I am all for accountability and believe that military advice and judgment can and should be questioned by the senior civilian leadership (and I am a believer in Cohen's and Gooch's thesis that all military failures can be attributed to the three failures: failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate). But this is rich:
My former colleague Andrew Exum, an ex-Army captain who studies insurgency, sees such rapid turnover as evidence of “the casual arrogance with which the U.S. military has approached the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.” And yet our political leaders have not publicly questioned the rotation policy.
This is quite an indictment and I think neither Ricks nor Exum are qualified to make such a judgment as to the casual arrogance of the US military. Rapid turnover is not evidence. I would like to see concrete examples of the casual arrogance of the US military that can justify painting the entire US military with such a broad brush. I do not think either of these men have witnessed the real inside decision-making that goes on at the most senior levels and listened to the debates on military strategy and the deep concern with which the vast majority of senior leaders have over how to best accomplish the mission and take care of the troops and consider the long term effects on our military. Mistakes have been made and yes people should be held accountable. There should be no doubt about that. But there has also been an awful lot of cheerleading going on in many quarters outside the military by would be strategists and policy makers particularly toward recently fallen generals. I think we should remember who was responsible for starting the Iraq war (civilian leadership) and who contributed to making Afghanistan an unnecessarily long war:
OVER the last 11 years, as we fought an unnecessary war in Iraq and an unnecessarily long one in Afghanistan,
Yes, there were generals that made mistakes in terms of military strategy making Afghanistan an unnecessarily long one, but as I recall both Ricks and Exum were supporters of and advisers to and certainly cheerleaders for some of those generals.
V/R
Dave
V/R
Dave
Questioning the Brass
Oliver Munday
By THOMAS E. RICKS
Published: November 11, 2012
For Op-Ed, follow@nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow@andyrNYT.
OVER the last 11 years, as we fought an unnecessary war in Iraq and an unnecessarily long one in Afghanistan, the civilian American leadership has been thoroughly — and justly — criticized for showing poor judgment and lacking strategies for victory. But even as those conflicts dragged on, our uniformed leaders have escaped almost any scrutiny from the public.
Our generals actually bear much of the blame for the mistakes in the wars. They especially failed to understand the conflicts they were fighting — and then failed to adjust their strategies to the situations they faced so that they might fight more effectively.
Even now, as our wars wind down, the errors of our generals continue to escape public investigation, or even much internal review. As the Vietnam War drew to an end, the Army carried out a soul-searching study of the state of its officer corps. To my knowledge, no such no-holds-barred examination is under way now. Instead, the military’s internal analyses continue to laud the Pentagon’s top brass while placing almost all of the blame for what went wrong in our wars on civilian leaders.
As Paul Yingling, a recently retired Army colonel, noted during some of the darkest days of the Iraq war, a private who loses his rifle is punished more than a general who loses his part of a war.
In the past, Congressional oversight hearings might have produced some evidence that challenged the military’s self-satisfied conclusions. But today, politicians are so fearful of being accused of “criticizing our troops” that they fail to scrutinize the performance of those who lead them.
Continued at the link above)
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