By Gary Anderson

Best Defense office of hard lessons

Over the course of the past 20 years, I have observed or participated in counterinsurgency campaigns in South Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan in both military and civilian capacities. Some were done poorly, some successfully. The one thing that I have learned is that each is unique in its own way and there are no templates that will work in all cases. Mali is a good example of uniqueness, and there are some lessons from each of my experiences that pertain to that particular situation.

As a U.N. observer in Lebanon, I watched the Israelis go from liberators to hated occupiers in a way that was completely unnecessary, and caused them needless grief. Like the French in Mali, the Israelis chased off an unwanted foreign presence -- in their case, the Palestinians were viewed occupiers by the largely Shiite southern Lebanese population. Unfortunately, the Israelis had a tendency to view any armed Muslim Arab as a threat. Consequently, Israel opted to arm a minority Christian-led militia. This action inadvertently created Hezbollah, which became a far greater threat to Israel than the Palestinians ever could present. The Israelis would have likely been far better off arming individual villages for self-protection without taking sides in the ongoing Lebanese civil war and positioning themselves as an honest third-party broker in the inevitable civil disputes in South Lebanon.

Mali is a civil war as much as an insurgency. The southern third, and the government, are dominated by blacks while the northern part has a considerable population of light-skinned Tauregs of Berber origin. Although heavily armed al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) foreign fighters have provided the Taureg separatists their military advantage, in the recent past the Tauregs have shown an inclination to negotiate, and will likely do so again if the jihadists can be ejected. This is where the French need to avoid Israel's Lebanon mistake and become facilitators of real negotiations.

In Somalia, we learned the lessons of cultural ignorance the hard way. After a largely successful humanitarian intervention to stop mass starvation, we and the United Nations ignored the traditional clan system of the Somalis and made the mistake of trying to supplant it with alien Western style democracy. Ironically, the attempt by the former Somali dictator to ignore the influence of the clans was what began the disastrous civil war that caused the collapse of Somalia to begin with. The Americans and United Nations overreached in Somalia. The Malian government understands that it needs to rebuild the democratic institutions that were toppled by the disastrous military coup that initiated the current crisis. We could help in reestablishing Malian governmental legitimacy.

In Iraq, we succeeded largely because we were able to separate the foreign jihadist insurgents from the indigenous Sunni nationalist insurgents through a soft power combination of diplomacy and money. The use of soft power such as this in driving a wedge between the Tuareg people and AQIM will be critical to any potential success.

In Afghanistan, we continue to learn perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. To successfully help a host-nation government fight an insurgency requires that the host-nation government wants to address the root causes of the insurgency. The Afghan government never accepted that principle, and may never will. That does not mean that governance cannot be improved in Mali. Good governance is not necessarily expensive. I have come to the conclusion through bitter experience that the more development money we throw at a country, the worse the government gets, as money breeds corruption. In Mali, we would be better advised to spend small amounts of money on rule of law training and local management techniques for local officials, particularly Tauregs and other local officials in the north. Insurgencies are like politics in that they are basically local.

In rebuilding the Malian military, we need to remember that the organizer of the coup debacle was American trained. As Western trainers try to retool the Malian Army, we need to remember human rights training and the importance of civilian control over the military as much as small unit training, patrolling, and other tactical skills. In addition, the Department of State and French Foreign Ministry need to stress civil-military relations in training national level Malian officials.

I am one of those opposed to U.S. intervention in Syria. The infestation of Islamic radicals in the ranks of the rebels is even greater than it was in Afghanistan during the revolt against the Soviets. I favor a negotiated settlement with the Baathists that will allow them a reasonably soft landing as we brokered between the government junta and the rebels in El Salvador two decades ago, but Mali is different.

If we use Special Operations Force troops to train local militias and retool the Malian Army into a professional force capable of supporting a democratic civilian government, we can do so cheaply and effectively; that is the SOF mission. More importantly, they could help build village-level self-defense militias in the north to prevent the now hated Islamists from returning. Again, a relatively inexpensive operation.

Likewise, the State Department and USAID now have hard-earned Iraq and Afghanistan experience in coaching good governance and anti-corruption at the national, provincial, and local levels. This ought to be exploited before it atrophies. Again, this can be done affordably. Mali is not hopeless, and it can be a model for the right way to stabilize governments and fight Islamic extremists.

