In what will go down in history as either a bold attempt to reshape the way the Army chooses its general officers, or the world’s longest professional suicide note, LTC Paul Yingling, the Deputy CO of the 3rd ACR, and a veteran of two pumps to Iraq, attributes much of the struggles the coalition now faces in Iraq to failures in “generalship“:
Having spent a decade preparing to fight the wrong war, America’s generals then miscalculated both the means and ways necessary to succeed in Iraq. The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq’s population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops. Alone among America’s generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that “several hundred thousand soldiers” would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. Prior to the war, President Bush promised to give field commanders everything necessary for victory. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books such as “Fiasco” and “Cobra II.” However, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win, these leaders did not make their objections public.
Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle. In 1997, the U.S. Central Command exercise “Desert Crossing” demonstrated that many postwar stabilization tasks would fall to the military. The other branches of the U.S. government lacked sufficient capability to do such work on the scale required in Iraq. Despite these results, CENTCOM accepted the assumption that the State Department would administer postwar Iraq. The military never explained to the president the magnitude of the challenges inherent in stabilizing postwar Iraq.
After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America’s generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theory prescribes providing continuous security to the population. However, for most of the war American forces in Iraq have been concentrated on large forward-operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents. Counterinsurgency theory requires strengthening the capability of host-nation institutions to provide security and other essential services to the population. America’s generals treated efforts to create transition teams to develop local security forces and provincial reconstruction teams to improve essential services as afterthoughts, never providing the quantity or quality of personnel necessary for success.
After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America’s general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that “there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq.” The ISG noted that “on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.” Population security is the most important measure of effectiveness in counterinsurgency. For more than three years, America’s generals continued to insist that the U.S. was making progress in Iraq. However, for Iraqi civilians, each year from 2003 onward was more deadly than the one preceding it. For reasons that are not yet clear, America’s general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq’s government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq. Moreover, America’s generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation’s deployable land power to a single theater of operations.
The intellectual and moral failures common to America’s general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship.
To this he attributes a combination of careerism – always a threat to a peacetime force – and the tendency of senior officers to groom subordinates for advancement who are “just like them.” The remedies for what he sees as this tendency towards monochromatic conformity in the upper ranks – where innovation and audacity might better serve – are 360-degree personnel evaluations combined with Congressional oversight of the 3 and 4-star selection process. That oversight should, in LTC Yingling’s view, demonstrate a favorable bias towards advanced degrees in the humanities and fluency in a foreign language. Like LTC Yingling has.
As a naval officer I speak under the risk of correction here, but it seems to me that the colonel is being a trifle hard on those who went before him, and who have faced complexities which are not always apparent to those operating at the tactical level. The “conventional” phases of OIF went brilliantly: The Ba’athist state was quickly dismantled, its legions routed from the field, Saddam sent impotent into a spider hole from which he was eventually rooted out and the threat of WMD – such as it was (and in any case, only one of 21 public reasons for the war) – affirmatively eliminated.
Stabilization and reconstruction has certainly not gone according to plan, nor is it at all clear that the post-hostilities plan was sufficiently robust. But any military operation has assumptions, and at each level in the chain of command a senior’s assumptions are to be treated by his subordinates as “truth.” The strategic assumption that 25 million people would be grateful to be unchained from 35 years of grinding tyranny did not take into account the de-humanizing effect that such a tyranny itself imposes. When those assumptions prove false – and this one certainly did with respect to a sufficient number of Sunni nationalists, Ba’athist rejectionists and irreconcilable jihadists – you get into what is known as “branch” planning. Branch planning can often look like an ad hoc, even chaotic process but it is one which – given time and adequate resources – generally stumbles on to a solution.
It has also become commonly accepted wisdom that US forces in Baghdad did not respond with sufficient vigor during the initial rioting that took place when the Ba’athist regime was decapitated, and that it was a mistake to disband the Iraqi Army. But front line combat troops dealing vigorously with rioting will appear much to the uneducated but all-seeing media eye as mere butchery, while preserving an institution like the old Iraqi Army – an institution that was used more than anything else as an instrument of state repression – could have been problematical for that majority of the civilian population inclined however skeptically to view our forces as liberators. Even if the old army hadn’t mostly changed into civilian slops and wandered off at the end of major combat operations.
