The Death of Initiative

This article from the NY Times is an informative read from a Army officer whose experience in Afghanistan was marked by the dismal effects the ever-growing military bureaucracy has on initiative in combat operations. Essentially, this captain argues that many opportunities to capture or kill key AAF leaders were lost because of the numerous levels of red taped that must be fought before the actual fight ever begins. By the time approval was gained for the operations, the target had long departed. Consequently, the local populace and Afghan forces were frustrated at the military’s lack of action on convenient targets.

I would guess that the origin of this bureaucratic nonsense (aside from being typical of any large governmental organization) is in another tenant of counterinsurgency: minimize civilian casualties. But in this quest (which I am by no means denigrating) to avoid civilian casualties, the level of approval for combat operations had climbed higher and higher, to the point where initiative is completely squelched. The ever-increasing technology available to commanders further allows micromanagement of troops on the ground, a mishandling of an asset intended to enable initiative.

Many a counterinsurgency expert (such as Kilcullen in his “28 Articles”) has emphasized the importance of initiative at the company level and below. This should not be a new concept to anyone even remotely familiar with COIN. But the military has forgotten to balance the avoidance of civilian casualties with encouraging initiative in lower level commanders. Pursuing extreme measures in support of one counterinsurgency guideline (ie. avoid civilian casualties) will not create success if it is only at the expense of other COIN lessons learned.

The discussion up until now is only scratching the surface of what is a deeper – and more complex – problem. Clearly, Commanders at BCT, DIV and above believe that BN and CO level commanders are not fit to make these types of decisions. Why is that? Is it the “fog of war”? The additional knowledge that is available at the TOC (Rivet Joint feed, UAS Feed etc) but not to those on the ground? Is the education level of CO Commanders simply incomplete?

If this cumbersome decision making process is not streamlined and decision making returned to BN and CO levels, the benefits available from the recently-announced troop increases may be limited at best.

Esquire Article

This article in Esquire was recommended to me by my Uncle and I diligently read it on a recent airplane trip. A few things jumped out at me. A reinforced Infantry company conducts a sweep of a ridgeline, searching for arms caches and insurgents. They tramp up and then down the ridgeline for two days, through dense underbrush, find no insurgents or weapons caches, but sustain a handful of injuries from exhaustion, dehydration, and sprained ankles. Am I describing a mission in Afghanistan or Vietnam?
Next:

One of the organizing ideas behind [the operation] had been to get the Afghan army, which has been improving in skill in recent years, to search an important village and try to trip up, or even catch, Haji Matin [a local insurgent leader], the owner of the valley's idled sawmill.

...[the operation] was meant to disrupt these locals by placing an American company on the insurgents' ridge and simultaneously placing an Afghan company in position to sweep a village Haji Matin frequented. The battalion had planned it this way, and briefed it this way, and then, the day before the mission began, word came from Kabul that the village search was canceled.

And yet the mission went ahead. This strikes me as sticking to a plan, even when the facts on the ground have changed.
Finally, the role of Haji Matin in the insurgency was what really confounded me. His sawmill was idled by a government decree that prohibited most logging. This left Matin, his mill workers, and the loggers out of jobs and pushed them into the arms of the insurgency. The author points out that the desire to expel the American invaders from their valley was also a motivating factor for the insurgency, but the Afghan governments logging prohibition is important for two reasons.
First, it presents an opportunity for the Afghan government and the American forces to disaggregate the insurgency. Let them log! If we can peel off even some of the insurgents by allowing them to resume their former occupations with a simple concession like allowing them to log then why not?
Second, this smacks of the US inserting itself on one side in a minor, perhaps ethnically motivated, conflict. This results in American forces becoming part of the conflict, and unable to function as a neutral arbiter working to resolve the problem. Yes, American forces need to support the Afghan government. But if they are seen as the Karzai faction's attack dog, we will never be able to effectively promote the reconciliation required to achieve a long term solution in Afghanistan.

Undermining the "Strategic Corporal"

I've never spent much time pondering the NCO promotion system, and why should I? It had never affected me before. But now, as a PL, one of my responsibilities is promoting talented Soldiers, or preventing promotions, as the case may be.

My PSG and I sent an E5 to the E6 board last month. This E5 is everything one could ask for in a young NCO and more. Anything I ask for will be done to the utmost of his ability. He is conscientious about developing his Soldiers, he is impressively knowledgeable about Afghanistan, he is tactically and technically competent, he spends his personal time thinking about the mission at hand and how to accomplish it, ultimately, he is the most competent person in my platoon. He is one of those NCOs that our Cadre were talking about when they said to naive Cadets "Don't worry, your NCOs will teach you all that you need to know." (Unfortunately, they never mentioned the 50% of NCOs that don't know enough - and don't care to - square a young officer away, but I digress). If any NCO should make E6, this is the one.

But I misjudged - and failed to understand - the NCO promotion system. Professional competency doesn't seem to really matter. Development of subordinates, not too important, personal development towards understanding Afghanistan - overrated. 1SGs and CSMs really only care to promote NCOs who remember an insignificant detail of the morning news, who have spent time memorizing the minutia of Drill and Ceremony (time that could have been spent on the Pashtunwali).

