That's the advice of a friend of mine who is a chaplain for a law enforcement organization. She was responding to a note I had forwarded about the recent spate of  suicides and spousal abuse incidents at Fort Bragg.

I think she is right. I've been wondering about how to implement her advice. My initial thoughts:

--Understand it as best you can

--Understand the history behind it

--Tell the truth as best you can

--Turn the other cheek when flamed by people carrying the burden of traumatic experiences. Try to understand where they are coming from, and especially that counter-attacking is not the answer because they already feel vulnerable and so are attacking pre-emptively. Remember Jonathan Shay's admonition: No pissing matches. 

By Mike Few

Best Defense library of reading lists

As we embark on the second decade of the 21^st century, we face the possibility of spending another decade embattled in small wars. Prior to attempting to fix our military organization, reconfigure foreign policy and military strategy, and solving others' wicked problems; we should begin by gaining a better understanding of revolution.

In the philosophical sense, most conflict today is competition from the haves and the have-nots, the crisis of the nation-state, and the dilemma of political power given scarce resources. In order to seek solutions, we must first seek to understand both ourselves and others. We have to learn how to see the world as it is and not how we wished it to be.

As we are better able to see the problems before us, then we may find better understanding and alternative solutions. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is called learning to walk in another man's shoes.

Below is a reading list that can help us along the journey to understanding. This list reflects my own journey towards understanding after fighting in the wars of the last decade. Specifically, it reflects my own frustration that we were not able to force the desired outcome in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace by Rye Barcott

Father of Money: Buying Peace in Baghdad by Jason Whiteley

The Human Face of War by Jim Starr. Military needs smaller staffs, innovation, and focus on empowering people. Book review here.

American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security by Richard K. Betts. Post-Cold War foreign policy has misused military power trying to turn a spoon into a knife.

Protestant Ethic by Max Weber. Father of Sociology describes why Americans and the Western World are do-ers and why we feel that we must fix other societies.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey. Che's early years when he was traveling and feeling empathy for the bottom 99 percent. Of course, after he got power, he was corrupted. Same issue we're seeing today with the Shiia in Iraq. They want revenge and payback instead of focusing on healing, forgiveness, and moving the state forward.

Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution by Matilde Zimmermann. Biography of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential figure of the post-1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca, killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes, ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN.

Blood Done Signed My Name by Tim Tyson. Civil Right Movement goes violent in Oxford, NC after black paratrooper is killed by a group of white men, and the system acquits.

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinski. How the movement in Chicago forced the power structure to provide essential services to the ghettos. Why should the suburbs have their trash collected and good schools but the inner city does not?

Preface to Maynard Smith's Evolution and the Theory of Games. Nobel Laureate describes how difficult it is to model human beings competing over limited resources.

Wicked Problems And Network Approaches To Resolution by Nancy Roberts. My mentor describes her frustration in trying to negotiate peace and modernization with the Taliban in 1997 at the conclusion of the last Civil War.

And of course, Fight Club -- understanding the anarchists who reject the state.

Michael Few is a retired Army officer and former editor of Small Wars Journal.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

In the still-dark of a cold and foggy-wet December morning with temperatures hovering just above freezing, more than 400 servicemen and women gathered at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to participate in a 5K-run. They didn't do it for PT or to raise funds for a cause or even to boost morale (though I'm sure it provided amply on that front). They were instead offering a show of solidarity and appreciation for the Military Working Dogs who have made a deep and lasting impression there.

I spoke with the run's organizers, Sgt. Alyssa Doughty, Capt. Katie Barry, and Spc. William Vidal who are part of the 64th Medical Detachment (Veterinary Services), early one morning last week. Our connection was a poor one but even as the phone line to Bagram crackled and echoed, one thing came through clear enough -- the force of feeling that fueled this event.

"I've grown to love these dogs more than I ever thought I would," Sgt. Doughty said. "Being in Afghanistan of course is hard. You're away from your family in an area that can be dangerous and so distant from home. But it makes it so much more worth it that I came here and got to work with [these dogs] and truly see what they actually do. It makes me appreciate them even more and want to fight for them to be considered actual soldiers."

A big part of the team's job is regularly working with the canines and their handlers, from day-to-day medical necessities like keeping the dogs well hydrated and ensuring their paws are protected from the rocky terrain. But they also deal with the worst casualties of down-range dangers like gunfights and explosions.

"Here at Bagram, we get a lot of combat related injuries in the field," Barry said. "We work with a lot of dogs that are in a lot of pain, we get a lot of the dogs that have passed away."

Read on

By Lieutenant General John H. Cushman, US Army, Retired

Best Defense department of Vietnam War studies

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

      John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller

This is a sequel to my Reflections on Vietnam 1963-64: Trying to talk to Gen. Westmoreland about COIN, posted January 6, 2011. It is taken from an oral history now in progress.

