The Jump Blog

FOXNews.com - U.S. Military: Leaders Can’t Lead - FOX Fan

Now, I’m no retired colonel, I was never anything more than a piss ant squad leader, so I feel obligated to defer to Col. Hunt’s rank –but that’s where my deference ends. It’s hard for me to fathom how a man can be so mistaken, especially one who achieved the rank of colonel. If nothing else his grasp of history is appalling.

I got full of myself (again) and wrote that we, as a nation, have forgotten how to fight.

This is the only statement in the article that I agree with, but I hardly see how that can be laid at the feet of the commanders. This is a cultural fact and has little to do with any military decision. It’s also a phenomena that has intrigued me for a while, so I’d like to offer an examination and explanation that I think is germane to the rest of the colonel’s argument.

For this explanation we have to go all the way back to November 11th, 1918 –Armistice Day– the end of World War I. At the conclusion of that devastating war (and it really can’t be over stated just how bloody it was for the Europeans) the involved populations began to search for answers and causes so as to prevent a re-occurrence. The answer that they came up with –the largest root cause– was “nationalism.” At that point nationalist sentiment began to die out in Europe. This aversion to nationalism fostered the appeasement strategy that allowed Hitler to rise to power and, after the conclusion of that second round of war, lost no ground whatsoever. Today the words “nationalism” and “patriotism” have the same negative connotations in Europe that the words “communism” and “socialism” carry for many on this side of the Atlantic.

This aversion has necessarily affected how wars are fought, but more importantly why they are fought and what their perceived purpose is. You see, to the prevailing European mindset Clausewitz was more right than he ever intended to be: wars are just politics by other means. Now, I believe that I understand Clauswitz well enough to state that he simply meant that both politics and war are meant to serve the the national interest and that war is simply the same exercise of protecting the national interest that politics is, it’s just an exercise of last resort. What many Europeans believe is that war is an extension of diplomacy.

Understand that this is no small difference, the first fights wars to defeat the enemy and protect one’s interests; the second fights wars to achieve a better bargaining position. According to this mindset we should be actively engaged in talks with all enemies at all times –even while we are fighting them– and that the goal of a war is not to defeat the enemy but to make him more amenable to compromise at the negotiating table. This subordinates the national interest to the overriding goal of “peace.”

“So the hell what?” I hear you saying, “what does this little history lecture have to do with how the US fights wars?”

Simply this: American thought, after eighty years of importing the European perspective into American academia, has been heavily influenced by the above. Read any sociology textbook, any history tome, step onto any college or university in the United States and finding a good word about nationalism is only slightly less difficult than finding a tea-totalling virgin.

The American attitude toward warfighting has shifted for at least half of the population. Sure we want to win the war in an abstract, disconnected way –but not if we have to be mean about it. We want victory –vaguely– but we don’t really want to have to sacrifice for it. We no longer wish our soldiers victory, we wish them safety. This implies a shift of goals. We don’t want to destroy the enemy, hell, we don’t even want to embarrass them or make them uncomfortable. Our goal in war has become to convince the enemy that we do not pose a threat and to fight them only enough to make them want to negotiate. We use war as a bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations.

Of course the problem is that diplomacy and military action are incompatible. Diplomacy requires that one be willing to compromise and not be too vested in one’s positions. Victory in war requires that one be uncompromising with one’s enemies and be incredibly vested in maintaining idealogical supremacy and certainty.

Diplomacy is an amorphous arena occupied by relativist thinkers whose highest goal is tranquillity and peace.

War, for all of our modern trappings, is (or should be) still a pretty straightforward proposition: close with and kill the enemy until there is no more enemy, there is no more you, or until your enemy loses the ability and will to fight.

It is this hard definition of war that America has largely lost the stomach for.

So back to those generals. Are they to blame for this shift in perspective in the western world? No. Generals can only prosecute war to the extent that they have the popular backing to do so. America lacks the popular will to win this (and I might argue ‘any’) war. Is that the fault of the generals? No, it’s the fault of us.

Now, I’m not naive enough to believe that there isn’t incompetence in the ranks that reaches up to the highest levels. But whatever incompetence that exists is not the root cause of why we are losing this war (and I would argue that strategically we are losing), the root cause is that the American people lack the will, resolve, and intestinal fortitude to win it.

Now, on to some specific “WTF?” statements the colonel makes:

I was treated to briefings, meetings and sights that left me breathless by their absurdity. These briefings are called “Battle Update Briefings”; they last for hours and there’s multimedia events which are impressively colorful. When I asked, “Did anything you’re presenting have anything to do with killing bad guys?” the general answered, “Ah … no.”

NO? Then how about a briefing that actually helps kill bad guys, and supports your soldiers, rather than impressing your visitors and yourself … General?

What sort of press briefing helps kill bad guys? Colonel? If briefings can be deadly to the enemy then I say let’s call all of the troops home tomorrow, get the Joint Chiefs out in a tent somewhere, call in all of the correspondents and then brief the terrorists all to hell.

But, according to a Marine Corps document leaked yesterday, commanders in the field in Iraq first asked for MRAPs in February, 2005 — more than a year earlier. That request — for 1,169 vehicles — was labeled “priority one urgent.” Here’s what the request said:

“There is an immediate need for an MRAP vehicle capability to increase survivability and mobility of Marines operating in a hazardous fire area against known threats …

The expanded use of improvised explosive devices requires a more robust family of vehicles capable of surviving … MRAP-designed vehicles represent a significant increase in their survivability baseline over existing motor vehicle equipment and will mitigate casualties … Without MRAPs, personnel loss rates are likely to continue at their current rates. MRAP vehicles will protect Marines, reduce casualties, increase mobility and enhance mission success.” (Source)

How is it possible that it took more than a year for the military leadership to act on this urgent plea?

How is it possible that, when it did act, it ordered only 185 vehicles, not the 1,169 requested?

Wouldn’t this to indicate that the commander in the field –which would include no small number of generals– seemed to be acting in a responsible manner and not with the reckless disregard the Colonel accuses them of? As to the numbers ordered, if there are 1,169 MRAPS extant on the planet Earth today I’ll eat the server on which this blog resides and wash it down with a Fat Tire.

We once had a president who got it; his name was Lincoln. He got fed up with the Union Army and fired a bunch of senior generals. He hired a drunk by the name of Grant, a man who was not even in the Army at the time, but who knew how to lead and how to be brutal when necessary. This was a man who knew how to win. Lincoln’s advisors told him, “Mr. President do you know that you just hired a drunk?” Lincoln said, “Find out what he is drinking, and give it to the other generals.”

Ummm, no. I mean, really, no, that isn’t what happened at all. Lincoln didn’t hire Grant off of the street and ask him to come take over the Army. Grant was a West point graduate who served in the Mexican-American War and then on the western frontier, but resigned his commission. He accepted a commission at the start of the Civil War because West pointers were in short supply. He was promoted by Lincoln late in the war to the position of Commander of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln didn’t fire the top generals en masse, he promoted and demoted them searching for a commander that would get the results.

Grant did turn out to be that man, but he did it by getting many, many men “blown apart”, so much so that even President Lincoln’s wife and General Lee’s staff accused him of being a reckless butcher. Mary Lincoln went so far as to proclaim in the last full year of the war that she could “fight an Army as well” herself. It’s true that Lincoln picked him because he fought and won, but he won by caring about victory more than casualties.

And “newspaper scribblers” (as Sherman called them) called him incompetent too.

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