Any armed force will have difficulty fostering innovation. It's an organic problem. An army requires discipline; discipline means executing orders without question; executing orders without question is done best by people who aren't given to reflection and the pondering of alternatives. Thus those who are not given to challenging the ideas held by those above them tend to rise to the top, and those who are, don't.

In this regard, it doesn't particularly surprise me that Kaplan has had to revise his opinion. The times when an army does creative thinking best is when it's old ideas come up short. The army knew exactly how to conquer Iraq when Saddam was running it, but was unable to pacify it thereafter. Once it became clear that the civilian leadership wasn't going to provide it with enough troops to police Iraq as it policed Germany and Japan after WWII, the Army was left with a mission which it couldn't perform without a radical shift in its thinking. Petraeus and Yingling are examples of men who went outside the box to solve a problem.

Without success, most likely, because Iraq remains unpacified to the extent that the gains recorded during the surge have not, as was hoped at the outset, shown themselves able to survive the end of the surge. At least that's what Petraeus told Congress -- the "pause" in troop withdrawals is an admission that the purpose of the surge, which was to permit more troops to be withdrawn, has not been achieved.

But in THIS war, at any rate, one cannot blame the military for the failure of the mission. That blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Tax Cut Traitors, who refused to increase the level of troops to the point necessary because it would have unbalanced the budget to the point where the Bush tax cuts would have had to go.

We were told, after 9/11, that we were in a "war for civilization." And then the wealthiest Americans simply refused, and continue to refuse, to finance that war, demanding instead that their tax burden be LIGHTENED. In the face of this betrayal, the military has done what it could to make lemonade out of lemons, but some missions cannot be accomplished.

Quite true.

For all its talk of ‘supporting or troops’ the Bush administration has consistently undercut them at every turn.

Let’s not forget the US Army DID have a plan for pacifying Iraq at the beginning. It involved bringing large numbers of the Iraqi Army units under US control and using them to supplement the Army’s shortage of ‘boots on the ground’. General Garner’s deputies had lined up a number of junior officers in the Iraqi Army who were prepared to accept US command and control of their units.

No one knows how effective the plan would have been or even if would have worked. That’s because Bremmer (Model of Freedom winner) pulled the rug out from under the Army by disbanding the Iraqi Army. Something that was apparently done without ever consulting the military or the State Department or even Bremmer himself since he claims the order appeared out thin air or something.

The last word on the decision to disband the Iraqi army was spoken over 50 years ago by Kennedy (obviously on another subject), when he said "success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan."

Ultimately, the failure has to be laid at the door of the Bush administration, which was, after all, quite ready to take the credit for "victory" when it looked as if it had it, and must accept the blame for the failure of that victory to materialize.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that, of course. What they've tried to do is pretend it's all Michael Moore's fault.

What must it be like, I wonder, to serve in a senior position in the military under clowns like this?

Slasher--you watch too many movies.

You write "Any armed force will have difficulty fostering innovation. It's an organic problem. An army requires discipline; discipline means executing orders without question; executing orders without question is done best by people who aren't given to reflection and the pondering of alternatives. Thus those who are not given to challenging the ideas held by those above them tend to rise to the top, and those who are, don't."

Nonsense

In 17 years as an Army officer, I've NOT ONCE heard it even suggested that an officer's duty is to execute orders without question. Flexibility in thinking through alternatives has in fact been one of the hallmarks of U.S. Army doctrine for decades.

The Army has plenty of problems, and LTC Yingling identified a big one--but officers who "aren't given to reflectionand the pondering of alternatives" is absolutely not one of them.

Your comments about the civilians show some insight--perhaps you shold have confined your commentary there where you're on firmer ground.

SPC123: I'll admit that my comments are badly expressed. Specifically, I spoke of "executing orders" in a context that really has nothing to do with them. The involvement of Yingling did not involve executing orders. He argued POLICY, and was able to make his case. Which, as Kaplan noted, is all to the good.

It's also fairly unusual. Consider the fate of the generals who spoke out for a larger deployment of troops at the outset of the war. They were shunted aside and replaced with generals who "knew better." This was, as I noted, mainly a decision made by civilians, not military officers, but in what other walk of life can obviously incompetent decisions be allowed to dominate the situation FOR YEARS without serious challenging from within the ranks. It seems to me, and I'll admit up front that you know far more about this than I do, that this is at least in part a function of the system of military discipline. I'd be interested in your opinion to the contrary.

