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The Milblogs site has multiple authors. Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the specific author, and not the official position of any other contributor or any organization to which they belong, to include the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components.

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« April 27, 2007 | Main | April 29, 2007 »

April 28, 2007

Prelude to Victory

[Eagle1]

Operation_Tiger.jpg

Operation Tiger April 28, 1944:

As noted here:

It was the costliest training exercise in all of World War II. As the bodies washed ashore in days ahead, the official count rose to 749.
But, as also noted,
The brave men who died that day contributed to the success in France six weeks later. Indeed their sacrifice was a Prelude to Victory.
Remember.

Cross posted.


Posted at 2247Z | Comments (1)

RE: Sounding the Bugle Re: failure day

[Soldier's Dad]

October 4th, 1962

By Morris K. Udall

I'm proud and fortunate to be an American living in a 20th century society which enjoys more basic freedoms and more material wealth than any nation in the history of this earth. All of us can rejoice in the blessings we now have. Yet, I sense from my mail a great deal of worry and concern about the future of our country. This uneasiness seems to boil down to two conclusions which are drummed into our people from many sources: (1) We are gradually losing our free enterprise system to socialism; and (2) we are slowly, but surely, losing the cold war and will eventually live under communism.

Updated: * higlight change
The all is lost crowd has been babbling away for a very long time......sometimes one needs to just have faith that the product they are selling is a product people , given a choice want to buy.


Posted at 2009Z | Comments (7)

Coming soon

[Greyhawk]

From the folks who can't provide "news" without mis-quotes, distortions, and unnamed sources: Failure Day.


Posted at 1953Z

Bugler...

[Greyhawk]

...sound retreat:

A British soldier who has just returned from Iraq yesterday described the situation in Basra as "hopeless and lost" and accused the Government of "trying to save face" by keeping troops there.
<...>
He called on Tony Blair to withdraw troops immediately.
<...>
"We're coming into the end game as far as I'm concerned. We're losing around four soldiers a month and it won't get any better.

"They've even started attacking our base at Basra airport now they've got proper artillery guns. Once that's gone there's nowhere left."

Artilery guns?
Pte Barton said in the 18 months between the end of his first tour of Iraq and his return this year the pressure on troops had increased hugely. The "Iranian influence" had given insurgents increasingly powerful and new weaponry, he said.
For information only - a "Pte" is a Private in the British military. The opinions of such should be very much respected - it's rare for one to "make the papers" (much less headlines) and this one did. I'd like to hear from more.

A reasonable discussion on this topic would include examination of Britain's intentions regarding Iran (given recent history), an appreciation of their steadfast commitment to the war on terror, an acknowledgement of the political realities confronting Tony Blair at home, and a valid explanation of the difference between complete pacification of an area and the return of responsibility of that area to Iraq. One is the goal of coalition strategy, ("The tipping point in the war in Iraq will not come from killing off insurgents - it will be achieved by replacing the Americans who are killing them with Iraqi forces capable of doing the same." I believe someone once said...) the other is beyond our control. (See Virginia Tech, for example.)

Meanwhile, Haider Ajina writes:

Greetings,

The following is an article form ‘Aswat Al-Iraq or “Voices of Iraq” from Apr 26, 2007

Al-Shuaiba airbase back to Iraqis for second time in 48 years

By Malik Saadon

Basra, Apr 26, (VOI) – Forty-eight years has passed between the handover of al-Shuaiba airbase from the British forces to the Iraqi Air Force (IQAF) in 1959 and its handover to the 10th division of the Iraqi army two days ago. During these 48 years the map of the world has changed, many concepts, ideas and theories have evolved, disproving others that scientists previously held true, but man's will to remain free and to be the master of his own land has not changed.


Posted at 1738Z | Comments (6)

Appeal for Even More Re: Generalship

[Greyhawk]

Chap asks, "Funnily enough I don't see anything about information war in the good LTCOL's article. Where's the IW/PA/PSYOPS love?"

Heh. I suspect that like me, Chap sees it between every line of the subsequent coverage. But perhaps I'm simply transferring my own suspicions...

*****

Wow - here's a huge surprise. NPR did a story this week on military members "speaking out".

Members of the U.S. armed forces are prohibited from speaking out against the war in Iraq. The Uniform Code of Military Justice limits what soldiers may say about political issues.

But as opposition to the Iraq war mounts, some service members are finding ways to air their opinions. Some are speaking anonymously while others sign a petition.

"You know this isn't really what we signed up to do. This isn't really what I believe America is about," an Army intelligence officer says, speaking from his base in Iraq.

Comments like this would land him in a military prison if he were identified.

Whoever wrote that line has never read the "letters to the editor" section of the Army Times.


Posted at 1632Z | Comments (1)

RE: Generalship (and Second Thoughts)

[Dadmanly]

Four must reads sometime this week:
Retired LTC Yingling's article in Armed Forces Journal
Hugh Hewitt interview with Max Boot on Yingling’s article, via Instapundit
Greyhawk's reflections on Yingling's piece
Point of view contrary to Yingling from Neptunus Lex.

