the new bureaucracies that have been created. How many people have now taken their shoes off in American airport because one boneheaded n’ere do well could light a match? Only a bureacrat would come up with that idiotic response to an idiots attempt to do the unspeakable.
Clinton raised the flag officer vetting process to a high art. You had to complete pages and pages of questions correctly to be consider for promotion.
It is part of the current academy mindset to hold careerism as a higher end. It has not been lost on the careerists that you have to play ball ALWAYS. There will never again be the Revolt of the Admiral we saw after WWII.
In Harry Summer’s Vietnam era “Crisis in Command” he observed that not enough career officers were resigning their commissions in a huff.
That was then. A whole new generation of officers have been bred to believe flag rank supercedes principle and they have been carefully culled.
Programmer:
ask me someday about the Mounted Bassoon Player.
Ya, you heard me right.
RWE @ 76: I don’t have any knowledge of officer ratios, but pilots are all officers, right?
Regarding technology, I know a bit. Technology management is always a challenge. Military is famous for preparing to refight the last war. Do we need space-qualified semiconductors to shoot womp rats in Waziristan? The long development cycles for SOTA weapons under government regulations means, by the time anything new is fielded, it’s obsolete. Right now anyone trying to save money at the Pentagon can cut short production on the F-22 in favor of what (one assumes) are black bag program UAV/UCAVs. I know less about it, but I gather a lot of army FCS stuff is caught in those loops, too.
Rumsfeld to his credit (and actually, Gates in his earlier days) was trying to reform that and other traditions, and like all change agents he was destroyed by it.
All I’m saying is it’s a mugs game, nobody can really win, just try to keep things moving and ready for whatever eventuates.
Mongoose,
Mind you, I’m not hoping for a catastrophe like that, just wondering if that’s what it would take. You seem surprising optimistic about the chances for mere exposing of leftist this-or-that to have a beneficial effect. I agree it should; but then I look around at the stuff we already know, and think, “So that didn’t do it for the uncommitteds and those not (yet) paying attention? So what will it take???”
Hence my question. I sure would be comforted to see some evidence of an awakening on the part of the uncommitted/not paying attention, and maybe stuff like the growing opposition to the health care takeover is just that.
And regarding the Mounted Bassoon Player–today is also “someday”, right?
@25. Mr. Linbeck, Jr.:
First let me say thank you for being the father of a wonderful, energetic and philanthropic son. It is nice to have L III’s Dad chiming in. He has done you proud, imho.
The inertia of our bureaucracy is almost cosmological in nature at this point. That it has infected the ground troops does not surprise me in the least. It was inevitable due to the advances in battlefield communications as stated up thread. What has surprised me is the relative inability of today’s soldier to circumvent said bureacracy. I place most of the blame on our inability to prosecute the war in Afghanistan squarely on the shoulders of McChrystal, Patreus, Gates and ultimately on the undecider in office. For it is his inability to define a clear and attainable goal/strategy and their inability to reroute around his deficiency that has caused paralysis by analysis and it’s attendent failures to obtain tactical victory on the ground.
W: “Bureaucracy is jealous of authority… a bureaucrat confronted with a plethora of i’s to dot and t’s to cross will add even more i’s and more t’s… The battlefield is a place where a man worries that he will die; the capital is a place where people worry about their careers. For some it is less important whether a war is won or lost than whether something was illegal…”
An unjust society can rightly be described as one where secular (legislated or bureaucratic) law becomes the enemy of sacred human rights; when it becomes illegal to defend human life and human liberty.
“Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” Thomas Jefferson
90. Mongoose:
I’m going to fisk your comment. Don’t be offended please as you are one of my favorite commentators and I have been around the net for a long time. Even before it was available to the general public.
But you must have had a couple or three stiff drinks and a toke or two of something stronger this evening. Because your way, way too optimistic and willing to believe in the unbelievable and the people in different levels of power that you would need to make your statements even have half a chance in coming true.
WARNING- BOOK FOLLOWS. Wrtiten by someone with only a high school education.
Parker: Well I really think it is a matter of going public at the highest levels with what is the real game of the Left and the Democrat Party and keeping the focus there. That and calling forth the real America, the traditional American civilization and identity and all the values, history and legacies that go with it. Perhaps that America still exists. At least I pray it does.
