I'm interested that in all the e-mails I've gotten, and responses posted on this blog about triple-dipping retired generals getting paid to "mentor" the active duty military while at the same time working in the defense industry, and also collecting their pensions, not a single person has contended that, yes, George Marshall would approve of this behavior. As a friend of mine says, this is a good gut-check: WWGMD?

Also, another friend points out that one of the dangers of this whole "mentoring" this is that if you are not careful, you wind up bringing in people who simply reinforce existing prejudices, instead of challenging them. For example, just how well mentored was Gen. Tommy R. Franks in his mishandling of Afghanistan in 2001-02 and then in his bungled invasion of Iraq in 2003? (And while we're on the subject of money, who remembers that Franks charged a group $100,000 to help them raise money for wounded vets-and that it later turned out that the group only delivered 25 percent of its funds to its supposed beneficiaries?)  WWGMD?

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This exchange from a Senate hearing yesterday about how and why the Army dropped the ball on the Fort Hood shooter is worth reading:

Sen. Lieberman: . . . . General Keane, do you -- and obviously this is speculation but the military is most sensitive of any organization I know to any taint or allegation or impression of being discriminatory which is appropriate. Do you think that political correctness may have played some role in the fact that these dots were not connected?

Gen. Keane: Yes, absolutely and also I think a factor here is Hasan's position as an officer and also his position as a psychiatrist contributed to that because of the special category I think someone who's operating as a clinician every day treating patients is in in the military. It's an individual activity versus a group activity which provides considerably more supervision in squads, platoons, companies and the like inside our units.

So there's no doubt in my mind that that was operating here. But in fairness to many of the people who are associating with him, based on what preliminary research I have done and I think what the committee is doing, I think we're going to find very clearly that we do not have specific guidelines on dealing with Jihadist extremism in terms of the obligations of the members of the military to identify a reported and what actions to take and what constitutes Jihadist extremists itself.

So that you take some of this burden away from people by having those guidelines and when you have those guidelines in place you are clearly saying to the institution that this is important to us, we are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior and we want to identify with immediately to try to curb the behavior through counseling and rehabilitation and if necessary separate that individual from the service if it cannot be curbed.

Sen. McCain: I have talked to military officers who have stated that they at least up until now have had a significant reluctance to pursue what may be these indications because of this political correctness environment. Have you heard the same?

Gen. Keane: Well I know it exists, no doubt about it, and what I'm trying to say is is that the way to deal with that -- it shouldn't have to be an act of moral courage on behalf of a soldier to have to report behavior that we should not be tolerating inside our military organizations. It should be an obligation. The way to make that an obligation is provide very specific guidelines through the chain of command as to what their duties are in regards to this issue. That takes this issue -- begins to take this issue off the table because the institution is speaking clearly in terms of what its expectations are and what it will tolerate and what it will not tolerate.

Sen. McCain: And perhaps err on the side of caution instead of erring on the side of correctness.

I think General Keane is pointing to a good way to help soldiers, and help the Army, akin to what Stu Herrington was talking about the other day in this blog.   

RoE warning: Look, I know the three people quoted above are not Democratic Party favorites. Even so, I don't want to see a bunch of ad hominem attacks on Keane, McCain and Lieberman. If you want to do that, take it outside to another blog. This is a sensitive, difficult subject. It is easy to rant about this. But that is not what we need. I don't want name calling, I want to think about solutions here, as Keane does. ‘Nuff said?

Will Palmer/Flickr

Pakistan's top female squash player hails from Waziristan. She has had to defy the Taliban to play.

Photo: Defense.Pk

I've been learning from this discussion of what constitutes a front-line soldier in our current wars.

Here's an observation in a different direction from my CNAS colleague Cmdr. Herb Carmen, a naval aviator who most recently commanded those high-morale video pioneers, the VAW-116 Sun Kings, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. 

Looking at your post about the smackdown video today fits my own reflection. The real heart of the matter isn't whether someone is unworthy because they are a JAG officer or a combat support soldier or a "black shoe" or a Hawkeye pilot. And it's okay for anyone to identify with their micro-community and culture.  After all, it's simply pride in one's service and experiences.

What I'm learning quickly, by working at CNAS and not being in a uniform, is that the guy with the beard or the intern may have just as an important perspective as the guy who just arrived from command. The most unassuming fellow passenger on the Metro might be a senior executive. The guy in cargo shorts I just shared a sea story with just might be a new Assistant Secretary at the Pentagon, or he might be the guy at the bike store who knows about the local trails.

It's not who says what, but what they say. And the problem with this video is that one guest attacks and the other counterattacks. At that point, the battle of ideas is over. So it's irrelevant that one guest is a POW and the other is a JAG officer. They've both lost me because they use their attacks on one another's service as an argument of ideas. I'm sorry, but I'd much rather have Andrew school me on Rupert Smith than have someone say I have nothing to add to the strategic dialogue in Afghanistan because I wear gold sleeves on my uniform.

