Course Adjustments and The Return of Optimism

TWEAKING THE SAILS AT DAWN

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Working my way down my blogroll this Sunday morning, I begin to sense a feeling of change as I read some of the posts from my fellow bloggers. My first stop today was at Thomas Barnett's always revealing and informative blog. His Sunday column was brimming with optimism, and became instant fodder for new post. However, the very next blog I visited swept away all thoughts of using Tom's column as the centerpiece of this post. Dan of tdaxp.com ties together several issues of recent concerns and in a few short sentences linked several articles that support his headline, Positioned for the Future.

Dan begins:

During August and September — when oil prices were high, Russia invaded Georgia, the financial crisis began unfolding, the doom-and-gloomers were at it. We were told that it was the end of capitalism. We were told that our foreign policy was being controlled by Mikheil Saakashvili. We were told that our choices were a close friendshp with Putin or a new Cold War.

Dan continues with countering evidence that the above statements are premature and wrong. Read the whole post, Positioned for the Future.

A few days ago, Thomas Friedman in the New York Times has this to say about Iran.

Have you seen the reports that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is suffering from exhaustion? It’s probably because he is not sleeping at night. I know why. Watching oil prices fall from $147 a barrel to $57 is not like counting sheep. It’s the kind of thing that gives an Iranian autocrat bad dreams.After all, it was the collapse of global oil prices in the early 1990s that brought down the Soviet Union. And Iran today is looking very Soviet to me.

Read the whole article,Sleepless in Tehran.

And also from the New York Times, who usually buries an article like this in the back pages was this by By C. J. CHIVERS in their October 31, 2008 edition.
A Warning, a Blast, a Fight to Save an Afghan Life From the New York Times.

COMBAT OUTPOST LOWELL, Afghanistan — Jamaludin, an aging Afghan cook, twisted and writhed on the green stretcher. Blood ran from his mouth and nose. Medics had cut away his clothes, revealing puncture holes where shrapnel from a Taliban mortar round had struck him minutes before.

Capt. Norberto A. Rodriguez, an American Army doctor, listened through a stethoscope as two Army medics and a Navy corpsman inventoried Jamaludin’s wounds. There were holes on his back, neck, buttocks, left leg and beside his right eye.

This next post may not look optimistic at first, but because it opens up what might be the most important discussion of our future it deserves to be here as the anchor piece on this Sunday Morning.

Mark at Zenpundit posted this today, The Coming of America’s Defense Meltdown. On first blush, it reads like we are faced with a crisis that would have the effect of threatening every facet of our society. Why? because security is the linchpin that creates the environment where societies can function and prosper, take it away, and chaos reigns. I include it here because it shows that thoughtful minds are thinking and proposing new ideas and directions in order to maintain as security rule-set that benefits all Americans and in turn the rest of the world.

Mark provides the links to other blogs who have written about a soon to be released series of essays about America's future defense posture. Mark ends his post with these words.

There’s going to be a titanic struggle over defense budget priorities in the next administration and the natural bias of Congress and the military-industrial complex in downsizing eras is to keep the same process dysfunctionalities intact rather than re-examine how a smaller pie can best be spent (and the pie is likely to be much smaller circa 2010 regardless of who is elected president). So in the 1990’s the armed services shed personnel - usually warfighters rather than desk jockeys - to preserve platforms; in the 1970’s we “hollowed out” the military by skipping on training, maintenance, spare parts and so on.

Back then, those poorly made decisions occurred during peacetime. Today, the country is at war in far-flung corners of the globe. It’s important that the right issues are raised and tough questions asked.

Mark notes that several blog friends have written about this soon to be released work, like, Fabius Maximus who posted this, America’s Defense Meltdown. and this, from Don Vandergriff, who outlines what each of the 13 authors will address.

A little snippet from Col. G.I. Wilson (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.) and Maj. Donald Vandergriff (U.S. Army, ret.) who write on Leading the Human Dimension Out of a Legacy of Failure

The fundamental reform requirement is to learn to lead people first and manage things second. Instead, today we administer people as a subset of managing things.

