SysAdmin force on the offensive
Thomas Barnett
¦"Troops' Queries Leave Rumsfeld on the Defensive," by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, 9 December 2005, p. A1.
¦"Rumsfeld's Gaze Is Trained Beyond Iraq: Defense Chief Focuses on Reshaping Military to Fight Unconventional Foes in Post-9/11 World," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2005, p. A4.
¦"As Chaos Mounts In Iraq, U.S. Army Rethinks Its Future: Amid Signs Its Plan Fell Short, Service Sees Benefits Of Big Tanks, Translators," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2005, p. A1.
¦"A Sharp Shift From Killings to Kindness: U.S. Troops in Iraq Torn by Competing Needs to Battle Insurgents and Win Over Populace," by Bradley Graham, Washington Post, 4 December 2005, p. A14.
¦"Former commander calls for new military-civilian planning organization," by Chris Strohm, GovExec.com, 7 December 2005, p. A1.
Don Rumsfeld gave a very poor, bureaucratic answer to the soldier who complained about a lack of armor supplies for troops in Iraq. What he should have said was this:
We knew that this type of war was coming, but we spent years buying for and preparing for war with China instead because that vision got us all the big weapons we wanted. And frankly, that's why we let the Army build all those Humvees with no armor when it only costs $90k per unit to go from the stripped-down version to the armored one that costs $180. This was a bad choice on our part, and let me tell you, we made that same bad mistake throughout the military throughout the 1990s. But I'm in the process of stopping that, because we can't fail you again like we failed you too often in this occupation.
That response would have been cheered wildly for its sheer honesty.
Rumsfeld is doing his best to redirect the military, and especially the Army, from its long, Cold War focus on big combat toward a new embrace of the small stuff, or all that Military Operations Other Than War "crap" that looks suspiciously like Vietnam-era counter-insurgency and counter-guerilla stuff that many old-guard generals have sought studiously to avoid all these years since (the essence of the Powell Doctrine).
So Rumsfeld is working to rewrite the rule-set on what constitutes getting the troops ready:
A recent directive, prepared by Mr. Rumsfeld's office and still in draft form, now yields to that view. It mandates that in the future, units' readiness for war should be judged not only by traditional standards, such as how well they fire their tanks, but by the number of foreign speakers in their ranks, their awareness of the local culture where they will fight, and their ability to train and equip local security forces. It orders the military's four-star regional commanders to "develop and maintain" new plans for battle, hoping to prevent the sort of postwar chaos that engulfed Iraq.
But here's Jaffe's best point:
Even if Mr. Rumsfeld can't engineer change from above, a revolution from below is brewing. A generation of junior officers is "coming home from Iraq with a phenomenal amount of experience with these kinds of war. I wouldn't trade that for the world," said the senior defense official involved in the [scenario-based war-planning] review.
But it's a tough learning process, because the experiences of our troops in Iraq demand that they leap back and forth between Leviathan-life warfighting to SysAdmin-ish "hugs and kisses" humanitarian work (a Brit phrase for it).
As one captain put it: "They trained me well for firing, but never for seeing U.S. soldiers die one day and trying to help the Iraqi people the next." Another one put it even more bluntly, "To go from one mindset to another, that's what has been most tiring. In all the courses you've had, nothing prepares you for that."
But something could prepare the military as a whole for that, and that something is admitting we need two types of forces: one to wage war and one to wage peace.
Retired Marine Gen. and former Central Command boss Tony Zinni sees the need for something different. Calling for a new "agency or force that directs interagency cooperation," one that would "coordinate military and civilian planning."
Hmm. Almost like administering a system? |
