In My Tent Leadership?
This last week, where unflattering remarks by the staff of Gen. Stanley McChrystal found their way into Rolling Stone magazine, and led to his subsequent resignation from being the commander of forces in Afghanistan, I have reflected upon my military service in Europe during Vietnam. Even though I was a reluctant volunteer, compared with the reluctant draftee, I have always looked at that time as a tremendous growing experience, that in many ways I see as a Divinely controlled adventure, giving me priceless insight into strategic world events that could have not been gained in such a brief encounter anywhere other than that time and place.
I read the Rolling Stone article, which is quite long and detailed for what passes for twenty-first century journalism. It sounded to me to be a relatively good assessment of a highly motivated general officer with a very tight staff. All good things, when you have a mission to bring a war action in Afghanistan to a reasonable conclusion as rapidly as possible.
My dad was not a military person, he was 4-F when asked to serve in WWII, he had a strong heart murmur, but he was a very successful school administrator. I can say he only had one absolute rule when it came to people management. That rule was, “Always support your staff, no matter whether they are right or wrong. Always support your staff and let the chips fall where they may.” It seems that Gen. Stanley McChrystal lives by the same absolute.
When I was in ROTC in college, we had the opportunity to be taught the science behind the art of military leadership. Many of the questions we were tested upon, outlined a role, mission, or objective to be obtained, and a number of different means to obtain the required results. Maybe to keep things light, somewhere in the options was the always wrong response generally following the line “give and order and say, if you need me I will be in my tent.” In the Rolling Stone article you find out quite rapidly that Gen. McChrystal was and is not a, “I will be in my tent kind of leader.”
When it was time to select what specialty I wanted to serve in on active duty, I needed to choose what branch of the Army would be my first choice out of three, I chose Military Intelligence or MI, because none of the cadre officers knew anything about it, other than to say no one would get in. Later I was called in to the ROTC office and told that I needed to make a choice within the MI branch, whether I wanted to serve in the MI side or the ASA side, I asked, “What is the ASA?” I was told that it stood for the Army Security Agency and no one knew what they did, only that it was harder to get into than just Military Intelligence.
The Army Security Agency, the military version of the NSA, as it existed that that time was the hi-tech arm of the Military Intelligence Branch. The ASA required a security clearance at the highest level of Top Secret. Even during Vietnam to get in, our enlisted personnel required a high school diploma and a four year enlistment. Most had a couple of years of college, and our First Sergeant had a Masters Degree.
I was the first of what I would call the Vietnam European class to arrive in Germany, but within a few months I was joined by maybe twenty to thirty other Butter Bars (2nd Lieutenants) and we were assigned pretty much equally between the tactical 502nd ASA Group and Field Station Augsburg, then under construction. To go to Germany all officers had to signup as Voluntary Indefinite, meaning we were on active duty until the Army said we were eligible to get out. As I said earlier my military training came through ROTC, all my compatriots were OCS (Officer Candidate School) graduates.
I was assigned to the tactical group, who’s commanding officer was a full colonel, began his career, as his story went, riding in a box car through Europe during WWII. He was definitely and old school professional officer, that was well liked, but profoundly pushed the duties of being an officer and a gentleman. He pulled some strings and forced us all to read the weekly intelligence briefings from Vietnam, because he said we had a need to know, as well as from the summaries from the European theater. Put in civilian speak the colonel said, “Vietnam was a lousy little war, but it was the only one we had!”
Because of the nature of the business, the old Bird focused on discipline and told us to always make sure that we carried our military ID, because the Soviets knew each of us by name and should hostilities break out, that ID should keep us from being treated as real spies, where the rules of the Geneva Convention did not apply.
About halfway through my tour the old guy retired and was replaced with a light (lieutenant) colonel, with emphasis on the light. He was from an ivy league school, a political schmoozer, and grossly ineffective, except in his own eyes. When you added his command style to another ivy league career officer, when I first read about John Kerry’s Swift Boat hijinks, the French looking, now senior senator from Massachusetts forever lost any of my support.