The primary route to valuing people is to learn to nurture highly innovative, unshakably ethical thinkers. Sadly, in today’s armed forces such people, those who lead by virtue of their courage, creativity, boldness, vision, honesty and sometimes irreverence, are known as mavericks.

Note the word ethics and leadership amid the strategies and tools of war. Like I said, it has the scent of optimism amid the clouds of gunpowder.

And for the Navy, William Lind mirrors what insightful blog friend Galrahn of Information Dissemination has been in the forefront of advocating, True 4GW Maritime Strategy is Corbett and Mahan.

Lind's Recommendations:

1. The main personnel deficiency of the Navy is an officer corps dominated by technicians. That reinforces the Navy’s Second Generation institutional culture. Reform requires adopting a Third Generation culture and putting the engineers back in the engine room.

2. Fourth Generation War demands the Navy shift its focus from Mahanian battles for sea control to controlling coastal and inland waters in places where the state is disintegrating.

3. Submarines are today’s capital ships, and the U.S. Navy must remain a dominant submarine force while exploring alternative submarine designs.

4. Aircraft carriers remain useful “big boxes.” However, they should be decoupled from standardized air wings and thought of as general purpose carriers, transporting whatever is useful in a specific crisis or conflict.

5. The Navy should acquire an aircraft similar to the Air Force’s A-10 so it can begin to effectively support troops on the ground.

6. Cruisers, destroyers and frigates are obsolescent as warship types and should be retired; their functions assumed by small carriers or converted merchant ships.

7. The Navy should build a new flotilla of small warships suited to green and brown waters and deployable as self-sustaining “packages” in Fourth Generation conflicts. (The Navy’s current “Littoral Combat Ship” is an apparently failed attempt at this design.)

I await the release of this important work and am looking forward to the coming verbal battles that allow a free people to choose their own path, even if it turns out to be rougher than expected.

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We American's will choose our leadership for the next four years this week. Whoever wins, will be charged by the will of the people to do their very best to lead all the people and carry on the traditions that have made American what it has become over the past 232 years. I am confident in the will of the people to decide, and if unhappy with their decision, tweak the course, via the congress in two years, and change the leadership at the top in four.

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Don't forget to vote this Tuesday!

Reflections on Leadership

Major General Fox Conner

General George Marshall

General Dwight D Eisenhower

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

This post comes from Small Wars Journal and their posting of the Summer 2008 issue of the US Army War College’s Parameters.

One article is based on remarks delivered 21 April 2008 at the US Military Academy by Dr. Robert Gates Secretary of Defense. His words resound with an understanding of history and military strategy that have been lacking in the leadership in Washington for decades.

Reflections on Leadership

Last year I read Partners in Command, a book by Mark Perry. It is an account of the unique relationship between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Marshall, and how they played a significant role in the American victory in World War II and laid the foundations for future success in the earliest years of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Marshall are, of course, icons, legends etched in granite. Their portraits hang in my office.

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One of the things I found compelling in Partners in Command is how they were both influenced by another senior Army officer who is not nearly as well-known and in fact, as a reader of history, I had never heard of. His name is General Fox Conner, a tutor and mentor to both Eisenhower and Marshall. Conner and Marshall first became friends when they served together on the staff of General “Black Jack” Pershing during World War I. In the 1920s, Eisenhower served as staff assistant under Brigadier General Conner in the Panama Canal Zone.

Three Axioms

From Conner, Marshall and Eisenhower learned much about leadership and the conduct of war. Conner had three principles of war for a democracy that he imparted to Eisenhower and Marshall. They were:

1. Never fight unless you have to.

2. Never fight alone.

3. And never fight for long.

All things being equal, these principles are pretty straightforward and strategically sound. We have heard variants of them in the decades since, captured perhaps most recently in the Powell Doctrine. Of course, all things are not equal, particularly considering the range and complexity of the threats facing America today, from the wars we are currently in to the conflicts we are most
likely to fight. So I would like to suggest how we should think about applying Fox Conner’s three axioms to the security challenges of the twenty-first century.