These are interesting points that LTC Yingling raises, even as his references to Frederick the Great’s 18th century condemnation of his own general staff demonstrates – perhaps ironically – that such issues tend to be endemic to the military. We do tend to be a conservative institution in peacetime – using that term in the sense of “sticking to what has been proven to work” – even as we have been adaptive in times of conflict: viz General Petraeus current strategy of counter-insurgency vice repeated raids and operations from cantonment. This a strategy that has a chance of actually rescuing both ourselves and the 25 million or so Iraqi people whose fate is chained to ours, for better or worse.
It takes time to settle on a new strategy, and while this strategic shift took arguably too long a time, the increased casualties our troops are suffering to go along with their increased exposure among the populace demonstrates that once again, this was not a “no-brainer.” Especially if it was true that the officer caste had been encouraged, and in fact selected to be as risk averse as LTC Yingling implies.
Just as it took time to develop a new strategy – or really, to conform our strategic view to the reality on the ground – it will take time to see it through, or at least, to see if it will work.
Time and patience. Virtues in short supply, unfortunately.
Update: Interesting. The WaPo got an advance look at LTC Yingling’s text and labels it a “blistering attack.”
Is that the way it reads to you, or does it just sound cooler if you call it that?
Update 2: There’s a great deal more (and better informed) commentary on this over at Milblogs, by the way. Check it all out.
I think, Lex, that you’ve highlighted the fact that the entire planning and execution process is terribly complex – And not just in the task of making a plan or carrying it out while having to rework the plan on-the-fly due to enemy changes and actions. The planners have to also take into account considerations of how the action will “look” on camera to the public, ours and, in this case, to that of the enemy. They have to concern themselves with so much that is not directly related to the “military action” of breaking stuff and subduing the enemy…but to things which will, ultimately, be as important or more important such as the PR and homefront morale.
I have printed out the entire article for later reading and consideration, but the portion that I read seemed to be correct in stating that the PR considerations had to be better addressed. But, yes, I hope that the brave Lt. Col. in question has his 20 in already.
It surprises me how many people fall into the trap of thinking that because Plan A didn’t work, Plan B would automatically have been better. Of course, blind partisanship goes a long way towards explaining how that trap still gets excercised regularly.
Let me see..Hard to stop a guy “with pedigree” from making 0-6 on account of one little ol’article, but quite an “odds- on” wager one COULD make general officer AFTER the 2008 election..the way the wind is blowing.
Gamble either way. There will be more of this methinks..
BTW Lex- spot on as usual in the deconstruct.
b2
Sure glad I didn’t have to serve with him.
Nicely done, Lex, and I agree the piece was less dramatic than the WaPo headline. I reckon if we knew “before” what we learned “later,” very few military campaigns would be with flaws.
I suppose admirers of General Lee tend to ignore Longstreet’s advice that the Army of Northern Virginia should not have engaged the Union Army in Gettysburg. And, in retrospect, Grant may have lost more troops than he needed to at the Battle of _____ (fill in your own battle).
Our assessment of the Zero fighter and the quality of Japanese fighter pilots at the start of WWII was’t too accurate. Operation Market Garden, the weakness of the lines at the Bulge…etc, etc, etc.
Who knew that a casual remark by a Secretary of State would cause North Korean troop to roll across a border?
And President Clinton’s plan to have the “troops out of Kosovo by Christmas” is looking like it might need to be revised.
War has been about learning to deal with the unexpected. And it probably always will be.
“…world?
“…world’s longest professional suicide note…”, lol, as usual well done. Sounds like b2 has it about right.
I have another theory, that year-groups have a lot to do with the cyclical nature of military leadership. The Vietnam generation of gunfighters are gone. The guys wearing stars now flowed in immediately post Vietnam, in the bad old days. I’m not saying that they were rotten to a man, but there was a qualitative difference between them, and those who preceeded them and followed them, just as I suspect that there is a difference between the kids who raised their hands in the last six years, and those who took the oath in the Clinton era.