But why, if what I've said isn't true, is there a cliche about "generals fighting the last war" which, according to my reading of history, is what generals tend to do? History is replete with instances of armed forces promoting the wrong men into positions of command, based upon careerism and political pull, and surely today's army has it's share of careerists. These considerations take a toll in other walks of life, to be sure, but the effect on those who must labor under incompetents is different. When I've worked for an incompetent boss, as I have, I quit and went somewhere else. Eventually, such men drive away enough good workers and suffer for it. In the armed forces, however, quitting often isn't an option, and I think it accounts for much of what history teaches us about generals fighting the last war.

It was in these very general terms that I meant to speak, and not the much more specific arena of "executing orders." If this created an incorrect impression of what I was trying to say, I apologize.

Hello slasher. I think our lieutenant colonel (or major) has moved-on, having made his point, which he was correct, by the book. He thinks logically and along linear lines, which for this topic was correct.

The problem arises when risk aversiveness rears its ugly head, where everyone becomes worried about making a mistake and how their reporting senior may view that. This mindset goes up the chain-of-command. Individuals become institutionalized thinkers within the institution - - - they learn to play it safe.

In our uniformed servies, many subscribe to the 4th generation war mind set, where we don't have defining events (battles), etc. Others are more comfortable with a more conventional view, i.e. the "looming" war with China. A debate rages within, over this.

Your comment on general's always fighting the last war. It's a tough call for those charged with the defense of our country and it's interests abroad to try an be ready for everything.

Perhaps as your first posting mentioned, our civilian leadershiip needs to define what those interests will be more clearly, and not so much where we will project force but "when."

In closing, don't apologize for the way you expressed yourself, it's always easier for someone to come along and critique you as opposed to coming up with the original idea!

These same people, slasher, may not be aware of it, but will come-off in an arrogant manner, as opposed to sharing their insight based on their background with you, in shall we say, a more elegant instructional way!

You guys seem to be confusing "outside the box" thinking as infinitely better than staying within a defined arena. Both have their benefits. Simply being an "outside the box" thinker doesn't always yeild the best results or ideas...and it's one way to describe conspiracy theorists.

Nothing wrong with exploring all ideas and facets, but then...simply changing a process just to change it isn't always the best either. Change and innovation is regularly encouraged in the military...but some things work quite well and don't need changing. We had a skipper that decided he had an idea for change that would enable us to do the job cheaper, faster, and better with less manpower. Well...all we have done is lose a lot of manpower...the job hasn't become any easier, faster, or better. And his tour had reached it's end before he ever got to see his great change reach its full implementation. Now, due to this great idea...retention is a serious concern.

Did we fight him?...yes. Did we offer up our own opinions and suggestions?...yes. Did he still want to do it his way?...yes. And being that he was the senior officer, the commanding officer...whether or not we disagreed with his decision mattered not anymore. We gave our input, he made his decision and issued his marching orders. It is my job to support that decision, and openly complaining about it isn't going to make things any better. The guy has the power and responsibility to make those decisions good or bad. My responsibility is to give the best input I can...how it influences the decision is up to they guy making the decision.

It's the same way anywhere. Can I just up and quit like a civilian can?...no. But then, I get a new boss every year. We are always having to change and adjust to new leadership...adaptation and innovation is a way of life in the military. Thinking outside the realm of any written instruction is commonplace, and those instructions are regularly updated as change occurrs. Matter of fact, one instruction we operate by openly states that this instruction is "no replacement for sound decision making and common sense." I do work on airplanes, and there are some very specific instructions for doing maintenance...so some things are extremely controlled. But hey, I fly on the same jets I work on...not a hip fan of someone afro-engineering anything that I have to trust my life too. Take-offs are optional, landings are mandatory.

Semper Gumby is a common expression. Perhaps the only ones not thinking outside the box are the civilians with their misperceptions about the military.

Tyrt: I don't think SPC123 (who I would surmise is a non-com from his tag) was being arrogant. I think he was trying to tell me that he thought I was wrong based on his experience. His comments on my knowledge of how things are in the service was phrased a bit harshly, but he was right -- I really don't know much about how things are in the Army in the areas he addressed. I said I felt I had expressed myself badly because he obviously did not completely understand where I was coming from, and it's really my job to convey that, not his to decipher it. Compared to some of the responses I get, this one was quite respectful.