Yes, NCOs are responsible for studying for the board. But in the case of this NCO, he transferred over from the Navy less than 2 years ago. Some of the regulation-based knowledge that Soldiers pick up along the way was lost upon him. Because he wasn't well schooled in nonsense that is easily looked up, he failed to make E6.

Much as been made of the "strategic corporal" or the importance of decentralized decisions made by junior NCOs on the ground. However, the NCO promotion boards must be redirected from the simple memorization of regulation minutia - metric that absolutely fails at indicating leadership potential, and refocused on questions regarding technical competency, knowledge of the deployment AO and situational leadership challenges. Furthermore, boards should not be the determining promotion factor, and should be subjugated to evaluations written by the NCOs chain of command. Only when the NCO promotion system has been altered to reflect this new focus will the Army see the greatest gains from the "strategic corporal."

Infantry Basic Officer Leadership, good prep?

Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course (IBOLC) is over. Overall, it was a good course at giving me technical tools but it was not a good course for creating a good mindset.

The Turkish international student in our platoon, Ferhat, was named the international honor graduate and had some especially cogent criticisms. He said that the situations we face were mostly canned and did not correlate to what we will be facing when we deploy. Every time we do a mission we go in knowing the exact enemy situation. We know where he is, what he will do, and how many people he has. He behaved like a conventional opponent every time. Whenever we attacked he would stay and fight when an irregular opponent would have broken contact. Also, we initiated almost all of our engagements, whereas in reality the insurgent initiates the vast majority.

He did say our training was very good on the whole. I did learn a lot about things like how to think about security in all environments and how to employ machine guns well. I also got good feedback from the cadre on how to communicate orders better and delegate to make my life easier.

At the same time, his criticisms were definitely valid. IBOLC did not help prepare us for the ambiguity that we will face having to react to a daring an crafty enemy who hits us at our weakest points. Also, it was very process oriented. We went into a situation we knew and had faced before, and just had to follow a process to get the job done. If they had taught the classes in a way that asked more questions and put us in unfamiliar situations we would have had a different experience.

Podcast Source

Some good podcasts here at at the Pritzker Military Library in my home of Chicago. The podcast with Kilcullen in June was fantastic as was the one with Steve Coll (although the later was a little out of date).

Fall of the Warrior King part II?

Very interesting article in last week's New Yorker about 3rd BDE, 101st ABN in Iraq in 2005-2006. It focuses on Operation Iron Triangle in May 2006, but also deals with the commander, COL Michael Steele, and the command climate he established. The article falls short in not exploring this element of the story in enough detail, but still provides us with some noteworthy insights. Unfortunately, the article is not yet available to those who do not have a subscription to the New Yorker, but hopefully you all will find a way to read it.
Many elements of the article are worthy of discussion, but as the argument against killing detainees is pretty well tread ground, I'll look to something a little more thoughprovoking.
If the name Michael Steele rings a bell it is because he was the Ranger company commander in Mark Bowden's book, Black Hawk Down. The author of the article comments more than once about the effect that losing 18 men that day in Mogadishu had on Steele. Perhaps this is just armchair psychology, but there does seem to be a basis in the author's interviews with and observations of Steele.
Which brings me to my point. In war, people die. It is the nature of the business. It doesn't make it any easier to lose a friend, colleague, or loved one, but it is a fact, and we ought to expect it to occur. This obviously does not mean we should be reckless with Soldier's lives, but we must remember that our job as Army leaders is to accomplish the mission. If the Army's mission was to aviod casualties, then we shouldn't even get out of bed. COL Steele seemed to become so preoccupied with avoiding casualties that it had a significant negative impact on mission accomplishment.

Look back at McNamara and Vietnam

McNamara's death brings to the forefront the legacy our involvement in Vietnam. The issue is especially relevant considering the debate over what we should do in Afghanistan today. Check out this Washington Post oped.

There has been a lot written about the mistakes we made in Vietnam. Those don't need to be rehashed here, but it is heartening to note how different the debate is. Talking to people who were alive then, they note that there was much less knowledge and debate about potential strategies for dealing with the situation. All of the debate was about whether we should stay or not. Today, there is a lot of constructive debate about Afghanistan and ways to deal with it.

The other important thing to consider about McNamara's legacy is his later stated belief that the war was unwinnable but he still continued to send troops there. I could never accept anyone doing something like that. You are putting other men and women in harms way because of a lack of political courage.

The same issue arises for Afghanistan. The Administrations plan for dealing with it is-on the whole-nothing too new but it is a good plan and gives me courage that the administration believes they can succeed and is sending us there for good reason. I have heard some talk of reducing our objective in Afghanistan to more just kill capture to take out senior Al-Qaeda leadership so that there can be some plausible success. It would be a huge mistake to do so, because it would not solve the problem and would only strengthen the hardcore Islamic militant leadership of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This solution is mostly political in my mind, and would be akin to McNamara's sending soldiers to Vietnam even when he knew the war was unwinnable for political reasons. For me, if I am standing in front of my men in a year explaining to them why I am dragging them across the world away from their loved one to possibly die, I want to have confidence it is for the right reasons.