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps colonel who was a governance advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs.

By Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer, U.S. Army

Best Defense department of war movie reviews

Torture has once again become a matter of noisy public debate. This time (thank goodness!), the reason has nothing to do with new revelations of U.S. servicemembers or CIA employees going amuck on prisoners. Instead, the cause de célèbre is a movie, Zero Dark Thirty. Critics of the movie say that it promotes the use of torture by linking torture to a piece of evidence that proved indispensable in America's search for bin Laden. This, critics like Senators McCain, Feinstein, and Levin say, is a dangerous fiction not rooted in historical reality.

Fans of the movie disagree. They argue that the movie portrays this evidence as far less valuable than that obtained by clearly legal means. What is more, they say, the movie performs a service by leaving no doubt in the audience's mind that so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EITs) were torture, and also by shocking the conscience of these same viewers, causing them to wonder how the U.S. government could so easily surrender founding national values to such little good effect.

I agree with the movie's apologists. The movie does not depict torture as producing indispensable evidence. It shows morally repugnant torture producing a piece of evidence that the CIA already had but had tucked away in a file and forgot about. Seven years of torture, the movie says, produced little if any intelligence that clearly legal methods could have (and did) provide. The real narrative of the movie: A new sheriff (President Obama) comes to town who outlaws torture; subsequent CIA detective work relies exclusively on more cunning, ethical techniques involving, not just humane interrogations, but other intelligence methods; and -- presto! -- in two short years, bin Laden's hideout is found and, a few months later, he is killed. Even if the movie gets many details wrong, it at least gets the basic story right.

But far more important than the movie's historical accuracy is the deeper debate it has resurrected: Does torture work? And, even if it does work, is torture something Americans ought to be using on "hardened" terrorists (or on anyone else for that matter)?

This debate is sorely needed since most opinion polls show Americans' support for torture steadily climbing. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey reported that 53 percent of Americans believe that torture should often (19 percent) or sometimes (34 percent) be used against terrorism suspects to gain information. That marked a steady 10 percent climb from 2004. A recent YouGov poll commissioned by a Stanford University professor indicated that, over a five-year period, the number of Americans approving of torture climbed 14 percent to 41 percent in 2012.

This trend is something that those against "torture as American policy" should be watching carefully. U.S. legislation, military regulations, and Army doctrine -- most notably the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and U.S. Army Field Manual 2-22.3 Human Intelligence Collector Operations -- now enshrine prisoner treatment that is in keeping with international standards and the national values expressed by such principled American leaders as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In our republic, though, all laws are subject to change -- even those in the Constitution -- if enough Americans support this change.

There is no question which side of the torture debate I fall on. First and foremost, it is clear to me that torture fails as a tactic within the most important domain of war, the moral one. It is thus something that we Americans simply ought not to do.

When people see images of torture, most empathize with the tortured rather than the torturer. This is especially true for those who identify strongly with the tortured in the first place because of in-group, out-group bias, say, because the tortured is a fellow Muslim or a fellow Iraqi. The moral judgment that this empathy has naturally generated -- the judgment that those torturing are "cruel," "evil," or worse still, "inhuman" -- has inspired legions of America's enemies to fight us. At the same time, shame has decreased the will to fight of some Americans within the ranks and at home and damaged the political ability of coalition allies to support America's military adventures abroad. Choosing torture as policy is thus rightly seen as a kind of slow moral suicide, strengthening the fighting spirit of our enemies while sapping our own fighting spirit and that of our allies.

It is also clear to me that torture is an extremely poor method for collecting reliable intelligence. This clarity derives in part from military doctrine, training, and professional reading. But it is also rooted in personal experience.

During the summer and fall of 2003, my boss and I managed interrogation operations for Task Force 1st Armored Division (TF 1AD) in Baghdad. My boss was Major Nathan Hoepner, who wrote an email in August 2003 that would one day be quoted by Tom Ricks in Fiasco. When told by the highest command in Iraq that "the gloves are coming off" and that our unit must provide a "wish list" of harsh interrogation techniques, Major Hoepner emailed a passionate rebuttal: "We need to take a deep breath and remember who we are...It comes down to standards of right and wrong -- something we cannot just put aside when we find it inconvenient." He concluded: "BOTTOM LINE: We are American soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on the high ground. We need to stay there."