I’m right there beside you in your hopes and prayers. Don’t ever doubt that. But…
In order to get the attention, focus and the average overworked, underpaid, harried, too tired and fed up to give a crap- American…about politics or much of anything else…you would have to explode a bomb in his/her front yard and post a sign that “your government did this and are going to tax you and your children and their children and their grand children, until they die from lack of government medical care and then they will take your house and kill your dog.
Then you might get their attention. And that doesn’t even cover, touch or address the millions of blacks, Latino’s and others that are sucking and have been sucking the governments di–tit for years. They only want more, more and then more, and are never satisfied with what they get. And it doesn’t cover the hundreds of thousands of Government workers who really are sucking the life out of us. Making wages that or 30 to 40 percent higher than the rest of us ignorant Americans. And will get even another raise next year.
So you want to go public? Just how are you going to do that? There are a few outlets on the net that give the truth and of course Fox, but even they are leaning to the middle and can’t be depended on. Are you going to hold a gun to the lame stream media and make them report the truth, to tell Americans that their Republic is going down the tubes to a hard stop at a mix of socialism and communism with a dash of chaos and a sprinkle of the depths of Hell.
They wouldn’t believe you.
If they and their agitprop arms can be marginalized or silenced, and the educational system cleared up, I think that it can happen. We might be surprised at how quick the turnaround would be.
I don’t know what agitprop means and am not going to look it up. But they if you mean the backers of Obama who incidently nobody knows who the hell they are except maybe for Soros, you would need lots of money and lots of people with arms to silence or marginalize them. They are not going to go down without a serious bloody fight. They have been planning and working for this for decades.
Clean up our American Educational System? I have been harping, preaching and shouting about this for over twenty years and so have others. But as you can tell, to no avail. The taint and corruption is too deep. The only way you could correct it is to fire almost everyone that is connected to the system and put them on a boat to some place without any recourse or return.
Never ever happen it’s just not the PC way or something that Americans would do.
Ironically, Obama may be the vessel by which the liberal establishment finally is exposed and rejected. This is not outside of the realm of possibility.
Here I agree with you, to a great extent, but not completely. Obama and his cretins and his shadow backer have bitten off more than they can chew and cover up. But even if they are exposed they won’t be rejected by over thirty percent of the liberal progressive population of America. Maybe even more. The others that don’t worry about anything except day to day existence and how much they can get from the government tit will vote for the democrats no matter what. All they need to know is where to sign or mark their X.
Certainly a mass attack could change matters, but then again, look at where we are now only a few years after 911. Look at the suppression of the Ft. Hood killer, or the various Law fare attacks on honorable servicemen.
Yep, a mass attack would change matters. There would be a declaration of Martial Law and the Obama and his backers would have a free hand to do what ever they wanted to. Including disarming America and putting American Terrorists, Extremists into prison camps. Mark my words.
What has to happen is that we really have to utterly expose the American (and international) left for what they are and make this a constant kitchen table topic. Along with that, they need to be marched to jail.
See previous rant. But don’t forget that your “kitchen table topic” is usually about what people think is important and not politics. It is where in the hell are we going to get the money to…
And yes, they need to either be marched to jail or to save money and time, just marched out and shot. But you know Americans would never do that. They have a sense of fair play that will in the end be the undoing of them if they are not really careful.
Impossible? A real investigation with some real federal bucks and drive behind it into the reality of the so-called “financial crisis” of last year that results in putting all the culprits behind bars I think might really cause some scales to fall from the eyes. I truly believe that the Democrats are in the pockets of enemies and competitors, nations such as China, Iran and Russia, and perhaps the rest of the BRICs too. If that can be proven, well, that would greatly set back the left. A president that every weekend in his or her address articulating what actually goes on in our schools and university, or articulating the real corruption would help.
Then there is the very real election and contribution fraud that has gone on.
You say a real Federal Investigation? Don’t you know who is in charge of that. No matter, just know that he is not only in Obama’s pocket but sucking really hard and saying pretty please. The FBI? They would be spinning their wheels and wasting time because any results they got would not be acted upon. The Federal Courts…makes no difference what they decreed if they had no one to enforce their will.
Then you say “a president” to make things right. Well, what do you do with the present president. The One, the Only Obama?