Gates looks to General George Marshall as an example of the qualities of leadership for military officers.

General Marshall has been recognized as a textbook model for the way military officers should handle disagreements with superiors and in particular with the civilians vested with control of the armed forces under our Constitution. In these situations, an officer’s duties are:

1. To provide blunt and candid advice always.

2. To keep disagreements private.

3. And to implement faithfully decisions that go against you.

Whoever becomes President in November would be an idiot, if he let Robert Gates go out with the present administration.

For more on General Fox Conner.

Tom Friedman Takes On The World

Author and columnist Thomas Friedman wrote this article Some Countries Are So Popular and So Spineless - in the New York Times today, July 16, 2008 . Friedman takes umbrage at the behavior of many countries that have rose colored glasses when it comes to repression in their own back yard. Friedman writes about America's role, and what the world would be like without it's leadership.

Friedman, is full of moral outrage and rightly so. But, much of his previous writing have fueled the fires of foreign opinion and contributed to the knee jerk reactions against American power that he now says the world would miss had we not exercised that power. Tom Friedman, is an important voice that has gotten much coverage due to his successful books, his voice on this matter may resonate with those who have thrown verbal and moral stones at America, and give them pause to consider what he warns a world without a strong America would be like.

Friedman begins by commenting on the recent popularity of America.

Much ink has been spilled lately decrying the decline in American popularity around the world under President Bush. Polls tell us how China is now more popular in Asia than America and how few Europeans say they identify with the United States. I am sure there is truth to these polls. We should have done better in Iraq. An America that presides over Abu Ghraib, torture and Guantánamo Bay deserves a thumbs-down.

But America is not and never has been just about those things, which is why I also find some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and borderline silly. Friday’s vote at the U.N. on Zimbabwe reminded me why.

Friedmans final thoughts on the matter.

So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.

Generalship and Iraq

The portraits above are of generals who captained America's wars.

George Washington,

Andrew Jackson

Winfield Scott

Zachary Taylor

Ulysses S. Grant

Nelson A. Miles

John J. Pershing,

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Matthew Ridgway
Creighton Abrams

Colin Luther Powell

Tommy Franks

They all have the same thing in common. They were in charge of either winning or commanding, the decisive battle in a war. Everyone of this men justly earned the accolades of their nation and in the case all save one, continued to serve until the job was done.

This week a report was released by the Army, entitled, “On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign.” a 700 page report that calls into question the plan for Iraq after the fall of Sadam Hussein. An article in the New York Times by Michael Gordon Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History details what the report says.

I will not attempt to denigrate General Franks here, I only make an observation that in every successful war, and even Vietnam, the General in charge stayed on duty to clean up the aftermath, or in the case of General Abrams, rebuild the Army. From a historians point of view it is something to ponder. Unanswered questions, that in hindsight led to many more deaths than necessary.

The end of World War in Germany saw horrific blood letting by victors against the German people in Eastern Europe as old scores were settled against ethnic Germans caught in reconquered territories. The Allies had several million troops stationed in Germany. A huge force was kept on to facilitate disarmament and security. In Iraq, the Army report states that recommendations to bring in a force of 300,000 men to secure the peace was rejected by General Franks.

Some of General Franks’s moves also appeared divorced from the growing problems in Iraq. Before the fall of Baghdad, Col. Kevin Benson, a planner at the land war command, developed a plan that called for using about 300,000 soldiers to secure postwar Iraq, about twice as many as were deployed.

But that was not what General Franks and the Bush administration had in mind. In an April 16 visit to Baghdad, General Franks instructed his officers to be prepared to reduce forces rapidly during an “an abbreviated period of stability operations,” the study notes.

If true, it a damning statement of over confidence and arrogance.