Tragically, his impassioned plea fell on deaf ears. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez soon signed a policy memo encouraging the use of EITs on prisoners, tactics employed at U.S. military Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion (SERE) schools to teach trainees how to survive torture with honor. Sanchez replaced this memo with another in October that ostensibly required interrogators to obtain his approval for non-doctrinal techniques. However, it actually reinforced the belief of some interrogators that they themselves had the authority to order that clothing, food, shelter, light, and warmth be withheld from detainees. Thus it was that degrading, formally promulgated tactics laid the foundation for more serious crimes at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

At the height of the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib, I regularly communicated with an interrogation chief working at the prison. The reason was to press him to have TF 1AD detainees re-interrogated. Despite his team's conducting numerous interrogations for us, we did not receive ANY useful intelligence whatsoever from Abu Ghraib. Sure, they produced reports on our detainees, but invariably, these reports contained either useless information or different versions of the same stories we had already extracted using humane, rapport-based approaches.

I was not alone in my frustration with Abu Ghraib. For example, Kyle Teamey, the S2X (senior human intelligence officer) for 1^st Brigade, 1^st Infantry Division, in Ramadi at the time, said: "The folks at Abu Ghraib not only failed to provide any intel of value, they turned the entire Sunni population against us. Meanwhile, we were getting actionable intel by giving detainees Skittles and a cup of coffee."

Despite our nation's and military's gross failures at Abu Ghraib and several other detention facilities, most interrogators at Gitmo, Iraq, and Afghanistan did not choose to torture. Why is this the case? One reason is that many shared the idealism expressed by Major Hoepner, which holds that torture is just something that Americans should not do.

But we should not dismiss professional competence as a reason, either. Those interrogators who had done their professional reading were less likely to engage in torture. In a future guest column, "Top 10 Books on U.S. Interrogation," I will provide a list of some of these books. Interrogators had also learned doctrine and conventional wisdom at the military intelligence schoolhouse that taught that torture is an ineffective intelligence tool. This conventional wisdom included the proverb, "The longest list of lies in the world is that given by the tortured." Many interrogators had taken doctrine and such conventional wisdom to heart, before they deployed.

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Pryer is a military intelligence officer who has served in various command and staff positions in Iraq, Kosovo, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and, most recently, Afghanistan. He is the author of the Command and General Staff College Foundation Press's inaugural book, The Fight for the High Ground: The U.S. Army and Interrogation During Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003 - April 2004. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Regulations mandating adaptiveness might be as useful as this report unveiled earlier this month by a couple of Army generals: "Everybody turn left and be creative."

Seriously, watching today's generals discuss how to improve leadership development is a little like watching dinosaurs discuss how to evolve. In bureaucratic terms, reports like this are called "moving deckchairs on the Titanic" -- that is, lots of fiddling at the margins but very little grappling with basic issues. For example, there is a lot of talk about mission command, but no indication that they studied how other organizations implemented and cultivated it.

This report missed an opportunity. It should have tackled large issues. For example, two-career marriages are now the norm in American society, but the Army doesn't recognize that in the way it runs its personnel system, which seems stuck in the Industrial Age. What kind of signal does that send about senior service leadership being out-of-touch and/or unable to deal with today's realities? For that reason, and many others, it is time to move the Army's approach to people into the Information Age. In the 21^st century it could be much more flexible than it is, offering features like sabbaticals, maternity breaks, and the ability to return after trying the private sector. That might keep some of the talent now fleeing.

Nor does there appear to be any reference to how the Army conducted the last 10 years of war. I guess the Army's leaders think everything went well. If not, maybe they could start by re-thinking the Army's bizarre rotational approach to warfare, in which commanders come and go. (One possibility would be alternating command teams at the division level and above, doing one year in and one year out for the duration, with different brigades rotating in below them. Worth thinking about.)

OK, Mr. Best Defense, you're so smart, what would you recommend instead? Glad you asked! Here are some thoughts, rooted in historical research, about what I think the report should have said:

• In a peacetime force, which is what the Army is about to become, you preserve your seedcorn by emphasizing professional military education. What do militaries do in peacetime? Train and educate. One reason our senior leaders were better in World War II than in World War I was that during the interwar period, the military education system was rigorous and respected. 