(The "Andrew" here is Andrew Exum, better known as Abu Muqawama. Who you calling a mook?)

I agree with Herb's conclusion that in the TV debate, both sides failed in the war of ideas. But then, TV generally is not a medium for serious discussion. More importantly, I endorse his notion that it is substance, not appearances, that in the end are important. As General Al Gray used to say, "Don't look good -- be good."

mashleymorgan/Flickr

Iraq's vice president, a Sunni Arab, says the recent killing of 13 people associated with a local political leader in eastern Anbar province was carried out by Iraqi army troops commanded by Colonel Raheem Kareem Resan. This somewhat undercuts the "those crazy Anbaris and their wacky tribal disputes" line previously issued by the Baghdad government.

Also someone is bombing the houses of policemen in Fallujah.

It looks to me like relations between Iraqi security forces and the people of al Anbar are deteriorating. If this is the wave of the future, fasten your seatbelts for 2010.

AZHAR SHALLAL/AFP/Getty Images

"I do not want to go over all the successes of the last eight years." Yeah, let's not -- that would take soooo long.

Speaking of Afghanistan, I see where old Steve Coll responds to comments posted on this blog. Having the author of one of the best books ever on Afghanistan (and one who is also an expert on bin Laden) wade in here is a real tribute to the quality of the debate you guys are maintaining. Thank you. Kudos especially to "smci60652," whoever you are.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Last night I went to see David Kilcullen, the most quotable Australian since the Brothers Gibb, report on his most recent tour of Afghanistan. This is a great way to begin a speech:

One afternoon about six weeks ago I got ambushed in a valley in Dora Nur, in Nangarhar province...

Kilcullen, who is now a consultant to NATO and the U.S. government spent much of his time explaining how the war effort in Afghanistan is being crippled by the debilitating corruption of the Kabul government. (I'd bet this is similar to the straight talk Secretary Clinton is delivering today on her visit to Afghanistan.) He said a Western diplomat in Kabul told him that the government there reminds him of the Nationalist Chinese government in 1949, with an urban elite trying to scrape together as much wealth as they can before time runs out and they have to scoot.

Kilcullen described a "cycle of corruption" that is destroying Afghanistan:

Corruption

Leads to

Rapacious behavior of government officials

Leads to

Rage and alienation of the people

Leads to

Operating space for the Taliban

Leads to

Growing Taliban strength

Leads to

Taliban encouragement of poppy cultivation

Leads to

Poppies producing funds that corrupt government officials

Leads to

More corruption

And so on

"Poppy is the Taliban CERP," he said, a chilling phrase to anyone who knows the major role that that U.S. military acronym refers to money that American commanders used to win friends and influence people. The farmers who grow the dope only make about $800 million total annually, he said, with the vast majority of revenue, more than $3 billion, being split between drug lords, the Taliban, and government officials.

His bottom line is that there are two real options in Afghanistan: Either tell the Kabul government we are pulling out, or put in enough troops to actually break the cycle of corruption, which he said would be a minimum of about 40,000. "We either put in enough to control, or we get out." The worst thing we could do, he added, is put in enough troops to get more people killed but not enough to do anything to break change the behavior of corrupt officials. Also, he said, it is more about what you do than the actual number of troops -- "If you do it wrong, you could put it a million troops and it wouldn't make any difference."

Without quite saying so, he also indicated that time is a factor right now. "We're seeing a lot of money leaving the country. We're seeing tribes associated with the Northern Alliance re-arming. ... A lot of people are getting nervous." He talked about how attuned local Afghan leaders in remote areas are to American politics, being familiar with the various stances of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Carl Levin. "Right now we're sending kind of a message of indecision."

One surprise to me was that he isn't particularly worried about the possibility of al Qaeda moving back into Afghanistan. "I hope so," he said, explaining that it would be a strategic gain for us to see the terrorist group leave Pakistan and move into parts of Afghanistan that essentially are "the moon with gravity."   

John Moore/Getty Images      

USA Today tells the unseemly tale of retired American generals who go to work for the defense industry, but also work as paid "mentors" to the military, which gets them helpful inside information -- and all the while collecting generous pensions. My view: If you are going to do this mentoring, do it for free, as an act of patriotism and gratitude. Otherwise it looks like a racket of insiders spreading the wealth around other insiders.

There will be a bunch of outraged responses about 30 years of dedicated service and how dare people question their ethics. My test on this is easy: Would George C. Marshall have accepted such payments? I doubt it. (Remember, he declined to write a memoir that would have made him wealthy because he thought it would have been improper to get into the failings of some of his comrades.)    

By the way, if the New York Times can win a Pulitzer for its story about generals going on TV too much, this one should win two.

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