Returning home from Vietnam in April 1964 I believed that I understood that situation. I had brought back copies of the flip charts that my deputy senior advisor Bob Montague had built to brief visitors to the 21st ARVN Infantry Division headquarters at Bac Lieu and to our Advisory Team 51. They described in detail the oil spot pacification scheme that the division with our help had developed and employed.

While waiting to attend the National War College, I used those charts to brief people at OSD and the CIA. I went up to West Point and briefed the cadets. I briefed at Forts Benning and Bragg.

I briefed LTG Harold K. Johnson, the Army DCSOPS. For about an hour I told him our story. At the end he said, "You know what we have to do to solve this problem in Vietnam? We have to build a command post down in the basement of the Pentagon where we can plot every platoon and every company and plot out the Vietnam situation in detail." I said, "General, even at the 21st Division we didn't keep that kind of detail. I don't see how you can keep that kind of detail in the Pentagon." He said, "That's what McNamara requires."

This was May 1964. If General Johnson had been perceptive he would have said to me. "You have just described the strategy for success in Vietnam's countryside." He would have bought the concept right then. He would have had me briefing everywhere. He did not. Eighteen months later he sponsored a massive study called PROVN which said essentially the same thing that I had been saying.^[1]

He missed a huge opportunity. We had the essentials of PROVN in April 1964.

When I got to the National War College that August with ideas on Vietnam, the Vietnamese government was in upheaval. There had been a series of coups. Things were deteriorating in the countryside. Battalions of the ARVN were being ambushed and beat up by main force Viet Cong. It got so bad there was talk of committing U.S. combat forces. It was election season. Barry Goldwater was President Johnson's opponent. That fall LBJ would not mention the possibility of sending combat forces into Vietnam.

As a student my message was, "The countryside is no place for American troops. They will only tear it up. They won't be able to tell friend from foe." I believed that pacification was the answer and that with U.S. advice and assistance Vietnamese troops could deal with the Viet Cong.

In my view there were two problems in Vietnam; one, the instability in the countryside, and two, the reinforcements being received by the Viet Cong from outside South Vietnam. I believed that I had found the solution to pacifying the countryside. I began to study the problem of infiltration.

Some supplies were coming through Cambodia. A small amount came in over the beaches. But most reinforcements and materiel were coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and entering through the South Vietnam's northern provinces. I thought that the best use of American resources would be to block the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Each student was required to write an individual research paper. I began to consider historical examples of counterinsurgency. An office at the Pentagon was keeping a library of them. I compiled a list of recent cases in which established governments had coped successfully with an insurgency (Burma, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Malaya, the Philippines and Tibet) and a list of those in which the insurgents were successful (China, Cuba, Indochina, Indonesia, Israel, and Laos, and a draw, Algeria). There were seven of each type.

For each case I wrote a one-page paper describing the government's internal measures compared to the effort being made by the opposition, grading it on a scale of one to 10. For each case, on the same one to 10 scale, I determined the degree to which the insurgents did not receive outside support.

When I plotted all fourteen insurgencies on graph paper the successful counter-insurgencies were grouped in the upper right, with a "7" or more in both dimensions. I plotted that as a "zone of success." I then gave my assessment of the situation in South Vietnam: it was down in the lower left at about a "3". I said, "You're not going to have a successful counter-insurgency until you solve both problems. The zone of success is up here and the situation in Vietnam is down here."

I derived this general principle that I put in my paper:

In order for a counterinsurgency to succeed, there must be both an internal effort substantially superior to that of the insurgents, and an effective restriction of (or an absence of} external support to the insurgents. Neither action alone is sufficient to success. Both are necessary.

That simple operations analysis with its profound truth was an appendix to my individual research paper, External Support of the Viet Cong: An Analysis and a Proposal. Originally classified TOP SECRET, it has been downgraded to unclassified and can be found in the special collections of the library of the National Defense University.

I had become convinced that a satisfactory conclusion in Vietnam was not possible if the Ho Chi Minh trail were allowed to exist. I thought that there had to be some way to use the great military capability of the United States to solve this problem. I thought air mobility could supply part of the answer. I had been following the evolution of air mobility in the Army for years and especially since the approval of the recommendations of the Howze Board in 1963 as I left for Vietnam.

While at the National War College I kept abreast of the formation of the 11th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning. Employment of that division was a key element of my paper.  My plan was to use the 173 Airborne Brigade (Okinawa), the 25th Infantry Division (Hawaii) and the 11th Air Assault Division to seize blocking positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

I thought that the force to seize and establish the positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail must be a coalition force, including Vietnamese and other nations' troops. As a cover plan, a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization exercise in Thailand would provide a reason for moving forces into the area. The assembled force would then launch the trail cutting operation.

Coalition partners would justify their action by citing North Vietnam's operations in Laos since 1961 to seize the trail's territory as flagrant violations of the 1954 Geneva Accords^[2]. I offered a U.S. political-military concept aimed at convincing China that it should not intervene in this defensive blocking action.