• But a year in PME cannot be permitted to be the slacker sort-of sabbatical that it has become in many places. (I'm looking at you, Air War College.) It should be intellectually rigorous, with an intense reading load and lots of writing (and re-writing until the paper is of acceptable quality. If you are not writing clearly, you are not thinking clearly). Admission should be competitive, and available only to perhaps the top half or top third of the cohort. Grading should be serious, with no "A"s for effort. There should be class rankings, released to the class perhaps weekly. At the end of the year, class rankings from top to bottom should be made public. There probably also should be a failure rate of at least 5 percent. And all these outcomes should have consequences for the remainder of an officer's career.

• The education should be of such quality that graduates of staff and war colleges are sought after by senior commanders. They are not today, under the "no major left behind" program. Having attended CGSC strikes me as not something that commanders are demanding.

• Teaching in PME should be a sought-after prize, not an act of voluntary career curtailment. There is a reason that Omar Bradley spent the majority of the interwar period as either a teacher or student in the military education system. One thing I did like in the powerpoint was on slide 12: "Require teaching in PME as a prerequisite for LTC and Colonel command." This is interesting, but it wouldn't be necessary if the smart, ambitious officers knew that teaching was a reliable route to the top.    

• The emphasis in PME should be not on training but on education, on developing officers capable of critical thinking. This is essential to prepare people for the unknown.

• If you want adaptiveness in people, reward it. Others then will emulate it. Distinguish between one-time failure and incompetence. Trying and failing on occasion is an inevitable result of risk-taking. Incompetence, by contrast, stems from persistent failure -- and paralyzes risk-avoidance. What you want is prudent risk-taking. Performance, good and bad, should carry consequences. Accountability will incentivize adaptiveness. Bureaucratic rules won't.

By Charles Krohn

Best Defense department of second thoughts

Is it an honor or a cruel joke to read "Operation Iraqi Freedom" on the headstone of a fallen soldier?

Given the irony of OIF in a historic context, the question is not irreverent, but it is relevant. This wouldn't be true, of course, if our invasion had yielded results intended and predicted, however imperfectly.

As an old soldier who has carried one too many body bags out of the battlefield, I feel a great kinship with the next of kin of the fallen. Few memories hold greater pain.

I wouldn't even ask this question if I didn't wonder if some in the Gold Star community weren't also asking it, even to themselves. And if any read this, please accept my reverence for you and the deceased. I know your loved one answered the call of the nation, understanding great risk was necessary to protect our country and help spread freedom among the oppressed. What could be more noble?

Is it not just as honorable now to recognize the prospect of freedom in Iraq as originally postulated is remote? As others have written, there is still great confusion about who will lead Iraq. The only thing most agree upon is that Iran, once held in check by Iraq, is now spreading its virulent reach deeper into the region, with a nuclear threat just around the corner.

Simply stated, the inspiration for Operation Iraqi Freedom was a dream. Does it honor or dishonor those who fell to perpetuate this myth on their headstones?

Should the matter be swept under the rug as an incidental slip of history or should next-of-kin have the option of a new headstone, marking sacrifice without promoting an idea whose time has passed?

Charles A. Krohn is the author of The Lost Battalion of Tet. Now chilling in Panama City Beach, Florida, he served in Iraq in 2003-2004 as public affairs adviser to the director of the Infrastructure Reconstruction Program, and later as public affairs officer for the American Battle Monuments Commission.

By yet another departing Marine officer

Best Defense guest columnist

I have been following the Junior Officer Exodus entries with great interest, because I, too, am a Marine Corps company grade officer who will be leaving active duty this summer after five years of active service. I share many of the frustrations of my fellow lieutenants and captains, and even had a number of friends email me to ask if I was the Marine who wrote about being disappointed that the Marines are not the elite force I was expecting. Apparently I have a history with vitriolic rants. Though while my frustrations run deep, I am sure that I would run into similar issues if I worked at the State Department, Goldman Sachs, or GE.