As Vietnam began to wind down, those officers who were contemplating making the military a career, began to volunteer to go to Vietnam. Out of our group of reluctant volunteers, that career segment was quite small, the major reasons given for staying in, was the job security and the pay. The rest of us were encouraged to make our decisions known. Being the first in and the first to choose to leave, attitudes of the older career officers changed greatly. So much that some of us short timers began to contemplate a book, “Vietnam the European Front,” which was to be an exposé similar to “Catch 22” and “Mash” as we protected the Free World from the coming attack of Warsaw Pact nations.
This was also the time when serious discussions began at all levels about the “All Volunteer Military.” With few exceptions, I was not alone in my feeling that many of the so-call military professional officers, really were not professionals at all. I did make the acquaintance with a number of Military Academy grads, who were all very bright, but all were indoctrinated into the military in the box worldview and seemed to have had any independent, out of the box thought trained out of them. That lack of diverse thought could apply to our military solutions in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
We all had the opportunity to go to the base theater and watch Patton. With George G. Scott playing the role of Patton, in the scene where the general says, “Rommel you SOB, I read your book.” it seemed weird that most of the career officers didn’t have a professional military library. For example in a discussion with an armored company commander that lived in my stairwell, his reading materials were more along looking at the pictures in Playboy, and his tactical military knowledge would compare favorably to today’s eight year old playing a strategic war video game.
As “Vietnam the European Front” became sadly more amusing, and as my time to head back stateside came closer, part of my misgiving about the future of the American armed forces were altered with a visit of the commanding general of ASA, Mag. Gen. Charles Denholm. The troops called him “Long Hair Charlie” because his hair hung over his collar, something that would never be allowed for us. For one afternoon he took over the secure office of the European commanding general, for it was the only secure room large enough to hold all the junior officers, captain and below, no field grade officers allowed (major and above), and proceeded to explain to each of us why we were in Europe, at a strategic level and down to almost to calling us by name and the strategic role we were each occupying.
Putting all of this in the current context, from what we are being told, Gen. Petraeus seems to be of the Charlie Denholm caliber, only more willing to take on bigger and broader challenges. Gen. McChrystal seems to be quite competent also, but after having spent the last five years running black ops in Iraq, may have lacked some degree of judgement when it came to relating to a hostile world within your own country. Both officers are the true antithesis of “I’ll be in my tent leaders.”
General Petraeus got his PHD at Princeton studying the failures of Vietnam, so we dare not repeat them, and is also responsible for much of the 2009 Counterinsurgency Guide. Afghanistan and Vietnam are quite similar in many ways and in many ways quite unique. The major similarity is that in Afghanistan perhaps as much as seventy percent of the insurgency we are trying to counter has its roots in Pakistan. In Vietnam the roots of the insurgency came from the North, Laos, and Cambodia.
Vietnam was a French colony not all that long before we got involved and our presence was dictated by the Domino Theory that we must stop the communist there, or the whole region would go communist. Afghanistan has been a poor tribal region for at least half a millennium. Other than the cash crop of opium poppies and a potential training base for Islamic terrorists, it has no real importance to the modern world. Afghanistan has never been conquered or even pacified by anyone except for Genghis Khan, the Russians being the previous losing example.
None of our current military leadership has any actual tie to the Vietnam era, except what they have read in books and heard in war stories. All that information limited to, or endorsing by our current professional military worldview. However there are a number of questions that need to be asked regarding Afghanistan concerning that Barack Obama has made it the major plank of the war against Al-Qaeda. Five questions come to mind but there are many more.
1. Does Afghanistan fit within the model of what is required to perform a successful counterinsurgency operation and does this mission fit with the need for a War on Terror, or whatever politically correct title it may now hold?
2. In the broader sense, can Afghanistan ever become a nation in the twenty-first century description of a nation, and is it the United States and the NATO function to attempt this transformation?