I thought that with engineer effort positions could be built and fields of fire cleared to establish positions that could be held and from which operations could be conducted to deny enemy use of routes. I made the best terrain analysis that I could based on the available maps. I determined that my planned multinational, multidivision joint force could do the job.

I also described how U.S. forces available at end-1964 were substantially greater than those available at end-1960 during the Laos crisis. In 1965 we had, for example: 1,119 UH-1 and 71 CH-47 helicopters on hand compared to only a handful in 1961. We had 139 Army CV-2B Caribou aircraft and 682 Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft, compared to zero Caribou and 264 C-130s in 1961's inventory. Secretary McNamara had in four years more than doubled the Air Force and Navy's capabilities in tactical air. So I thought that adequate force was available.

After the 1964 election someone at OSD called me wanting to know more about my idea of cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail and using the 11th Air Assault Division. He said, "Tell me more about this division." I sensed that they were thinking of deploying the division and using it in the countryside. I said, "Don't use this outfit that way. It's not the proper mission. This unit should be assigned to seize and secure terrain interdicting the infiltration routes."

My notion was overtaken by events. In April 1965 a battalion of  U.S. marines landed at Da Nang. In June LBJ gave General William Westmoreland the authority to commit American troops to ground combat operations in Vietnam. That summer the 11th Air Assault Division, renamed the 1st Air Cavalry Division, was committed into Vietnam's countryside, as was the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Search and destroy began. Half a million U.S. troops followed.

Years later, in the 1980s and 1990s, I presented this trail-blocking idea at various symposia as having had merit as a possible solution. I said that it should have been undertaken as a feasibility study. Many commented that it would never have worked, for various reasons. I'm not sure, but someone should have made a proper feasibility study. If done right, there would have been no Ho Chi Minh highway and we could have had a success in South Vietnam.

In 1984 General Bruce Palmer, who was the Vice Chief of Staff under General Westmoreland, came out with a book The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam in which he said we should have done something like this early in the war. I took some comfort from the fact that he had the same notion.

General Cushman commanded the 101^st Airborne Division, the Army Combined Arms Center, and the ROK/U.S. field army defending Korea's Western Sector. He served three tours in Vietnam.

^[1]Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam (PROVN) March, 1966:

"PROVN examines the situation in South Vietnam within the context of history and in broad perspective. Specific problems of pacification and long-term development are identified, and specific actions are proposed to alleviate them...

"PROVN submits that the United States and the Republic of Vietnam must accept the principle that success will be the sum of innumerable, small and integrated localized efforts and not the outcome of any short-duration, single master stroke."

^[2] Text: "Final declaration, dated July 21, 1954, of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indochina, in which the representatives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the State of Viet-Nam, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America took part...

"In their relations with Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam, each member of the Geneva Conference undertakes to respect the sovereignty, the independence, the unity, and the territorial integrity of the above-mentioned states, and to refrain from any interference in their internal affairs."

The counseling director for a veterans' organization in Houston specializing in PTSD turns out not to have been a much-deployed Special Operator as he claimed. Apparently he never saw one day of combat.  

The odd thing is that these guys all tend to have had actually been in the military, but as a cook or, in this case, an MP.

I don't get it. Checking out someone's record is fairly easy, especially when claiming to have been a SEAL or Special Operator. My favorite is the guys who tell you they were in units so secret they can't reveal their name…

No, it is not heading for civil war, figures Joel Wing. At the same time, he says, "Iraq is likely to continue to be a deadlier place than Afghanistan into the foreseeable future, despite the decline of the insurgency there."

I don't always agree with Mike Few, especially when he baselessly attacks friends of mine. On the other hand, he had a nice Nirvana-ish piece about what he misses about Iraq that made me pause to wonder about what I miss about Iraq.

I found it easier to think of things I don't miss: the adrenaline jolts, the horrible climate (especially the mudstorms, when duststorms got overtaken by rainclouds), the fear of getting kidnapped, having loaded weapons pointed at me at checkpoints by nervous young men, or the body pieces of a suicide bomber that once landed in the backyard I would look at every morning.

So my list is shorter. In fact, it is only two things: The best tomatoes I've ever eaten, and the stars at night in the desert while I lay in my sleeping bag on a rooftop outside Najaf. I specifically remember we were driving from Baghdad to Tikrit in the summer of 2003. Around noon we stopped to buy fresh tomatoes and some baked bread, still warm. We sliced them up, salted them, and ate them by the side of the highway.

Taken with water, they made one of the best lunches I’ve ever had. I would have enjoyed the meal less had I known how dangerous Tikrit was about to become.

What do you miss, if anything?

The Egyptian military appears to be on a collision course with the U.S. government. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dempsey is heading to Cairo to talk to the generals.

What makes it especially interesting is that Egypt appears to be calculating that President Obama and Congress won't cut off the $1.5 billion (that's a B) in aid that the U.S. provides annually. Given the mood of Congress, and Obama's visceral disdain for Third World tinpot generals, I think that is a bad bet.

It is interesting that two of our largest aid recipients (Egypt and Pakistan) appear increasingly to be acting as adversaries.