He ain’t leaving, he is going to serve out his four years come hell, high water, impeachment, rebellion or his wife leaving him for Tiger Woods. Forget any cooperation from him. He is under control of others and has no will nor choice but to follow their direction and commands. They have stripped his will, his mind and his compassion from him.
Uncontroversial evidence of this will destroy the Left. If some Republicans have to go down, if the reason why this all has not been done heretofore is because someone as the goods on the GOP, well let the chips fall were they may. The point is not to save the GOP but save the nation.
Evidence makes no difference if those who it should make a difference are not paying attention or if they are don’t believe because they either don’t want to or don’t give a damn and just want some more of that democrat government tit. Even those middle of the road independents are not going to pay attention if the messenger is not who or what they want to believe. They are numbed by the fight between the crats and the repubs and are sick and tired of it and wouldn’t notice if they wiped each other out. Until after the fact.
If the Feds actually went after political machines like that of Daley’s Chicago mafia, and put the big men in jail, it would radically change the tone of this politics in the nation.
See above. The Feds can’t do anything because the courts, the attorney generals the governors of many states are in the democrats pockets and those that are not can’t buck the liberal socialist progressive courts with the legions of lawyers that love money more than they love our Republic. And those courts that are not corrupted and tainted will be unable to get any federal or most state law enforcement to do anything of any magnitude. Check Mate.
Prosecuting some criminal liabilities in the AGW fraud could help too.
Forget that. There will be no prosecutions nor much of anything to come out of the AGW fraud other than denials by the lame stream media and the corrupt (and some blackmailed) scientists that want to keep their jobs and make a lot of money. There seems to be no conscious or patriotism among them.
So it is a matter of calling out and marginalizing the Left and then retaking the culture,
Simple and easy to say. But I’m afraid if our votes can’t bring our Congress to it’s senses and make them once again love America more than their bank accounts and their fantasies there is no way to retake our culture except the way our founders warned us about and advised us to do.
Things looked pretty bleak before Reagan took office too you know.
Sorry, that is no comparison. Not even close. This is an attack on America, a determined, calculated, preplanned massive effort to destroy our Republic.
All it takes is putting brave conservatives into power in the next few years.
Jeez, I wish it would be that simple. Even with every man/woman in our Government trying to fix what has happened in the last few years it will be a herculean effort that will take many years to repair. Even then I’m believe and am afraid that the confidence and pride of Americans will never be the same.
It is not impossible. It may take strident and persistent grassroots activism on the right. But we tend to forget the glory days of the Reagan revolution activism. Those was pretty heady days back then. You know things look pretty bleak for conservatism up until Reagan too.
You repeat yourself. But that is good. Good thoughts, beliefs, hopes and wishes are needed. But remember all that in one hand will not be enough unless there is real power and threat that is not false behind it.
Granted the democrats were not openly driving us to Communism, and were not as outrageously open in their corruptions and power grubbing, nor was the nation so at risk then as now, but nonetheless it was quite hard to be optimistic about changing anything prior to the 1980’s. It was easy to feel despair. I do not know your age, but people how came of age after Reagan’s presidency perhaps do not know how bad it was. We had real wage and price control regimes. Unions were extremely powerful. There was not real alternative media and conservatives were quite isolated and fearful.
I was there, not as involved, more like the masses I spoke of, whose attentions we have to have to do anything. You speak of Union power? They are more powerful now and the other liberal progressive lobbys, groups such as ACORN and it’s many affiliates are not only powerful but have the financial power that they have never had before. The democrats have access to a known Billion dollars and an unknown other massive large amount of money. Don’t forget that there is over eight hundred BILLION dollars that are just gone. Missing… Who has that money?
People forget that the big tech pushes in the late 1970’s and 1980’s were not big Democrat affairs nor were the firms and institutions solely democrat fiefs. It is was nothing like web tech firms now which are wholly taken over by moonbats. It was much more profitable too and the opportunities much broader than now. Bring this back, or something like it, and make it clear just how America returned to herself, and we might tip the scale.
Yea, that was then but this is now. Many things have changed since then not even considering how much the dollar is worth or the confidence of lending institutions that are now in the pocket (or straight-jacket) of the government. The scale is so far over now that as I said earlier it might take generations to make it right.