3. Since the formal Counterinsurgency Guide, or COIN is only about a year and a half old, does our military and the militaries of our Afghanistan partners have the training, time, and other resources required to perform this complex nation building operation?
4. In the broader picture, would Iraq and this escalation within Afghanistan have been possible without the “All Volunteer Military” something unheard of in the United States for the first two-hundred years of this republic?
5. The history of the demise of historical world powers generally begins when the nations cease to fight their own wars, and either constructs a professional military or hires mercenaries. To adapt the most famous words of Gen. Patton, “Has the American public become a nation of cowards?”
Answers to the above questions are above my pay grade, however we sometimes construct fictitious dialogs to provide a humorous contrast to this week’s in my tent title.
Knock knock: Mr. President General McChrystal is here to see you.
President: Thanks, hold my calls. General McChrystal it is a pleasure to meet you, your record speaks highly of your qualifications. Let’s go over and sit in the chairs and relax and we can discuss what you see as options for Afghanistan.
General: Thank you, Mr. President the pleasure is mine, after all I voted for you.
President: I always like to meet one of my supporters. As you are probably aware, I have made success in Afghanistan one of the pillars of my administration. Why don’t you explain to me what you see we need to do. I will ask some dumb questions, and we will see if we can put together a strategy that will work for you and for me, and more importantly the American people.
The two parties discuss the Afghanistan options for about an hour and a half.
President: Sounds good to me General McChrystal, you have my full support. Just tell me what you need and we will see if we can get the bureaucracy up and operating ASAP. After all the American people are tired of the war in Iraq and will have little patience with things dragging on in Afghanistan any longer than absolutely necessary.
General: I agree wholeheartedly Mr. President, I will be in touch soon.
President: If you have any questions or further thoughts, just give me a call and I will see to it that my secretary puts you through to me right away.
General: Thank you, Mr. President it has been a pleasure.
President: Likewise General McChrystal, my door will be always open for you.
This of course is just a fictitious little dialog which might have kept one highly qualified general in charge of Afghanistan because he and his staff would have had no reason to think that the Commander in Chief was intimidated so much by the demands of his office, that he would do nothing but give orders and then retire to his tent for security.
I read the Rolling Stone article, which is quite long and detailed for what passes for twenty-first century journalism. It sounded to me to be a relatively good assessment of a highly motivated general officer with a very tight staff. All good things, when you have a mission to bring a war action in Afghanistan to a reasonable conclusion as rapidly as possible.
My dad was not a military person, he was 4-F when asked to serve in WWII, he had a strong heart murmur, but he was a very successful school administrator. I can say he only had one absolute rule when it came to people management. That rule was, “Always support your staff, no matter whether they are right or wrong. Always support your staff and let the chips fall where they may.” It seems that Gen. Stanley McChrystal lives by the same absolute.
When I was in ROTC in college, we had the opportunity to be taught the science behind the art of military leadership. Many of the questions we were tested upon, outlined a role, mission, or objective to be obtained, and a number of different means to obtain the required results. Maybe to keep things light, somewhere in the options was the always wrong response generally following the line “give and order and say, if you need me I will be in my tent.” In the Rolling Stone article you find out quite rapidly that Gen. McChrystal was and is not a, “I will be in my tent kind of leader.”
When it was time to select what specialty I wanted to serve in on active duty, I needed to choose what branch of the Army would be my first choice out of three, I chose Military Intelligence or MI, because none of the cadre officers knew anything about it, other than to say no one would get in. Later I was called in to the ROTC office and told that I needed to make a choice within the MI branch, whether I wanted to serve in the MI side or the ASA side, I asked, “What is the ASA?” I was told that it stood for the Army Security Agency and no one knew what they did, only that it was harder to get into than just Military Intelligence.