Yet more than any of the frustrations I have with my job, my senior officers, or what I perceive to be my future in this organization, the single driving factor for me leaving active duty is that I never wanted the military as a career. I joined the Marines a few years after graduating from college. Throughout my undergraduate years, I kept pretending that Iraq was a passing event that would be over shortly. I graduated from college to take a corporate job, and after 18 months I couldn't shake the itch that if my country was at war, I should be a part of it. I attended OCS, and the rest is history.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Marine Corps. I believe I had the best job a 24-to-29 year old can have. I joined because I wanted to go to war and lead Marines in the pursuit of an enemy. Now that we are in the full midst of the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, there is only a slim chance that I will deploy again. I got what I wanted from the military (experience, adventure, the chance to shoot things, maturity, discipline, leadership, new approaches to problem-solving), and the military certainly got their money's worth out of me. It is simply time to move on to a new phase of my life.

The problem I am facing now is that most of my senior officers simply don't understand why I would ever want to leave active duty. With few exceptions, all field grade officers joined the military prior to 9/11. I am not questioning their motivation or patriotism, but those of us who joined after 9/11 did so basically to go to war. I see many older Marines (both officer and enlisted) enjoying the relatively low stress of garrison military life. Fine, but that's not for me. In my late 20s, I am eager to try other things (teaching, graduate school, business), and am willing to take the risk that I will take a pay cut. The majors and lieutenant colonels that I count as mentors have cautioned me against leaving a steady paycheck and a possibility for a pension. I worry that this risk-averse nature it also emblematic of the cover-your-ass trends in the military, but that is an entirely separate discussion.

My caution to others in similar positions is that you should be prepared to be looked at with suspicion and disdain from senior officers as you prepare to leave active duty.

By Ron Rogers

Best Defense office of veterans' affairs

There were four of us left in the VA Clinic waiting room in Morehead City, North Carolina. There was a rather bulky fellow with a huge shock of white hair and half-asleep, a woman waiting to drive a neighbor home, a young veteran of Fallujah and Helmand, and myself, a Vietnam veteran.

The woman, a bright senior, and I started out talking about the man she was driving and that conversation morphed into Afghanistan and getting the heck out. I mentioned that the hardships of Korea, the "forgotten war," made Afghanistan pale by comparison. The older gentleman seemed to wake up and mumbled an apology for jumping into the conversation and he was welcomed -- of course. He was a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant who had fought in Korea and Vietnam. He acknowledged that Korea was the forgotten war and told a brief story about his unit "resting" behind the lines, but still having to man defensive positions. One night he was handed a .38 revolver (!) and sent to man the front gate of the compound. It began to snow and soon it had piled up to shoulder height. Two days later they were able to reach him and relieve him on post. Note that he did not talk about the cold, the lack of food and water, or the hardships of the fights that preceded resting. We talked some more about how, in Vietnam, he had gotten tired of the infantry and changed his MOS to aviation ordnance, and he spoke of his gauging the intensity of the battles by the amount and type of ordnance he was supplying for the planes. He observed that it was not going well. And then he was called back to see the doctor.

It was running very late and was now 1730 (for a 1530 appointment). Next the woman's friend came out and they left. I was now alone in the room with a rigid, taciturn, powerfully built young man who was standing at parade rest facing the door and wearing a backpack. His face was a slightly hostile mask. I asked him if he was a veteran and he said yes, he was a Marine. I observed that he must have been in Afghanistan and he replied that he had fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I asked him what he did and he said that he had been a "door kicker." He said it with both pride and resignation -- he was not happy. Part of it was due to the fact that his wife hadn't shown up yet to take him home. He phoned her and it was clear that they were not communicating well. I took a chance and said that I had observed that many younger veterans were seemingly angry and asked if he was doing OK. He revealed the very sliver of a smile and said with some hesitation that "he was doing OK." He said that he had spent 10 years in the Corps and that at the very end, he too had changed his MOS to aviation and proudly said that he had worked on Harriers. Then it turned out that both he and his brother had fought in the same places and made the same shift to aviation. He politely listened to my mentioning that I had read books by Bing West, who West is, and also Little America. When I said that West had explained the folly that led to the vicious second Battle of Fallujah, he acknowledged that with an angry nod and a "yes." Then I mentioned that in Little America General Nicholson had been described as a nice man with the wrong instincts about where and how to fight. It was clear that this former NCO was not happy with General Nicholson at all.

Just then his wife drove up and he said, "Time to go home to my three kids." I exclaimed "three?" and he smiled. I asked if he was now working as a civilian at Cherry Point and he showed surprise and said yes that he was working on Harriers. I said that that was a good job and that "I had found that the best thing to say was ‘welcome home,' so welcome home." He smiled for the first time and said, "that was right -- welcome home," and we shook hands and he went out through the door to join his wife.