It’s worth remembering, that Marshall reached down into the pool of Colonels, and pulled out Patton, Eisenhower, and Bradley. FDR hired Donovan out of the reserves to create the OSS, and the strategy that won the cold war was crafted by a Jewish banker from San Francisco.
Shipmates,
This business of field grade officers writing letters to editors about the failures of generals goes all the way back to our own revolution. It’s to be expected as we expect the sun to rise and the rain to fall.
Lincoln had a similar, if even more acrimonious relationship with both his General officers and the press. The nation survived, despite the Generals and Editors, and the agitations of the Copperheads in the several states.
However, the problems we face now are exacerbated by the fact that the Copperheads run both the House and the Senate, and own most of the presses. that is a recipe for a disaster of biblical proportions if not soon remedied.
As to the remedy, I propose an exhilerating ride upon the “rail” to some secluded spot in the country, for an extended stay, along with an application of the latest Spa remedies, warm tar and chicken geathers, applied “liberally” and in a quantity suitable to the station of the wearer.
Respects,
I’m with Tim on the “Spa” treatments!
He might be preparing the ground for his next career, and this essay is intended to establish his credentials.
Cheers
Tarawa, Peleiu, Anzio, Hurtgen Forest,etc.
Failures that didn’t need to be fought or valuable lessons that brought certain victory later. No definete answers either way, only initiative that needed to be seized and never relinquished.
In the end, you fight the enemy where you find him. Fighting him in a bad place over there on your terms is still better than him coming to your turf on his terms.
The letter is pure argument from hindsight. Which is the modal form of logic of the intellectually bankrupt.
Where’s the good LTC’s blistering letter from spring 2003 prior to the invasion? oh. cue sound of crickets [chirp...chirp]
100 demerits to Lex for giving this 0-5 additional webspace. One good BFM story will suffice for penance.
[...] Lex (worth reading in its entirety–and he’s on fire this week) contextualizes the article. To this [failures attributed to [...]
“Congressional oversight of the 3 and 4-star selection process” sounds like a terrible idea, a guaranteed way to make senior officers more concerned with politics rather than mission.
For comparison, imagine that the top 500 shareholders of General Electric had direct oversight of the selection of the next executive to run the jet engine business or the appliance business.
I think his reference to Lincoln was a little more telling as well as the slow reaction of the president to failed strategy by his generals.
Of course, he is an active duty officer so it wouldn’t do to be to obvious in criticism to the commander in chief. That is for the book after you retire.
I think it is important to recognize when we do not react in a timely fashion to realities on the ground and fail to innovate. Though, as noted, it is usually after the fact that you evaluate how you reacted for future reference. But, we do tend to learn our lessons over and over in a circular fashion.
I think that we did fail to understand the power of the mosque (I don’t simply mean religion, but the mosque as a power structure such as the church was in places like poland during the communist rule) and how this sub power structure had become the underground community that bound together the oppressed. We failed to understand how that would work politically (though, not total failure since we have been trying to work with Sistani for three years). We failed to understand the political divisions, however they are represented in “sectarian” groups. That political division was based on who had what power and material resources, who was oppressed and who wasn’t and what effect that would have on the desires of certain groups to get some of their own back above and beyond taking out the Ba’athi government and military.
It’s that old saying about “all politics are local”. It wasn’t simply the regime in Baghdad that oppressed, but the Arab Ba’athist in the big house down the street that controlled the local party apparatus, jobs, money, etc and had certain pull with police and military in the area, thus able to oppress for personal gain all those with in their reach. Thus, those that would be seen as the “evil doer” at the local level, and all those that worked with them, would become targets and would, by necessity, be forced to some degree to join the insurgency for protection.
I think we even failed to understand how effective AQ would be at organizing in Iraq.
that last one gives me some pause.
