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Posted on 08/31/2007 5:49:17 PM PDT by SandRat
WASHINGTON, Aug. 31, 2007 – It will take 10 years to breed Iraq’s noncommissioned officer corps, the general who oversees training for Iraq’s security forces said today.
Often described as “the backbone of the Army,” a noncommissioned officer, or NCO, is an enlisted member of an armed force who has been given authority by a commissioned officer. The NCO corps includes all grades of sergeant, in addition to corporals.
“Growing an NCO corps is not a month-long deal; it’s a decade-long deal,” Army Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, told online journalists and “bloggers” in a conference call.
In the last 18 months, the Iraqi army has grown by two divisions, seven brigades and 16 battalions, Dubik said. “When you grow that fast, regardless of what army you’re in, … you’re not going to be able to produce leaders at the same rate that you produce soldiers. It’s just physically not possible,” he said.
Earlier this month, Dubik made a similar observation about commissioned officers. “You can’t grow majors and lieutenant colonels and colonels in four years. You can grow good captains and lieutenants in four years, … but it takes longer to build the field-grade officer,” he said.
Dubik’s decades of experience in the U.S. Army give him insight into NCO development.
“We had to re-grow the Army’s NCO corps in 1975 after the Vietnam War, because we had pretty much destroyed it … by promoting people too quickly,” he said. “And then once we took the number of casualties we did, we really didn’t have a strong NCO corps left in 1975 when the war ended.”
To fix the fractured system, the Army created a professional development program called the NCO education system. It revamped personnel policies, selecting NCO candidates and training them before the soldiers promoted to NCO ranks.
“Those were new organizational habits for the United States Army, and it took from 1975 to 1985 to re-grow the U.S. Army NCO corps,” Dubik said. “The expectation that I have of the new Iraqi army in developing new organizational habits is the same. This is a decade-long project.”
To speed Iraq’s NCO growth, the Iraqi army siphons the top 10 percent of enlisted graduates into an NCO training program, or “corporals course.” Recruiters also are recalling former NCO-grade soldiers who served in Saddam Hussein’s army and retraining them at an academy. Dubik called such procedures “positive steps in the right direction.”
The deputy commanding general of Iraqi joint forces, Lt. Gen. Nasser Abadi, noted that Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein’s regime were modeled on the Soviet style, in which NCOs didn’t play a strong role. In developing Iraq’s NCO backbone, the country has had to start from scratch.
“We had the junior officers performing the task of the NCOs,” he said, “so this is a new idea for the new Iraqi army.”
FR WAR NEWS! It’s a good thing this will all pay for itself.
“It’s a good thing this will all pay for itself.”
LOL.
Seems like the Regular Iraqi Army had a good load of trained NCOs before we disbanded it, even though they silently cooperated with us and did not fight us like the Republican guard and goon squads.
It would have been nice to have a “loyal opposition” that could have forced hearings on the “thousands of mistakes” of the occupation, but I believe they cannot because such would impugn their expectations/party line that the war from the beginning was unwinnable.
“We had the junior officers performing the task of the NCOs,” he said, “so this is a new idea for the new Iraqi army.”
Do not concur. We have rebuilt our NCO corps from scratch three times since WW2. USMC has only done it once (post-VN.) Experience counts!
It is no accident that the nations which have strong NCO cultures also have strong middle class cultures -- capitalist nations which honor merit and entrust junior leaders with authority. It is also no accident that dictators distrust such distributed authority, and tend to reserve all authority within tight circles of senior officers who can be watched closely. Once you decapitate those leaders, their aimless peasants are easy to route. But take out any succession of American leaders, and the next in line will immediately step up to lead your escort to hell.
If a well-trained and trusted NCO culture can be instilled in the Iraqi Army, it will be the first in the Middle East (except for the US/UK-modeled Israeli Defense Forces). But a Western-styled NCO corps can only thrive if Iraq also develops a Western-style democracy with a middle-class meritocracy. If any Arab country can make it work, I believe it is Iraq.
One thing that the US military has learned in its work with other nations, is that the American ideal of independent action by leaders focused on the mission does not translate well in authoritarian cultures.
In a setting where mistakes lose you your head when the dust settles, there is a difficulty even seeing the value of independent action.
With an American unit that loses communication with higher, the NCO will lead the unit to accomplish the objective in their own creative way. In units from authoritarian cultures, those units will generally sit until they can reestablish links with those who tell them what to do.
Islam is an authoritarian culture. I don't have any high expectations for their military.
This is why, in 2003, I told folks we would need to stay for 15-20 years. And if so, we needed to increase the size of the Army.
Pity SecDef & POTUS didn’t see it that way...
“This is why, in 2003, I told folks we would need to stay for 15-20 years. And if so, we needed to increase the size of the Army.”
Wow you must have got quite the reception back then on FR. What was that like?
They're all a bunch of goons and punks.
That was exactly the point of my second and third paragraphs. True delegation of distributed authority stems from capitalist culture. If a highly-developed NCO corps is to succeed in Iraq, it must be accompanied by a national transformation to a democratic and meritocratic culture. If Iraq can maintain its secular nature and transition into a democracy, it has a chance. A chance.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Too bad we place more emphasis in growing the military of other nations and not our own. Field grades were trashed from 92 to 2000 under Clinton and replaced many senior field grade and flag ranks with socialist leaning brotherhoods from the US and abroad. They in turn have refocused the military from the ability to field several wars to an abundant police force with limited operational capacity, provided nobody attacks their supplies and lines of communication.
IMHO, we are spread thin and it wouldn’t take much by multiple players to tie us up worldwide.
BTW, the US didn’t have that much difficulty developing many NCOs in WWII, in half the time than we’ve been in Iraq. IMHO, it boils down to national discipline, and quite truthfully, it isn’t that difficult to build the training camps to far outproduce US military than what we have. If we lower ourselves to the same common denominator as other cultures, we’re fighting a losing battle.
Actually, most of the military folks agreed. And most of the folks I talked to about it were military folks, at the office or at home. I didn’t guess we would need more forces to go in, but I always assumed we would need to be there a long time...after all, I went to Korea in 2004, well after the end of the Korean War.
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