Now alone in an ever colder waiting room, I marveled at the parallel careers of these two Marines, separated by fifty years, but sharing the same thought processes -- that kicking doors had gotten old and it was time for a change. And, just as comfortable as "the Gunny" was with his life, this new veteran Marine was going to go through a difficult transition to reach that place as I had noted his demeanor and his difficulty in communicating with his wife on the phone. They were going to have to learn to communicate and perhaps deal with his demons or their marriage would come to an end. He is a fine young man.

He and his brother are home now, but are we helping them to get all the way home?

The author served on active duty and in the Reserve for 23 years and was lucky to spend most of that time in Army Special Forces, with a diversion to Intelligence. While in Vietnam, he served both on an "A" Team and with DARPA. As a reservist, he served in OSD. In civilian life he has been an editor for McGraw Hill, a civil servant with USIA, and an IT manager in Washington. He is now retired on a boat in North Carolina.

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Just three days before Christmas, a note bearing sad tidings came up on a Facebook feed:

Military working dog Rex (E168) passed away this morning. He was 11 years old (April 2001-December 2012). Rest in peace Rex and thank you for your service and sacrifice. Once a Marine, Always a Marine...Semper Fi

Former Marine dog handler Mike Dowling posted the notice. Rex had been Dowling's dog in 2004 and, when they deployed to Iraq that year, they were one of the first U.S. dog teams to go into a combat zone since Vietnam.

Rex's story is one we've followed closely here -- from his stint with Dowling in Iraq (a harrowing story well told in Dowling's 2011 book), to his heroic tour in Iraq during which he was gravely injured, and finally the dog's highly publicized and star-studded transition from working dog to housedog. When Rex became eligible to retire from service last year, he was adopted by Marine handler Megan Leavey, who served with the dog in Iraq.

In his book, Sgt. Rex, Dowling writes how it was his bond to Rex that sustained him during their starkly dangerous tour; one in which their role was mostly undefined and ever evolving. A particularly moving passage in light of the dog's recent death:

I keep thinking that a time will come when Rex is gonna flee from the next explosion with his tail between his legs. Or I'm gonna come to my senses and realize that I just can't do another lonely, death-defying walk ... But here's the thing: Having Rex beside me helps give me the strength so I can face it. ... Never once has he faltered when I've asked him to do the walk with me, not even when we're under the enemy's gun. And because of this, he's put steel in my soul."

Complications with Rex's health arose suddenly during the night of Dec. 21st and Leavey, who rushed him to the emergency vet, also posted a note on Facebook letting friends and fans know that Rex did not suffer long and when it became clear he could not be treated comfortably, she was confident euthanasia was the right decision. He went peacefully the following morning.

Leavey writes she was grateful she got to spend the last eight months with her "partner and best friend." During the time Rex lived with her, "he got to roam the yard & bark at deer, play with as many toys as he wanted all day everyday, sleep in a cozy bed next to me every night, chase and eventually make friends with my 2 cats, enjoy & play in his first snowfall."

RIP: MWD Spike, a dog reportedly stationed at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Sand Diego and also 11 years old, passed away on Jan. 1.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Atria Books in September 2013.

Antulio Echevarria is one of those guys I always read, no matter what aspect of defense he is writing about. Even when I don't agree with him, his assertions make me think.

For example, in a recent article, he argued that "It is the mind of the commander in chief-where gains and losses are weighed-that has always been America's center of gravity, not the will of the public." I had never thought of that, and it did make me stop and consider. On reflection I suspect he is correct: I think it was Lincoln who often shaped public opinion during the Civil War, not the opposite. It was Lyndon Johnson's fears and flaws that drove both his handling of the Vietnam War and his failure to level with the American people. It was George Bush's determination to invade Iraq that led to the American invasion, not a groundswell of public opinion that drove him.

In the very next paragraph, Echevarria launches another provocative thought on how landpower is fundamentally different from airpower and seapower: "Landpower is generally employed not only to defeat an opponent's ground forces, and the quicker the better, but also to establish and maintain control over people and places thereafter." I think he is right, and this is one reason that landpower is, I think, more important than the other two forms of power. (And that is one reason this blog focusses more on the Army and Marine Corps than on the Navy and Air Force.)