Asked about the decision to establish a new headquarters, General Franks told Army historians that he had told the Pentagon what was needed and that it was the Defense Department’s responsibility to ensure that the headquarters was rapidly installed.

The invasion of Iraq began on March 19, 2003 the country was declared secured on May 1, 2003. Twenty two days later General Franks announced his retirement from the Army. This in my recollection is the first time in our history when the winning general quits less than a month after major hostilities ceased. These are questions that call for an answer. Why did General Franks retire? The future is ripe for historians to discover the truth.

Army's Combined Arms Center's Web site. for a down version of the 700 page report.

Further discussion at Small Wars Journalm under the heading On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign.

Leadership?

The news this week has focused on the failure of leadership. A sex scandal felled a governor and the revelations of a candidate's personal pastor, threaten to impugn the integrity of that candidate's perception to be a unifying force for change.

I will not offer my personal opinions on the above issues, the MSM, talk radio and other blogs will cover these stories ad nauseam. However, the events are symptomatic of America losing it's middle ground.

Several posts this week highlight this problem. Eating Their Own posted on Zenpundit notes:

There appears to be an emerging civil war in the Democratic Party flowing along generational, ideological, gender and racial lines that has just spilled onto one of the premier sites of the Left blogosphere, the DailyKOS:

And continues with another post entitled, On Synchronicity and Other Variables cross-posted on Zenpundit and Chicago Boyz. This post speaks to the importance of media in conflict and offers insightful comments in an op-ed by:

Blogfriend Matt Armstrong was recently featured at the USC Center for Public Diplomacy where he had a very thorough and well-considered op-ed on Information Operations and New Media.

The supporting comments reinforce the necessity to:

.....craft some kind of coherent narrative of it’s national objectives, policies and values.

It is well worth taking the time to read, along with Matt Armstrong's linked op-ed to understand what is at stake.

Finally, Tom Barnett's weekly column for Scripps Howard and KnoxNews, entitled, Losing America's middle ground means losing our way directly addresses this issue.

He writes about his own experience in working in the national security community and how he has almost always found that they all have the best interests of the United States at heart. He goes on to note that many people no longer believe that:

I also know many citizens don't believe that. They sense everything is decided by cabals and secret programs and groups you've never even heard of..........Most people see too many movies and don't read enough material that accurately describes the day-to-day workings of things, so their images of policymaking tend to be very dark and nefarious.

Barnett writes that shortly after 9-11 it was cool to be working for the USG. But:

Today, the tide seems to be turning quickly back to those earlier days:........People feel powerless over events, and so they go to blogs and discussion boards and type in statements I couldn't deliver as an actor they're so angry and out of control.

This speaks directly to, Eating Their Own linked above.

Tom points out what is missing is a middle ground because:

....... there is a profound mismatch between our current grand strategy fixated on terror and what most Americans feel needs to be something visionary and more positive -- not just the future to be prevented but the one worth creating.......The next president better address that mismatch or we'll see the moral vigor of this nation continue to decline in dangerous ways, especially during an economic downturn.

This leads back to the title of this post, Leadership? It appears this is lacking in massive droves today. Personal responsibility is only taken when trying to cop-a-plea, after the truth comes out. Many including Tom Barnett hold out hope that Barak Obama's appeal is one of hope, but the latest revelations may torpedo that appeal.

In balance, Barnett, standing in the middle ground also sees an appeal in John MaCain, Handicapping McCain.

Only time will tell, as Tom's final sentence states:

People don't join a cause they mistrust.

I have noted before, that the United States has been blessed to have an almost unbroken chain of leaders from Roosevelt to Reagan, who were able to communicate and maintain the heroic myth that every nation has as it’s cornerstone. This myth is not false ideals, it is the ability to communicate the idea that the future will be better, while assuming responsibility for current conditions. Technocrats and single barreled laser-sighted leaders, have always failed to lead and inspire because they lacked the skills to stand in the middle ground and bring both sides together.