Posted on 04/27/2007 1:24:55 AM PDT by Cardhu
An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there.
"America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq," charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "The intellectual and moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals."
Yingling's comments are especially striking because his unit's performance in securing the northwestern Iraqi city of Tall Afar was cited by President Bush in a March 2006 speech and provided the model for the new security plan underway in Baghdad.
He also holds a high profile for a lieutenant colonel: He attended the Army's elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has written for one of the Army's top professional journals, Military Review.
The article, "General Failure," is to be published today in Armed Forces Journal and is posted at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com. Its appearance signals the public emergence of a split inside the military between younger, mid-career officers and the top brass.
Many majors and lieutenant colonels have privately expressed anger and frustration with the performance of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and other top commanders in the war, calling them slow to grasp the realities of the war and overly optimistic in their assessments.
Some younger officers have stated privately that more generals should have been taken to task for their handling of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, news of which broke in 2004. The young officers also note that the Army's elaborate "lessons learned" process does not criticize generals and that no generals in Iraq have been replaced for poor...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I understood what you meant but I don´t think it will do him any harm. Which one of the ‘Intellectual and Moral Failures’ will cast the first stone?
As if any stone needs to be cast. One needs to cast stones [undertake active action] to promote, not to deny a promotion. Denial of promotion is absolutely passive activity.
Mobilization of the people and industry was not done after 9/11, and because of that our economy recovered quickly and al Qaeda failed to disrupt our way of life. What made sense then makes less sense now. The passion of the people must be aroused.
How?
When one becomes that high profile and obviously groomed for advancement, then what would normally be passivity, would be interpreted as retaliation.
And any Secretary of Defense would not want to become involved in appearing to be a party to such a politically indefensible action, he has nothing to gain.
But that is just my opinion.
“The passion of the people must be aroused.
How?”
As for “how?” - one Goebbels left detailed descriptions how such things are done. Prior to him there was one Hearst, who managed to do much the same thing, but more amateurishly. “How” is the easy part. The will to do that “how” is the weak point.
“What’s needed is fighting spirit. But you’re not going to find too much of that among people who, typically, hold several post-graduate degrees. People who end up with those sorts of “credentials” are, typically, uniquely unsuited to fight wars, particularly in the present environment.”
Not true.
We need more officers with these credentials to be able to think through and anticipate the secondary, tertiary and quarternary effects of actions taken in this environment.
We also need officers who understand the true nature of the Enemy’s IO capability and ways which we can counter that that and in fact prosecute an aggressive offensive IO campaign against them.
This is NOT how most our current crop fo SR. GO/FOs think. It is a completely NEW paradigm for them and they are very uncomfortable here. We are also hobbled by the laws under which we operate in this arena as well.
WE officers in the O4/O5/O6 realm know waht to do, and how to do it - we are just not ENABLED to do it because of our leadership’s old way of thinking.
His career will be shortened I do believe.
RHIP...always has been, always will be
The 500 pound gorilla never mentioned in the article is Donald Rumsfeld.
bookmark
“I think that proposal would bring the struggling Iraqi economy to a total collapse, and you really do not want the Iraqi soldiers to babysit the Americans do you?”
Is it our war, or their war? If it is just our war and they are just watching, I have no problem with their economy collapsing.
But why would it have to collapse? By having goods delivered outside the city to warehouses, and having trucks from the city that have been secured, to pick up said deliveries and bring them into the city is a minor inconvenience.
Buses could pick up citizens from parking places outside the city also a minor inconvenience, or do you prefer the daily car bombing?
As for the Iraqi soldiers babysitting our troops, why not? Is it our war or theirs? Whats wrong with Iraqi troops that we have trained and equipped and paid, pulling cars off the road before our troops pass, do you prefer the suicide bomber swerving into our troops?
Patton (who because he had a good movie made about him and people don't actually read a lot of military history, is a TAD overrated on FR) was a widely-read intellectual who spoke multiple languages.
Quality education doesn't remove any "fighting spirit."
Actually the Post´s article is just a summary of the actual article written by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling.
For the real article and his arguments on the conduct of this and other wars go here:
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198
Interesting that his prescription for congressional oversight does not include timelines - that's the cheap way our for our CYA politicians. Rather, he is asking congress to seriously take up its oversight and judgmental duties, a task today's very political group might not be prepared to assume:
First, Congress must change the system for selecting general officers. Second, oversight committees must apply increased scrutiny over generating the necessary means and pursuing appropriate ways for applying America's military power. Third, the Senate must hold accountable through its confirmation powers those officers who fail to achieve the aims of policy at an acceptable cost in blood and treasure.
Strategic IO is on its ass. One of the ways IO-aware officers could facilitate IO in denied target audiences would be to enlist the support and assistance of people to whom that target audience is not denied.
The author seems to be saying that no matter what the adminstration says, that military generals must be forthright and honest in their appraisals and planning for war. So while Rumsfeld was completely wrong in his assessment, this should not have been met by public silence by the Generals. The Generals had plenty of opportunity to brief congressional committees, and hence you and I, on the realities. They failed.
Thank you for your reply.
I read the article and smell a RAT.
Too bad the message boards on that article are currently down. Would be interesting to read posts by our military people.
I smell a FOW (Friend of Webb). Charles Lee, Horatio Gates and Thomas Conway were ferocious in their disregard for Washington as well. They also wanted to reach out to Congress for oversight on the army.
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