Call it all some considerations of the second draft of history, all relating to how we have conducted our military efforts in Iraq, how we’ve adapted, and where we stand now.

The mainstream media (MSM) delight in stories like this. They move from darling to darling, from one convenient message to another, and find ways to highlight and stress those particular threads of military commentary and opinion that supports their own biases, or the partisan aims of those they seek to assist.

I don’t want to insult or call into question the integrity of LTC Yingling, or impute ulterior motives to the particular timing of his article. I think Yingling accurately captures a strain of thought within the officer corps, particular for younger officers a level or two below those who have achieved the political stature of elevated senior rank. I say political because for those not as familiar with the world of the military, it may not be apparent the degree to which Generals and aspiring Field Grade officers by necessity excel as political animals.

I will certainly grant that, in hindsight, it will always be possible to find oppositional voices in military senior command who take positions contrary to those which ultimately prevail, and after the fact can seem deep wisdom indeed. Hindsight, after all, can always be measured as 20/20. I would even go so far to admit that a certain degree of hubris, institutional prejudices, vanity and pride underlay much military decision-making immediately leading up to our invasion of Iraq, and decisions in the first 3 years of executing the various components of our plans.

All that said I still have several big objections to his argument.

Bad results don’t necessarily indicate bad plans, or even bad decisions. Poor results are more often a failure of adaptability, not necessarily foresight. You can generally foresee all manner of possibilities, but leadership is a matter of making decisions, of choosing courses of action (COA) among alternatives. After the fact, it will always be possible to point at outcomes, and say, well, clearly, you should have opted for COA #2, or #3, or so on, rather than the one chosen.

Yingling describes the failures of Generals making decisions during the Vietnam War as inadequately preparing their forces for counterinsurgency. That may or may not be a complete picture of all that went on, and certainly doesn’t accommodate evolving thinking about Vietnam, that we may have won militarily but lost politically by giving way on PR and pulling out on the verge of victory. Sure, the results were disastrous, but was the disaster the fault of military operations, or the political decision-making that pulled US forces out, and then cravenly abandoned our allies in South Vietnam?

We fought a very tough and prolonged fight against a Filipino insurgency at the turn of the 19th century, and won against them, and the military created doctrinal components that were informed by those experiences. I think it reasonable that the US military was justified thinking they would prevail in Vietnam. Certainly, tactics and strategy could have evolved more, but the great unanswered question is what would have happened if we had held on longer, maintained support of South Vietnam? Our North Vietnamese enemies candidly admit they were near complete defeat and surrender shortly after Tet.

Again, we might grant Yingling his premise that the military didn’t exhibit sufficient foresight as the war in Vietnam continued, or didn’t adapt, or ignored warning signs and alternative courses of action. I don’t think it supports his conclusion, in any case.

I thought at the time and I think now that arguments by Administration detractors and in-house military critics that 300,000 to 400,000 troops would be needed to prevail in Iraq was a recipe for guaranteed paralysis. Say we ponied up that kind of force. How long would that big a force be needed to accomplish a “pacification” of the country? How many more casualties would the US have sustained with two to three times as many targets for IEDs and other suicide attacks?

How on earth does anyone think the US could implement that in the politics of the time? We’d see even worse conflict and obstructionism, only louder, more, and sooner. No, those kinds of troops levels would ensure that we would, in fact, choose not to go to war. That was the overriding intent of these estimates, anyway. Prove me wrong, but I think that would be perfectly logical based on the cynical Powell Doctrine. (We fight ONLY when we are certain of complete victory, not on necessity, nor on principle.)

If there is one truism in modern warfare, it’s that we don’t always get time and opportunity to choose a fight that is brought on you unexpectedly. We can’t always support or sustain overwhelming force, and we can’t control every eventuality or eliminate terror as PR and media tactic. Careful “pragmatists” like Powell and Shinseki would, by their doctrines, ensure we only take on boutique wars against very minor adversaries. That was the intent of Shinseki and others on this side of the argument, an argument for inaction and status quo. And the fatal fallacy of these arguments, are they don’t in any way answer what we face in AQ and similar global terror affinity organizations.

The example Yingling cites of Valmy is grossly inapt for our situation in Iraq. Valmy led to Jena because the Prussians did not see Valmy as a warning for what the future might hold, or their own vulnerabilities. You can argue that Secretary Rumsfeld (and the President) didn’t take a sober enough look at the security situation in Iraq, or change strategy, or prompt adaptation in the military. But you surely can’t view the surge, the substantive and impressive changes in strategy and tactics, and the orchestration of the surge by GEN Petraeus as an inability to reassess, and adapt.

Lastly, I find it incomprehensible that a military leader of advanced rank, a Brigade Deputy Commander no less, could thoroughly inform himself of ground truth in Iraq, and then honestly or accurately describe us on the verge of defeat, in any sense. We have difficulties transferring authority to Iraqis, building up their security forces (more so the Iraqi police versus the Army), and no one is happy with security, but this is not a military defeat.