As for the Lt Col, while I found his piece interesting in terms of thinking through these realities, I also found his commentary to be, well, somewhat whiney. In fact, he sounds like the guy that thinks he knew things and would have been much more innovative if the bosses above him hadn’t been such lemmings.
Oh, and the President, too.
Still, we can’t ignore reality. The current strategy may be more appropriate and may yet win the day, but it is almost too late.
You see, Lincoln was saved because his new, innovative generals won several very obvious battles, burned Atlanta and had Lee on the run with a very large, notable army that could be SEEN as on the run.
This president isn’t going to get that unless we locate one giant AQ hive, have a giant battle and kill Omar al Baghdadi, Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden in one fell swoop.
In otherwords, there is no obvious battle or signs of “winning”. So, the president and Petraeus, even if they succeed, will not be given any accolades. Iraq will simply dies a slow death on the front pages of the news and all those nattering classes will be able to go on nattering.
http://rokdrop.com/2007/04/28/creating-perceptions-of-the-military/
At least its nice to see someone publishing something contraian in a military publication-you don’t see this type of article in Proceedings anymore. All they print are puff pieces written by some staffer for some flag extolling the virtues of (fill in the blank) of whichever part of the “Enterprise”.
“Congressional oversight of the 3 and 4-star selection process?
At least its nice to see someone publishing something contraian in a military publication-you don’t see this type of article in Proceedings anymore. All they print are puff pieces written by some staffer for some flag extolling the virtues of (fill in the blank) of whichever part of the “Enterprise”.
“Congressional oversight of the 3 and 4-star selection process” .”
Don’t we have that already? Why else do some folks do tours in OLA. While it may not be blatant, there is politics involved in those selections. Or how else do we end up with some of the folks we have in the 3 star grade? It’s always been political within the service if not outside of it.
Look folks.
Even if you aren’t in agreement with many of the premises or conclusions drawn out by this officer, he is published in the Armed Forces Journal…not a local news outlet, his own blog-rant or even the bugaboo MSM. That is why this IS significant and not to be treated lightly. Rather, this type of analysis must be examined and deconstructed, honestly and on the merits, by keen observers like Lex and others…Writers like this are NOT to be lumped with C. Sheehan or M. Moore.
There will be more of this and some of it will get more shrill as election time approaches. “This”, meaning both self-motivated and genuinely heartfelt, thoughtful critiques of the war to date. it’s open season. The first of many, like that lifer government employee George Tenet just last week.
b2
Wonder what the MSM of today would make of WS Sims’ demonstrated “insurgent spirit”?
“I am perfectly willing that those holding views differing from mine should continue to live, but with every fibre of my being I loathe indirection and shiftiness, and where it occurs in high place, and is used to save face at the expense of the vital interests of our great service (in which silly people place such a child-like trust), I want that man’s blood and I will have it no matter what it costs me personally.”
Of course there is little need to speculate what would happen to Sims’ career in today’s USN, especially given the aftermath of Lt. BW Stone’s after he penned the article “A Bridge Too Far” in the Feb. 2005 Proceedings. That journal hasn’t seen a hard piece of debate since.
The MSM has it wrong (as usual-if you can ascribe a 50% or better “veracity score” to them, then it’s a good day). Lt.Col. Yingling’s treatise is not a sign of radical revolution in the ranks, but instead is part of a process that will foster genuine-and probably healthy even if currently a bit messy-change in an Army finding its way past the twin assaults of “Transformation” and the whatever kind of war in which it is fully engaged is being called today.
The obvious piece always missing from articles such as these is a proposal for dealing with the real issue at hand — not just pointing out the obvious. How would LTC Yingling propose we finish the job in Iraq?
He doesn’t. by his tone I would say that he follows the Reid theory of Iraq: it’s a done deal, we just have recognized it yet.
I did not read his conclusion that way at all. It seems to me he points out that there were certain decision points that drove the availability of other options down stream. Like choosing to go with the right force package called for in the oplan- gave better flexibility down the pike. When one chooses to ignore that, the options to fix things 4 years later become limited.
Nowhere does he say its over though.
Much of his observations are simply spot on.