Then, in the next paragraph after that, he loses me. He argues that the contemporary era is no more uncertain or ambiguous "than the era of the Cold War, or any other era." I disagree. The Cold War may have been more dangerous to the future of humanity, but there were some knowns. The Soviet Union was a stable, slow-moving, conservative, and rather poor enemy. For several decades, our national strategy of containment remained in place. But as I say, even when I disagree with him, he makes me stop and think.   

That's a lot of thinking to pack into an op-ed piece not much longer than this blog post about it.

I've been reading No Easy Day, which I find a well-done but fairly typical tale by a Navy SEAL who by luck and hard work happened to be in on the bin Laden kill.

What worries me is all the talk of pre-publication review by the Pentagon. I know CIA does that sort of thing, but I don't remember the military doing it much. I read all the books by guys like Hugh Shelton, Tommy R. Franks, and David Crist, and I don't recall much talk of the Defense Department getting to peek at the books first. I mean, I doubt that Eisenhower submitted Crusade in Europe to some lawyer at the Pentagon before it went to press.

So I think it would be a bad thing if people came to expect some sort of right of the military to review memoirs. I suspect that a lot of the criticism of the book is being provoked not by legal concerns but by anger among SEALs and the like that the author violated the cultural code of the Special Ops community and blabbed. 

Necessary disclosure: My books are published by Penguin Press, which is under the same corporate umbrella as Dutton, which published No Easy Day.

Spencer Attackerman wrote last month somewhat mockingly about the Pentagon cracking down on soldiers watching porn on official computers. I actually think there is a clear and present danger in porn: I suspect it is the vehicle by which the Stuxnet virus was introduced into the computers running part of the Iranian nuclear program. (Reading Henry Crumpton's memoirs, I began to wonder if the CIA is a major buyer in the porn market, for use with North Korean diplomats, among other contacts. They probably have a "chief acquisition officer, pornography.")

If I were managing any official office that used computers -- which is to say all of them -- I would make watching porn on them a firing offense, not for moral reasons but for security reasons. And I would consider bringing criminal charges against anyone who actually used a thumbdrive to transfer porn into an official system.     

This phrase in an article in the Fayetteville Observer caught my eye:  ". . . . Sharing the stage with Ryan were . . . . retired Army Gens. Dan McNeill and Buck Kernan."

I have nothing against either of those generals. But I wish they would not allow themselves to be used by political figures. The Army chief of staff should ask all retired generals to stop appearing with candidates who are campaigning. I especially hate it when they trot out a coupla dozen at political conventions.  In the long run, this sort of partisan activity can only hurt the Army, and the nation.

By Col. Chuck Bowes

Best Defense guest respondent

I challenge your premise that low-cost high school graduate conscription is a better way of staffing our military services.

Today's high school graduates suffer from systemically deficient abilities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) that poses considerable challenges to our increasingly technological military force. Research findings reported by the United States Mission to the Organization for Economic and Co-operation Development (OECD) reveals that U.S. middle school and high school students are habitually under-performing their international peers in STEM achievement measures.

President Obama, Secretary of Education Duncan, and Bill Gates also express concern that too few young people are acquiring the knowledge they need to use technology in creative and innovative ways. As U.S. student STEM achievement continues to race to the bottom of all industrialized competitors, adding non-volunteer recruits worsens the problem.

Today's graduates may quickly master the user-interface on commercial technologies, but if one of those competitors becomes a future adversary then our military recruits must be competent in the underlying STEM areas in order to adapt specialized military technologies to gain a competitive edge in cross-dimensional domains. A competitive edge is increasingly dependent on America's innovative edge. Absent another "Sputnik moment" that generates self-inspired reform for STEM achievement, the U.S. requires new concepts, new organizations, and new long-term strategies to develop agile young minds in order to retain our dominant military position.

For the U.S. to maintain its competitive edge it must carefully develop children with high IQs to achieve high levels of creative productivity. Intellectually gifted (IQs above 130) people have an above average innate ability to learn significantly faster than their cohorts. The National Science Board also recognizes that gifted students will form the next generation of STEM innovators.

Instead of reinstating a draft, I propose that our Defense Department train all of its officer candidates in ROTC programs and transform its military academies to become prep-schools that offer 3,000 intellectually gifted old youth a no-cost in-residence opportunity to specialize in STEM subjects during their early education. Further, we could provide many more free non-resident academies at public universities across the U.S. for just the cost of President Obama's $1.35 billion Race to the Top campaign.