We and the Iraqi forces we support have been unable to fully secure important population centers, and there are significant populations of potential adversaries not pacified. Terrorists are not fully eliminated nor prevented from conducting harassing operations. But this can be said about many places in the world. If a steady stream of foreign ideological suicides, or vulnerable innocents (children, handicapped, subjects of blackmail) can be kept available, this could be kept up indefinitely, anywhere in the world. It just happens that Al Qaeda wants to continue to focus on Iraq, because they believe they can thereby turn Americans against the war, with the help of the Democrat opposition and western media.

Links to Hugh Hewitt, Greyhawk, and Neptunus Lex, and more commentary, over at Dadmanly.)


Posted at 0629Z | Comments (4)

Re:[96] Generalship and Congress

[Grim]

I wouldn't say anything against a gentleman from the 3rd Armored Cav. I do wonder about this idea, though: "To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility."

Congressional confirmation procedures are something we've seen a lot of over the last several years. Does anyone really believe that these procedures ever, ever, ever even once, "reward moral courage"?

Let's say you want to be on the Supreme Court. Or an ambassador. Whatever. Does it help or hurt your chances if you've ever expressed strong opinions about any controversial topic?

Reward moral courage? That's the best way I can think of to make sure that no one of moral courge is ever considered for the post.


Posted at 0448Z | Comments (1)

Re[95]: Generalship

[Chap]

Yeah, a civilian friend read the paper, and now I just had to post on it. Hawk's got the importance right--if you think this article is as Important as the papers say it is, you're being played for a sucker unless the papers get to drive the momentum enough for people to riff on the article.

Funnily enough I don't see anything about information war in the good LTCOL's article. Where's the IW/PA/PSYOPS love?

Update: One more thing. Seems as though GEN Abizaid fits LTCOL Yingling's model for the modern general...


Posted at 0251Z

Re:Quadruple Re: Generalship

[Soldier's Dad]

Just a quick question...

If one knows that it will be 3-5 years before handing off to the ISF is feasable...and the maximum sustainable rotation is 15 Brigades...does one immediately engage in a policy that will require 21-22 Brigades until the ISF is capable of assuming command...or does one engage in "economy of force" for three to four years?

Just asking


Posted at 0215Z

Quadruple Re: Generalship

[Greyhawk]

W. Thomas Smith Jr.

I think it is important to note that the officer criticizing American generalship is doing so in the Armed Forces Journal, which (according to the AP story) is published by Army Times Publishing Company, which publishes all the Military Times newspapers.
Yup:
Armed Forces Journal and its Web site, armedforcesjournal.com, are published by Army Times Publishing Company, a part of Gannett Company, Inc.
Although
Army Times Publishing Company is organized into three market sector groups to effectively cover the needs of the consumer and business-to-business communities served by its publications: 1. The Military Times Media Group, which publishes the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times newsweeklies;
2. the Defense News Media Group, which publishes Defense News, Armed Forces Journal , Training & Simulation Journal, and C4ISR Journal (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance); and
3. the Federal Times newsweekly.
So now you know.

Also at The Tank, Gregory S. McNeal found AP coverage of Yingling's article, which claims that

In February, the U.S. forces launched the Baghdad security operation, which calls for deploying about 28,000 additional American troops as well as thousands of Iraqi soldiers. Most will try to secure Baghdad.

Yingling welcomed the change, but suggested it is too little too late.

I can't find that in Yingling's article anywhere. I recognize from his conclusion that his point is that Congress must take control of America's Generals (and find it unworthy of comment) but I can't find any mention of his expectations for the current strategy.

But it certainly looks like Gannett is pushing this story hard.

The AP story also shoehorns in a reference to the Astroturf campaign "Appeal for Redress":

But public criticism from an active duty officer is rare and may be a sign of growing discontent among military leaders at a critical time in the troubled U.S. military mission here.

An anti-war group, Appeal for Redress, says about 2,000 active duty personnel and veterans have signed a petition calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

One of its founders, Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, has said 60 percent of the members have served in Iraq. There are about 1.4 million active-duty personnel in the U.S. military.

I guess it fits better than Abu Ghraib, but the AP story is an exceptional example of a disinformation campaign even without it.

Which seems to be a trend.

Update: The Military Times papers ran a fluffer piece on Appeal for Redress a while back, too, without explaining the background on the group.


Posted at 0155Z | Comments (4)

The MilBlogs Community Grows

[Greyhawk]

...even faster than we knew:

A vibrant milblogging community in the People's Republic of China, where all manners of speech are closely monitored and controlled, may seem unlikely. Chinese milbloggers, however, have closely followed major defense and security developments both within China as well as abroad, from last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah to China's anti-satellite missile test in January.
We must demand US Government money to keep ahead of the yellow peril!

Translations of Chinese MilBlogger names into English include Chinese Sword, Door of Green Dragon, Flying Flower Pursues Moon, Flying Fish, and Commanding Feather Eagle Wolf.

Wonder what they think of Harry Reid being a fan boy of one of their Generals?


Posted at 0124Z | Comments (4)

« April 27, 2007 | Main | April 29, 2007 »