The prescriptions fall far short- authors, myself included, are too often better at identifying problems than offering good solutions.
Language and humanities – things I value greatly – right!!!
The culture is what is at issue.
For an explanation of the Navy’s parallel problem see “We Believe in Command not Staff.”
USNI Proceedings, March 2005
The band plays on…
Yingling is not trying to fix a mess that is already in progress. His purpose is to remind folks of how we got into the mess to begin with-in the hope it is not repeated-and its a good analysis. One has to read the article in its entirety though and …..
Greetings my seaborne friends…
I’m here by way of the Mudville Gazette and an email from a fellow graduate of Harvard on the Hudson (not to be confused with Canoe U).
That email contained LTC Yingling’s article. I read through it upon receipt and said “WOW!” Pretty biting stuff. At a more leisurely and analytical pace, it reads a little less hard-hitting. Still there are some key insights I think that the Army/DoD might consider implementing.
1. 360 evaluations/appraisals are pretty eye-opening. I had the opportunity to have one done on me as part of a course I took at Fort Belvoir several years ago. This leadership course used the assessment to show students how others thought of them as leaders, compared to a self assessment. Not surprisingly, my superiors gave me glowing, walk on water remarks. However when peers and subordinates took their swings, they were far more candid and frankly much more useful. I think that this type of system should be piloted not only for GOs, but for all officers and NCOs as well.
2. LTC Yingling correctly, I believe, identifies something of a GroupThink mentality that’s far too prevalent in today’s force. Successful officers seem to be more “go along, get along” kinds of guys rather than strong willed individuals with minds of their own. While it is hard to believe that Patton would have been one to welcome dissent, he has been quoted as saying “If we’re all thinking alike, then someone’s not thinking.” That’s happening far too often these days. When’s the last time you’ve heard a junior officer toss a turd in the punchbowl at a staff meeting?
3. LTC Yingling appears to be quite enamored with the concept of classroom and university education. While I can’t argue that you want to have officers with good heads on their shoulders, I would challenge him to look back on his training within the Army. Has he ever truly been as challenged in an Army classroom as he ever was in one at a university? When I have friends and subordinates that worry about going off to a course or a class, I ask them, “Is it an Army class?” If the answer is yes, then I tell them not to worry. Everyone in the class, with very few exceptions, is going to pass it. It’s just the way things go… What I would say to LTC Yingling is not to be too “doe-eyed” when it comes to reading a bio sheet. I’ve run across too many dopes holding post-graduate degrees to think that I need one to do well.
All in all, a good article…but certainly not the ground-shaking one that I had initially thought it might have been. I’m sure he got a good grade on it.
See you on the high ground!
MajorDad1984
I think the 3ACR’s track record speaks as to whether or not LTC Yingling has an idea of how to fight in Iraq.
Overall, I enjoyed the article.
Any experienced Soldier who has been to Iraq, especially in the beginning of the occupation knows that there were not enough troops to do the job of stabilizing the situation. Still we rucked up and did it as best as we could and are still doing it today. Would it have made more of a difference if a few high rankers had done more in an effort to get the right number of troops from the beginning? For that matter, would have have made a bigger difference back in the ’90′s, when we so eagerly cut land forces by more than 50%, if a few more high rankers had put their careers on the line to protest this short-sighted effort to reap the “peace dividend”? I don’t know, but if it isn’t the generals’ job to fully explain the consequences of the civilians’ plans, whose job is it?
I’ve seen several people say that this article was published in a “Military Publication”
No where can I find any proof this is a military publication. Its owners are all liberal rich guys, who happen to own several publications. This one included.
Google it yourself.
Papa Ray
Is Yingling correct when he says, “war is ultimately an instrument of policy and its conduct is the responsibility of policymakers”?
Yes, to go or not to go to war is the responsibility of the policymakers, but the conduct should not be. If that were true, the current crop of congressmen would be dragging all of the military back home. Some are trying to do just that, and we see the mess they are making.
I also wonder if Yingling can offer us some ideas what wars will be like ten years from now.
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