As for generals fighting the last war, read Kaplan's recent piece on how we don't have any troops to send to Afghanistan other than the ones we have in Iraq. The point he made was that for all the incredible amounts of money we spend on the military, WE CAN'T WIN WARS because we don't have enough troops to win them. How can that possibly be? Simple: our military leaders (and our civilian leaders as well) are still fighting the Cold War, focusing on hugely expensive weaponry/ships/planes while leaving us with not enough troops to conquer and hold a fourth-rate power like Iraq. Oh, we can bomb the shit out of anybody, but as the British in 1940 and the Vietnamese in the 1970s showed, bombing alone ain't enough.

One of the points I was trying to make in this post was the same general point Kaplan made, which is that the military in the field has shown flexibility in trying to adjust to what are obviously new realities in this war. Iraq was really lost by the civilians, not the military. But in the larger sense, the careerism and the kind of institutional thinking you refer to exists to such a degree in both civilian AND military minds that it was almost inevitable that once we ran into a war in which the enemy didn't fold up quickly, we would lose.

Rubma: what is afro-engineering?

My response to you is the same as I gave SPC123, which is that I was trying to express the idea that the military -- any military anywhere -- operates AS AN INSTITUTION in very hidebound ways. I was not referring to the day-to-day operations of a military unit. Those are, I would guess, much the same as in any other huge bureaucracy -- some are bad, some are good, some just done the best they could.

As I said elsewhere in this thread, it is a cliche and a very accurate one that generals are always fighting the last war, and that is CLEARLY true of the Pentagon, which has the overwhelming majority of its funding tied up in super-machines that are designed for a war with the Soviet Union, which doesn't exist anymore, or China, which is too busy eating our lunch economically to fight us.

On the tactical level, the Army has shown itself to be highly flexible in Iraq. I think I conveyed that -- if not, let me state it now. But the fact is that the American armed forces have shown themselves unable to win a protracted battle of the kind we're fighting in Iraq, if for no other reason than that those who designed our armed forces seem to have forgotten to provide enough troops to conquer and hold a fourth-rate power over a long period of time. That isn't the fault of the soldiers in the field nor those dealing with the day-to-day problems of the armed forces. But it sure seems to me to be true of the civilians running the show, and the top brass assisting them.

My speculation was that this kind of inability to think creatively on the part of our military leadership was somehow related to the nature of the military itself -- to put it as simplistically as I think you believe I did, if you follow orders, you don't learn to think. I retract that statement, based upon your response and that of SPC123.

But whatever the reason, the people who manage our military machine show a STRONG tendency to hidebound and inappropriate thinking. That part of my statement I do not retract.

Spoken like the true professional I know you are Rubma.

The crux of what I, and perhaps slasher are talking about is with much of our flag officer corps for not speaking-up and keeping congress, and the nation, informed of what many of them must have known would occur.

It is the mindset that the ambitious see as as part of the path to advancing, by playing it safe.

A lot of what we learned in Vietnam seems to have been forgotten. There has been ample evidence since then, with conflicts around the globe, that should have stimulated how we should be equipping and training for something other then conventional warfare. Thus, thinking outside the box.

At the operational small/mid unit level, our uniformed service people, such as yourself, do good things and do make a differance. My belief is too much of the generalship didn't prepare us for a conflict of this nature. Many are still opting for the conventional.

Thus Lieutenant Colonel Yingling raising more then eyebrows with his condemning the generals in the Armed Forces Jounal last year. And in so doing perhaps putting the skids on his career advancement.

I agree, don't fix what ain't broke. But when things that are broke are pointed out and we behead the messanger, what kind of signal does that send to the rank and file?

Our fair haired boy himself, General Petraeus, again safe for now, has many high ranking detractors, in uniform and out, and getting Yingling into the billet he is in now, caused much agitation.

Will Petraeus pay the price for going against the grain. We'll see; I have at least one detractor in the Fray that thinks I'm out in left field.

Just my thoughts for this evening Rubma. Your posting was thoughtful - - - thanks.

The point is, the same level of discussion and so forth happens well above the unit level...even more so, the officers so do love their meetings. I think they have meetings to plan meetings...but I digress.

I can't speak for the level of discussion that occurred while planning for this war, but I can safely assume that there were a lot of people involved. What advice was given, the dicussions that took place, and what advice influenced the decision...I really don't know. What I do know is that the guy with the final say-so made his decision, and those below him had to do whatever tasking was theirs related to that decision. Hindisight is 20/20, but at the time the decision was made...bad or good, they thought they could handle the job with what they assigned to it. I'm sure that lessons learned from the first Gulf War had a lot to do with the number of forces we brought in the second time.

