thedrifter
06-15-05, 05:35 AM
06.14.2005
Good Intentions Take A Little Longer
By Raymond Perry
In his recent article, "Good Intentions Gone Bad" (Newsweek, June 13, 2005), Rod Nordland reflects on his job as Baghdad Bureau Chief for the newsmagazine. He unintentionally illuminates the ignorance of a press chasing only Significant Actions while he illustrates military leadership failures deeper than Abu Ghraib. As in Vietnam, America's "good intentions" are simply not enough.
Significant Actions are reports (SigActs) transmitted within operational military circuits when any attack occurs. Given the propensity of insurgents to kill any foreigner walking the streets unprotected, the foreign press in Iraq receives much of their information via military Public Affairs Officers. The news we see is essentially these re-worded SigActs padded with reporters' preconceptions.
The fourth estate is driven by the two-edged sword of a 24-hour news cycle and their own zeal to become the next "Woodstein" of Watergate fame. Because of that, they miss the news right in front of them.
Author Frank Schaeffer, unexpectedly, uncomfortably but proudly the father of a Marine on duty in Afghanistan, recently wrote about "The Military You Don't See", (The Washington Post, Sunday May 29, 2005). He chronicled several telling actions taken by Marines in the best interests of humanity and honoring the Geneva Conventions in a way the insurgents cannot even conceive. Importantly, he noted how these become known only through "a military family samizdat email underground."
He spoke movingly of a treasured photo of his son cradling an Afghani child while protecting a school from fanatics intent on retribution for the crime of educating women.
The juxtaposition of these articles to me illustrates both the ignorance of the press and the Cold War hubris of senior Department of Defense leaders.
The issue is not one of our capable and motivated youth. They will win this war, in spite of us, if we just let them.
"Counterinsurgency is not rocket Science," commented retired Army Lt. Col. James S. Corum, a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University's All Souls College. As he wrote in his recent article "War from the Top Down" (The New York Times, June 2 2005), history tells us how to fight and win against an insurgency.
But it takes time, a willingness to develop a Western-based military officer corps and police force, and the intestinal fortitude to sidestep the Planning and Budgeting Process' focus on finding the "most efficient and least costly" plan. As Corum notes the U.S. military has "lurched from one quick fix to another."
This must be recognized as the natural outcome of the Cold War groupthink that still dominates the Pentagon process. The die was cast when Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki was sidelined and later retired for the sin of standing tall (as his oath required of him) and asserting that it would take at least several hundred thousand of soldiers to maintain order in Iraq after victory.
Corum's key to ultimate victory in Iraq is education of Iraqi military officers and police willing to take chances. This kind of professional development will take years and our nation must remain steadfast in the interim. The fourth estate just does not get this and it is only just beginning to dawn on Pentagon leadership.
There really are indicators today of a coming victory in Iraq. In their recent Op-Ed article, "The State of Iraq: An Update", Adrianne Lins de Albuquerque, Michael O'Hanlon and Amy Uskiewicz (The New York Times, June 3, 2005), outline the developing infrastructure of nationhood within Iraq. As they wrote: Iraq is "a complex mix of tragedy and hope," there is a "hustle and bustle" in the streets, and Iraq's Stock Market trades billions of shares a month.
By some measures – electricity output for example – things are not going so well. But I believe the truly significant measures they annotated, are: a trained judiciary, a growing free fourth estate (press and broadcast), a truly massive growth in telephone and internet subscribers, and a growing percentage of those believing in and supporting their nascent government (to include a smaller but growing fraction of Sunnis).
Yet, even as he penned in "Good Intentions Gone Bad," Nordland showed that he only dimly understood the real story. Nordland is absolutely right when he decries leadership that allows the Lyndie Englands and Charles Graners to take the public rap for Abu Ghraib. He is correct in his damage assessment of these acts. So why is Nordland content to allow leadership to hide systemic flaws behind the Article 15 process?
Nordland is also correct when he castigates U.S. military leaders for their inability to control two miles of a central Baghdad highway. He further decries the "Mad Max wasteland of fortifications within a trash strewn Green Zone" where even the stoplights don't work. Most importantly, he brings to light the poor performance of the U.S. military guards of the Green Zone.
These elements of Nordland's article are, first and foremost, indicators of the performance of U.S. leadership there. But because he does not understand the larger context, Nordland's article is short and buried on page 40 as a "reflection" on his two years in Baghdad.
Because this leadership context is not understood by our fourth estate generally, and the lessons of history on beating an insurgency are only beginning to dawn on Pentagon leadership, the American people are effectively deprived of the opportunity to understand how flaws in the Pentagon decision-making process slow progress in Iraq. Nor do they have the opportunity to consider the degree to which Pentagon self-protective measures hide these flaws.
The Cold War mentality of the Planning and Budgeting Whiz-Kids, who believe that a properly done "marginal analysis" will reveal the least expensive approach to victory, has much allure. It is as if the exact number of bullets needed can be determined. Inherent in this is a systemic focus on corporate-like efficiency believing with a passion that anything that cannot be quantified is irrelevant.
But this is not the marketplace of Wall Street. It is the marketplace of ideas where the "mix of tragedy and hope" cannot ever be efficient, much less quantified. Only when the Iraqi people themselves are capable of physically ejecting the insurgents will victory dawn.
Neither a 24-hour news cycle nor our current bitterly political process will ever be able to understand Corum when he points out that "[insurgencies] develop their own internal logic and momentum. ... [and may] simply [fight] until attrition [makes] them irrelevant."
In the meantime, a fourth estate searching for a Watergate-like scapegoat coupled with a Pentagon leadership focused on efficiency will miss the larger picture. And, they will continue to ignore the true humanity of the vast bulk of our soldiers and miss the systemic folly that hobbles our soldiers in the field.