The Army Security Agency, the military version of the NSA, as it existed that that time was the hi-tech arm of the Military Intelligence Branch. The ASA required a security clearance at the highest level of Top Secret. Even during Vietnam to get in, our enlisted personnel required a high school diploma and a four year enlistment. Most had a couple of years of college, and our First Sergeant had a Masters Degree.
I was the first of what I would call the Vietnam European class to arrive in Germany, but within a few months I was joined by maybe twenty to thirty other Butter Bars (2nd Lieutenants) and we were assigned pretty much equally between the tactical 502nd ASA Group and Field Station Augsburg, then under construction. To go to Germany all officers had to signup as Voluntary Indefinite, meaning we were on active duty until the Army said we were eligible to get out. As I said earlier my military training came through ROTC, all my compatriots were OCS (Officer Candidate School) graduates.
I was assigned to the tactical group, who’s commanding officer was a full colonel, began his career, as his story went, riding in a box car through Europe during WWII. He was definitely and old school professional officer, that was well liked, but profoundly pushed the duties of being an officer and a gentleman. He pulled some strings and forced us all to read the weekly intelligence briefings from Vietnam, because he said we had a need to know, as well as from the summaries from the European theater. Put in civilian speak the colonel said, “Vietnam was a lousy little war, but it was the only one we had!”
Because of the nature of the business, the old Bird focused on discipline and told us to always make sure that we carried our military ID, because the Soviets knew each of us by name and should hostilities break out, that ID should keep us from being treated as real spies, where the rules of the Geneva Convention did not apply.
About halfway through my tour the old guy retired and was replaced with a light (lieutenant) colonel, with emphasis on the light. He was from an ivy league school, a political schmoozer, and grossly ineffective, except in his own eyes. When you added his command style to another ivy league career officer, when I first read about John Kerry’s Swift Boat hijinks, the French looking, now senior senator from Massachusetts forever lost any of my support.
As Vietnam began to wind down, those officers who were contemplating making the military a career, began to volunteer to go to Vietnam. Out of our group of reluctant volunteers, that career segment was quite small, the major reasons given for staying in, was the job security and the pay. The rest of us were encouraged to make our decisions known. Being the first in and the first to choose to leave, attitudes of the older career officers changed greatly. So much that some of us short timers began to contemplate a book, “Vietnam the European Front,” which was to be an exposé similar to “Catch 22” and “Mash” as we protected the Free World from the coming attack of Warsaw Pact nations.
This was also the time when serious discussions began at all levels about the “All Volunteer Military.” With few exceptions, I was not alone in my feeling that many of the so-call military professional officers, really were not professionals at all. I did make the acquaintance with a number of Military Academy grads, who were all very bright, but all were indoctrinated into the military in the box worldview and seemed to have had any independent, out of the box thought trained out of them. That lack of diverse thought could apply to our military solutions in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
We all had the opportunity to go to the base theater and watch Patton. With George G. Scott playing the role of Patton, in the scene where the general says, “Rommel you SOB, I read your book.” it seemed weird that most of the career officers didn’t have a professional military library. For example in a discussion with an armored company commander that lived in my stairwell, his reading materials were more along looking at the pictures in Playboy, and his tactical military knowledge would compare favorably to today’s eight year old playing a strategic war video game.
As “Vietnam the European Front” became sadly more amusing, and as my time to head back stateside came closer, part of my misgiving about the future of the American armed forces were altered with a visit of the commanding general of ASA, Mag. Gen. Charles Denholm. The troops called him “Long Hair Charlie” because his hair hung over his collar, something that would never be allowed for us. For one afternoon he took over the secure office of the European commanding general, for it was the only secure room large enough to hold all the junior officers, captain and below, no field grade officers allowed (major and above), and proceeded to explain to each of us why we were in Europe, at a strategic level and down to almost to calling us by name and the strategic role we were each occupying.