A radical scale back of government, an radical reduction of taxation would result in a great boom, and another wave of technology advance and whole new industries falling into place.
Sounds great. But look at it this way, even if you tighten the belt, if you reduce your income it will just make it longer to recover and pay your bills. Has it not sunk in that America is now bankrupt. That we owe more money than all the previous administrations put together did? That we only are being let to continue on the grace of a communist state. That they could foreclose on us at any time. I wish they would just take California and New York state and call it even. But that is just me.
But again, what is crucial is to call the left out. Reagan managed to do this in a way appropriate to his times. It was less strident in rhetoric, at least so far as domestic politics goes, than perhaps is required today, but if the “code” was understood” it was really pretty aggressive and focused. That constituency, I do hope, is still out there. I recall being both moved and shocked by the nation’s reaction to Reagan’s death and funeral. It was really am unofficial day of morning, and quite deeply and broadly felt. My take on it was that the response was more profound that JFK’s funeral. And it was pretty much impromptu, bottom up affair. Try as they might, the MSM could not tame or suppress it. I had no idea that the Nation felt so deeply about Reagan. This all surprised me, but what really shocked me was the age of some of those people. They obviously where children or teenagers during the Reagan years. They must have understood more than I imagined they had, and he must have had a profound effect on them. Perhaps that is still out there in the body politic. At least I hope it is.
I’m there with you on all you said. But I don’t have that confidence in that generation or for that matter the generations since. A third of America is either in poverty or on the government tit and don’t know or don’t want any change.
Though I do get what you are saying. It almost seems like an act of God is required. Perhaps we will get one.
Well actually an act of God would be nice but God only helps those that help themselves.
It is the responsibility of each and every American to protect our Republic from all enemies.
The only question is to each American is will you do so at the risk of your treasure and your life?
Papa Ray
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
2009 Judge Alex Kozinski
And no I have not been drinking. Nor had any smoke (except my pipe and Sir Raleigh Aromatic tobacco) I kinda wish I had.
RWE: I think it unwise to equate a level of education, intelligence or aptitude with membership in the officers corp. That may have been meaningful 70 years ago, but in the all volunteer, highly specialized and technocratic military of today, I am not sure that is true. If one looks just at the gear hanging off of the average ranger or SEAL NCO, it is worth $20K or more, sometimes much more. The level of training that competent NCO’s have today certainly is equivalent to a college degree. In some specialties it really takes 3 or 4 years to train, and that training in much more intense that it would be over the same period in the civilian world. I would also point out that a great many of the higher level degrees our officers pursue to climb the ranks are of a highly dubious nature and value. I really doubt that some of these humanities degrees, such a “public policy”, “political science” or “sociology” degree programs impart much of real value in either the civilian or military worlds. Indeed, they lead to much mischief. I would say that the larger part of the higher educational system today functions more as a gatekeeper to than new Nomenklatura rather than as an institution of learning or study.
It is not clear that all of these graduate programs for officers are real worth much at all. It is pretty recent development, and there ight be better ways to train people.
One supsects that even during WW2 entry to the officer’s corp was often more about position in the WASP or New Deal establishment than it was about merit, officers from professional military families excepted, of course.
One can just as well have high standards of education for the NCO ranks, and push down authority. There is no real reason that an O2 or O3 has to pilot fighter aircraft, for example.
Also there appears to be some confusion in our current military about the difference between skills and knowledge, and what their requirements are in both areas. I would suggest that they need more skills than knowledge per se, and that the knowledge is highly specialized in most cases. Experience and common sense would seem to be the key ingredient to success, and thus my emphasis on high quality NCO’s.
One may look at special forces or the USMC as guides here, but it could be taken even further. The British military once had a tradition of being less officer heavy and of placing more authority on senior NCO’s. (note: I have no knowledge of conditions there today.) Outside of the strictly military world, the Intel community might also guide us. There it is commonplace that staff levels have Phd’s in the ranks, and in the NSA’s case, they essentially have an in-house graduate school system for cryptology and cryptanalysis. The “graduates” here often return to staff positions.
If what I propose requires changing entry to certain NCO ranks then so be it.
(BTW, I a not proposing this out of some egalitarian impulse, I am just trying to get results.)
I think the whole business is about having integrated cross-arms and cross-service/discipline capabilities at the lowest echelon level. If this is a core goal, then your analogy about A&E and construction firms might not apply.