As for Yingling, openly lambasting your leadership in print isn't normally the best path for anyone to take. I doubt you would find your job still around if you were to do the same. So, while he has some good points...his delivery left something to be desired. Especially if his intent was to effect change vice immediately putting his leaders' abilities in doubt and on the defensive. And I'm quite sure he was aware of the risks he was taking.

And while the world of conflict appears to be changing, there is still the risk of a large conventional or nuclear conflict which can't be ignored. Harkening back to the cliche' of generals fighting the last war, there is no guarantee that our next fight will be so assymetrical. Problem is, deterrence is such an intangible subject. It's hard to truly know if we have deterred anything, and if we did deter anything...how many times. But to eliminate that posture and capability...is that really in our best interests because right now we are only fighting primitives?

Hello Rubma. Since the article by Mr. Kaplan was about Lieutenant Colonel Yinglin's present billet, and about the man that got him there, I'd like to revisit that.

Unlike, Admiral Fallon, the lieutenant colonel choose an armed forces journal to voice his concerns. Where else could he have done this? Certainly not at the O-club during happy hour.

A position paper might have been the way to go, but one has to be at an advanced school for that to be offered. Could he have run it by his reporting senior? I'll bet he did! He choose the moral hight ground. There is a past precident for that.

I, and others, feel he spoke-up on a problem within his branch (and others) and was marginalized because, quite honestly, the truth hurts. Of course he embarrassed the general officer corps.

Always understand this Rubma. I gave 10 years enlisted service and 16 years commissioned. I hate failure, especially when, in my view, it could have been contained by those senior in our military, who could have prepared us for what they had to know (or should have), their civilian mindors were going to hand-off to them.

Is the Army hide-bound? Every institution is to some degree. I'd like to see our branches of the Armed Forces get back to viewing what they do as a way of life and war as an occupational hazard. War and geo/politics is to be an on going study by those that lead you.

Now we'll have to wait and see if General Petraeus pays the price from the lobby of his detractors when the next administration is elected. If he wins the day, the up and coming win. If he loses, we are back to square on.

The point being, he could have made his point without taking anyone to task. To effect change and open dialogue, publishing an attack on your superiors' credibility and ability is no way to push them towards embracing his views and desires. If one of my guys was to discredit my abilities out in the open, in front of my Sailors....right or wrong, our relationship will be explained in detail and they will most likely come out on the losing end. If he/she wishes to question my credibility and ability, we can do that offline in private and hopefully come to a successful and mutual resolution.

Yingling I'm sure was aware of the risks he faced, and if you ain't willing to lose, don't gamble. My issue with it wasn't his argument, it was his presentation. Open dissention within the ranks is non-conducive to our mission. If one of my guys has a problem with my leadership/decisions, I'm always willing to discuss it offline. But to openly call me out....stand the fuck by. There is a whole new issue to be addressed and rectified....and they will be the example to rest of the Sailors that were witness; and the effectiveness of their original point good or bad will have been lost.

Nothing wrong with the truth....but when it is in the format of an opinion, stand by to defend it. Yingling called out what he thought was the truth, and discredited what his superiors thought was the truth....bad call. He could have made his point simply by conveying his ideas for success without calling his boss' work shitty.

Hello again Rubma. How are you this fine Navy day?

Lieutenant Colonel Yingling did not single out any specific flag officer. He also choose a military publication, which should be an acceptable venue for such dialogue.

Your counter-point, I would agree with. No senior could tolerate a subordinate questioning his/her authority among the unit. I believe we have two seperate points here.

I have an amusing analogy to share with you, On a fitness report there are numerous blocks to mark. Two that come to mind are courage (both moral and physical) and judgement.

Could we say, as reporting seniors, we would mark Lieutenant Colonel Yingling outstanding in the courage block and perhaps below average in the judgement block?

Think about it, that's the crux of the issue really. What senior sticks-up for someone like the lieutenant colonel?

Again, historically, our Armed Forces has a precident for this, with certain outstanding individuals that were ostracized at the time, but proved correct later down the line.

In closing Rubma, I'm a bit harsh on our senior leadership. I believe they've been given a free walk, But I also know they're not evil, and many are fine officers. I watch one with pride, whom I had influence over early in his career.

I can accept his FITREP marks...it did take balls.

And yes, there have been those that served and presented radical new ideas that were discounted and later embraced. Odd thing is, you really don't get to read about all the bad ideas that we would celebrate the military leadership for embracing those same ideals we appear to be discussing as stodgy and old-hat.