Putting all of this in the current context, from what we are being told, Gen. Petraeus seems to be of the Charlie Denholm caliber, only more willing to take on bigger and broader challenges. Gen. McChrystal seems to be quite competent also, but after having spent the last five years running black ops in Iraq, may have lacked some degree of judgement when it came to relating to a hostile world within your own country. Both officers are the true antithesis of “I’ll be in my tent leaders.”
General Petraeus got his PHD at Princeton studying the failures of Vietnam, so we dare not repeat them, and is also responsible for much of the 2009 Counterinsurgency Guide. Afghanistan and Vietnam are quite similar in many ways and in many ways quite unique. The major similarity is that in Afghanistan perhaps as much as seventy percent of the insurgency we are trying to counter has its roots in Pakistan. In Vietnam the roots of the insurgency came from the North, Laos, and Cambodia.
Vietnam was a French colony not all that long before we got involved and our presence was dictated by the Domino Theory that we must stop the communist there, or the whole region would go communist. Afghanistan has been a poor tribal region for at least half a millennium. Other than the cash crop of opium poppies and a potential training base for Islamic terrorists, it has no real importance to the modern world. Afghanistan has never been conquered or even pacified by anyone except for Genghis Khan, the Russians being the previous losing example.
None of our current military leadership has any actual tie to the Vietnam era, except what they have read in books and heard in war stories. All that information limited to, or endorsing by our current professional military worldview. However there are a number of questions that need to be asked regarding Afghanistan concerning that Barack Obama has made it the major plank of the war against Al-Qaeda. Five questions come to mind but there are many more.
1. Does Afghanistan fit within the model of what is required to perform a successful counterinsurgency operation and does this mission fit with the need for a War on Terror, or whatever politically correct title it may now hold?
2. In the broader sense, can Afghanistan ever become a nation in the twenty-first century description of a nation, and is it the United States and the NATO function to attempt this transformation?
3. Since the formal Counterinsurgency Guide, or COIN is only about a year and a half old, does our military and the militaries of our Afghanistan partners have the training, time, and other resources required to perform this complex nation building operation?
4. In the broader picture, would Iraq and this escalation within Afghanistan have been possible without the “All Volunteer Military” something unheard of in the United States for the first two-hundred years of this republic?
5. The history of the demise of historical world powers generally begins when the nations cease to fight their own wars, and either constructs a professional military or hires mercenaries. To adapt the most famous words of Gen. Patton, “Has the American public become a nation of cowards?”
Answers to the above questions are above my pay grade, however we sometimes construct fictitious dialogs to provide a humorous contrast to this week’s in my tent title.
Knock knock: Mr. President General McChrystal is here to see you.
President: Thanks, hold my calls. General McChrystal it is a pleasure to meet you, your record speaks highly of your qualifications. Let’s go over and sit in the chairs and relax and we can discuss what you see as options for Afghanistan.
General: Thank you, Mr. President the pleasure is mine, after all I voted for you.
President: I always like to meet one of my supporters. As you are probably aware, I have made success in Afghanistan one of the pillars of my administration. Why don’t you explain to me what you see we need to do. I will ask some dumb questions, and we will see if we can put together a strategy that will work for you and for me, and more importantly the American people.
The two parties discuss the Afghanistan options for about an hour and a half.
President: Sounds good to me General McChrystal, you have my full support. Just tell me what you need and we will see if we can get the bureaucracy up and operating ASAP. After all the American people are tired of the war in Iraq and will have little patience with things dragging on in Afghanistan any longer than absolutely necessary.
General: I agree wholeheartedly Mr. President, I will be in touch soon.
President: If you have any questions or further thoughts, just give me a call and I will see to it that my secretary puts you through to me right away.
General: Thank you, Mr. President it has been a pleasure.
President: Likewise General McChrystal, my door will be always open for you.
This of course is just a fictitious little dialog which might have kept one highly qualified general in charge of Afghanistan because he and his staff would have had no reason to think that the Commander in Chief was intimidated so much by the demands of his office, that he would do nothing but give orders and then retire to his tent for security.