Papa: No offense taken, and I am glad I provoked a passionate and well argued response out of you,
BTW, “agitprop” means “agitation propaganda”. This is a technique invented by the Communists and Socialists long ago and raise to a high art by our current Commies and the MSN.
Sometimes I find myself making the same sort of counter-arguments that you make to me above.
I just feel, tonight at least, that is is not necessarily hopeless. I am just saying that at the highest levels we need to stop pussy-footing around and start calling things by their real names. Let us understand that we are in a civil war and act accordingly. Just one two year period with a strong majority of courageous patriots on the Hill and in the WH would be enough to expose them all and change things permanently.
Certainly it will require the average American taking responsibility seeing what is going on and doing something about it. All I am asking of them is to vote the vipers out.
The poison in any bureaucracy really comes from the personality types who tend to accumulate in it. I can’t find it anymore, but once I read that most people could be broken down into one of four personality types:
1. the empathic –about 1/8 of the population. Dr. McCoy in the original Star Trek.
2. the doers –people who when presented with a problem immediately set out to solve the problem –about 3/8 of the population. Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek.
3. the analytics –often very inwardly directed people who really don’t care about what others may believe, only about what they perceive to be the truth –about 1/8 of the population. Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek.
4. the pyramidal –outwardly directed people who are mainly concerned about their level in the social pyramid in which they exist, and who want to rise but also want to keep anyone from below to rise to their level –about 3/8 of the population. Major Frank Burns in M.A.S.H.
All of these are extreme examples, but it illustrates the point.
The pyramidal types really don’t like the other personality types very much. In real world terms, the doers and the analytics threaten them. Once they rise to any level in the pyramid, they will impede anyone other than their own personality type from rising to whatever extent they can. They become a choke point beyond which it is difficult for any other personality types to rise in the hierarchy.
They become a self-perpetuating poison in the bureaucratic body.
Over time, the functionality of the pyramid decays. The doers and the analytics are excluded from the top of the pyramid. Dysfunctionality reigns. The purpose for the pyramid, whether it be a business or a governmental agency, is purely secondary (at best) to the people at the top to whom dominance games and status is all that could ever be important to them. The original mission, the purpose of the pyramid, has been forgotten and is now deemed to be insignificant.
And for the people at the top, whether a business or a government bureaucracy, the attitude becomes “the taxpayers/stockholders don’t have any bread? Well then let them eat cake!”
Parker: I was talking less about exposing their treason than grabbing people by the collective back of the neck and shoving their faces in it, and keeping it there. It is not as if the democrats are not wide open on this. The high level opposition seem not to want to do this. The next time they say “how dare you question our patriotism” we should whip out a copy of their bank accounts and a copy of their curricula and say “I will tell you why i dare you smarmy, treasonous b@stard!”
And i was less saying that we should expose this or that but rather saying that we should connect the dots.
No one of high profile is willing to do this, though we have yet to see Palin get rough. Hope that we do.
Tcobb, ya, you nailed that one.
Apropos of Star-trek, I think it is just the archetypes you outline and the resulting dynamics that interested people. not really the SF part, though i gather that few would admit this. The Science Fiction part was just a stage in which to act out these dynamics.
As SciFi, TOS was really sort of hokey, but as a morality play along the lines that you indicated it was rather sophisticated, and for the TV of the the time strikingly so.
Good SciFi, like good Westerns, is a way to talk about the present by conveniently locating the discussion in another, mostly mythical, time.
Westerns choose the past, SciFI the future, but the real moral locus is always now.
By the way, you left out one key archetype: Scotty, the practical man whose idealism is yet not corrupted by the world’s demands. All the other archetypes depend on his good will, good cheer, expertize, experience, creativity and level-headedness in a crisis.
He would have made a fine CPO.
15. Josh: That’s pretty close to the truth. A mitigating point though, is that standardizing equipment manufacture helps lower the cost. In the San Francisco Bay Area, BART designed their system with a wider gauge, which meant that no equipment manufacturer could offer standard equipment. Consequently the cost is much higher for BART’s equipment.