Ellie
Good Intentions Take A Little Longer
By Raymond Perry
In his recent article, "Good Intentions Gone Bad" (Newsweek, June 13, 2005), Rod Nordland reflects on his job as Baghdad Bureau Chief for the newsmagazine. He unintentionally illuminates the ignorance of a press chasing only Significant Actions while he illustrates military leadership failures deeper than Abu Ghraib. As in Vietnam, America's "good intentions" are simply not enough.
Significant Actions are reports (SigActs) transmitted within operational military circuits when any attack occurs. Given the propensity of insurgents to kill any foreigner walking the streets unprotected, the foreign press in Iraq receives much of their information via military Public Affairs Officers. The news we see is essentially these re-worded SigActs padded with reporters' preconceptions.
The fourth estate is driven by the two-edged sword of a 24-hour news cycle and their own zeal to become the next "Woodstein" of Watergate fame. Because of that, they miss the news right in front of them.
Author Frank Schaeffer, unexpectedly, uncomfortably but proudly the father of a Marine on duty in Afghanistan, recently wrote about "The Military You Don't See", (The Washington Post, Sunday May 29, 2005). He chronicled several telling actions taken by Marines in the best interests of humanity and honoring the Geneva Conventions in a way the insurgents cannot even conceive. Importantly, he noted how these become known only through "a military family samizdat email underground."
He spoke movingly of a treasured photo of his son cradling an Afghani child while protecting a school from fanatics intent on retribution for the crime of educating women.
The juxtaposition of these articles to me illustrates both the ignorance of the press and the Cold War hubris of senior Department of Defense leaders.
The issue is not one of our capable and motivated youth. They will win this war, in spite of us, if we just let them.
"Counterinsurgency is not rocket Science," commented retired Army Lt. Col. James S. Corum, a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University's All Souls College. As he wrote in his recent article "War from the Top Down" (The New York Times, June 2 2005), history tells us how to fight and win against an insurgency.
But it takes time, a willingness to develop a Western-based military officer corps and police force, and the intestinal fortitude to sidestep the Planning and Budgeting Process' focus on finding the "most efficient and least costly" plan. As Corum notes the U.S. military has "lurched from one quick fix to another."
This must be recognized as the natural outcome of the Cold War groupthink that still dominates the Pentagon process. The die was cast when Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki was sidelined and later retired for the sin of standing tall (as his oath required of him) and asserting that it would take at least several hundred thousand of soldiers to maintain order in Iraq after victory.
Corum's key to ultimate victory in Iraq is education of Iraqi military officers and police willing to take chances. This kind of professional development will take years and our nation must remain steadfast in the interim. The fourth estate just does not get this and it is only just beginning to dawn on Pentagon leadership.
There really are indicators today of a coming victory in Iraq. In their recent Op-Ed article, "The State of Iraq: An Update", Adrianne Lins de Albuquerque, Michael O'Hanlon and Amy Uskiewicz (The New York Times, June 3, 2005), outline the developing infrastructure of nationhood within Iraq. As they wrote: Iraq is "a complex mix of tragedy and hope," there is a "hustle and bustle" in the streets, and Iraq's Stock Market trades billions of shares a month.
By some measures – electricity output for example – things are not going so well. But I believe the truly significant measures they annotated, are: a trained judiciary, a growing free fourth estate (press and broadcast), a truly massive growth in telephone and internet subscribers, and a growing percentage of those believing in and supporting their nascent government (to include a smaller but growing fraction of Sunnis).
Yet, even as he penned in "Good Intentions Gone Bad," Nordland showed that he only dimly understood the real story. Nordland is absolutely right when he decries leadership that allows the Lyndie Englands and Charles Graners to take the public rap for Abu Ghraib. He is correct in his damage assessment of these acts. So why is Nordland content to allow leadership to hide systemic flaws behind the Article 15 process?
Nordland is also correct when he castigates U.S. military leaders for their inability to control two miles of a central Baghdad highway. He further decries the "Mad Max wasteland of fortifications within a trash strewn Green Zone" where even the stoplights don't work. Most importantly, he brings to light the poor performance of the U.S. military guards of the Green Zone.
These elements of Nordland's article are, first and foremost, indicators of the performance of U.S. leadership there. But because he does not understand the larger context, Nordland's article is short and buried on page 40 as a "reflection" on his two years in Baghdad.
Because this leadership context is not understood by our fourth estate generally, and the lessons of history on beating an insurgency are only beginning to dawn on Pentagon leadership, the American people are effectively deprived of the opportunity to understand how flaws in the Pentagon decision-making process slow progress in Iraq. Nor do they have the opportunity to consider the degree to which Pentagon self-protective measures hide these flaws.
The Cold War mentality of the Planning and Budgeting Whiz-Kids, who believe that a properly done "marginal analysis" will reveal the least expensive approach to victory, has much allure. It is as if the exact number of bullets needed can be determined. Inherent in this is a systemic focus on corporate-like efficiency believing with a passion that anything that cannot be quantified is irrelevant.
But this is not the marketplace of Wall Street. It is the marketplace of ideas where the "mix of tragedy and hope" cannot ever be efficient, much less quantified. Only when the Iraqi people themselves are capable of physically ejecting the insurgents will victory dawn.
Neither a 24-hour news cycle nor our current bitterly political process will ever be able to understand Corum when he points out that "[insurgencies] develop their own internal logic and momentum. ... [and may] simply [fight] until attrition [makes] them irrelevant."
In the meantime, a fourth estate searching for a Watergate-like scapegoat coupled with a Pentagon leadership focused on efficiency will miss the larger picture. And, they will continue to ignore the true humanity of the vast bulk of our soldiers and miss the systemic folly that hobbles our soldiers in the field.
Ellie