Mongoose: OK, I’m with you now: we’re just looking at it from slightly different angles, that’s all. Perhaps because of the people I’m associated with (for better or worse) I seem to have contact with a lot of folks who are resistant to the shove-their-face-in-it approach. So I’m constantly looking for ways to (in Tod Snyder’s wonderful words) “sneak up on all they believe from behind”. We certainly need both approaches (and more.)
The problems of bureaucracy & careerism eventually afflict every human organization. NASA stands out as the poster child, but it is interesting to recall that Chairman Mao is reputed to have unleashed the Cultural Revolution in China over the frustrations he had about his own Communist bureaucrats. Not that the Cultural Revolution worked out too well for the Chinese people.
I have often wondered about how people felt in the 1930s. Many of them must have seen the warning signs and realized that things were not going to work out well; but they were unable to do anything about it. Our world faces different challenges from theirs, of course. Still, it is clear there will be tears before bedtime, and there does not seem to be much we can do to prevent it.
Maybe what we need to think about is ways to pass on the lessons to the eventual survivors, so that they can avoid making the same mistakes.
“I have often wondered about how people felt in the 1930s. Many of them must have seen the warning signs and realized that things were not going to work out well…”
—
Limbaugh’s dad sure did. He was constantly giving lectures to the boys about FDR and his grabs for power and control.
A lot of red tape is created by legislative oversight committees. A lot of red tape is also created by a desire for central control from the chief executive. And some of it is old-fashioned CYA.
When Congress demands regular reports, a considerable amount of bureaucratic effort is expended on making those reports (and making them look good) rather than attending to the usual business of an institution. For example, if snow needs to get shoveled, every detailed report explaining aspects of the process of shoveling snow takes away from the time and effort one needs to actually shovel snow.
Yes, Congress needs to be informed about what is going on. Yes, regular audits are a good idea, especially when there is corruption. Still, when congressmen play “gotcha”, the result is invariably increased paperwork (and meetings and office politics…).
It’s easy to criticize the bureaucrat, and many bureaucrats richly deserve criticism. Still, we need to realize that a certain amount of red tape exists because the public demands it. The game of “gotcha” played by aspiring reporters and congressional demagogues diverts bureaucratic attention away from the tasks they are ostensibly supposed to be accomplishing and toward protecting themselves from rival bureaucrats, hostile reporters, and legislators with an ax to grind. Every minute spent defending one’s self against office intrigue is a minute lost on the battlefield.
If enough ordinary Americans demanded a streamlined bureaucracy for our military, we would get it. The fact is that we basically have the military bureaucracy that our political culture demands. Given how demagoguery and pork barrel have been par for the course for most of the history of the United States, it’s a wonder that military has won as many wars as it has. Look at the bright side. The court intrigue of other empires has often been even worse.
Given that American public opinion and political leadership don’t appear to be willing to give our military the moral and material backing to ensure victory in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, I think many of our military’s senior officers are trying to avoid getting blamed for a military disaster. I think some of them know only too well what fate befell General William Hull at the hands of President Madison, never mind that President Madison’s own conduct during the War of 1812 was far from exemplary.
Two words: Information Management, which isn’t done, here or abroad. The EA (Enterprise Application) software missed the target (but made money doing it) – target bureaucracies that were both private and public. But that’s another long story.
It used to be a simple matter of organizing information into hierarchical layers of increasing complexity as a structural means of designing documents to meets the needs of a diverse readership. Short story is you just don’t see even that level of effort anymore. Some pair of eyeballs has to plow through the entire pile. Ridiculous is an inadequate description. The relationship, and the direction of relative impact, between computer technology and bureaucratic efficiency remains an open question.
On another subject, I just watched “A Few Days in September” about massive banking withdrawals prior to 911, which prompted me to compare market losses from 2001 with 2008. The DJIA fell 14.3% in the week after 911 compared with 50+% between Sep 2008 and Mar 2009. IOW, by our own devices, more than triple the 2001 decline.
GL @ 109…
So the impending and then realized Obama presidency is three times as destructive as 9-11?…
An interesting comparison.
Opinions may vary b@110.
But my real point was that very little compares to what we can do to ourselves, without any help from anyone, thank you very much. It’s amusing to think of the panicked bank withdrawals pre-911 – in a black sort of way.
(As you well know, the events leading up to 2008 accumulated incrementally starting at the end of Clinton’s second term and carefully cultivated with the active participation of both sides of the political aisle.)