An operating budget of $1.35 billion equates to $11,000 per pupil yearly, which is 9 percent less than the 2010 national high school average of $12,018 per pupil, and 59 percent less than the District of Columbia school system spends per pupil. These opportunities should be specifically reserved for the students with the highest cognitive potential, just as varsity teams are reserved for athletes with the highest physical talent. 

This proposal would provide the opportunity for the estimated 120,000 highly gifted students to participate in a highly challenging ability-based curriculum that accelerates their learning commensurate with their higher intellectual aptitude. Similar to the National Security Education Program and the CIA's Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholarship, graduates merit a "priority placement" hiring status and are excepted from competitive service under law as an incentive for long-term employment in the armed services and military industrial complex.

Since this proposal is an additive intervention, not a voucher system, it relieves pressures to provide special accommodations for gifted students without stripping money from public schools. Accordingly, the more gifted students in attendance, the more that public schools can fully focus their resources on educating the ‘vulnerable' students whom they commendably target now. Most colleges eagerly accept gifted students and leveraging their existing underutilized infrastructure benefits the college and offers a shrewd dividend to taxpayers created by decades of investments from many federal sources.

Colonel Chuck Bowes is an Air National Guard aviator and graduate of the U.S. Army War College. He is currently serving on active duty at Headquarters 18^th Air Force, Scott AFB.

By Maj. Joseph Bruhl

Best Defense department of leadership studies

Growing up, if I wasn't playing sports, I was building model airplanes or gardening with my father. Both were captivating exercises, but for different reasons. Building models was a drill in precision and attention to detail. Gardening was a complex experiment in give and take. Both developed important skills, but as a leader I return most frequently to the lessons of my father's garden. Leaders who think like gardeners are better equipped to adapt, reason creatively, and approach challenges with humility than those who think like model airplane builders. Unfortunately, many in the army prefer fabricating P-51 Mustangs to nursing tomatoes.

Model airplane building supports an "A+B=C" mentality that is familiar to many in the military. Assemble the right tools, carefully study directions (read doctrine), and work with exactitude. For the model airplane builder, nothing is beyond his control. The only measure of success is: Does the model mirror the standard?

Gardeners, however, do not possess complete control. Their craft is affected by a host of things beyond their control. Gardeners' crop output is graded, not on exactitude, but on an ability to adapt, think creatively, and remain humble enough to try new methods.

Like the gardener, today's combat leaders understand that progress can be affected by a host of things beyond one's control: historic feuds, dysfunctional institutions, and even past mistakes by U.S. forces. Here again, adaptability, creativity and humility are keys to success.

Adaptive leadership, however, is not limited to the counterinsurgency fight. It is a timeless military model. To support the development of "gardener-leaders," the army should do three things: develop a profession of arms that values thinking, writing, and education; adapt its personnel system to support diverse experience; and renew mentorship as a foundation to the profession of arms.

1. Developing a Profession of Arms that values education, thinking, and writing:

Access to civilian education for both officers and NCOs must be dramatically increased. Education develops a leader's identity, mental agility, cross-cultural savvy, and interpersonal maturity. This is why universities are often analogized to gardens, where minds are cultivated and ideas are the harvest.

Increase the importance of non-divisional assignments in an officer's professional development. Assignments to the Army Staff, the Combined Arms Center, and branch school houses are not "take a knee" assignments; they are investments in the institutions that support our profession and broaden a leader's vision.

Encourage officers and NCOs to write and publish. In a recent article, Admiral Stavridis offers some "common sense guidelines" to consider when writing. Army leadership, following these guidelines, should be pushing folks to write and share; there is a wealth of untapped wisdom that will add richness to the army's intellectual debates.

2. Adapting personnel systems to support diverse experience:

The army must transition its personnel systems from an industrial-aged model that views leaders as interchangeable parts to one that manages talent on an individual basis. In the absence of complete personnel system overhaul, the army should allow officers who self-select for civilian education, teaching, or internships to "slip-back" a year group or two in order to avoid missing key developmental jobs in their operational specialty.

By adapting its personnel system to allow officers to pursue opportunities that develop "gardener-leader" skills without hampering competitiveness for command, the army encourages its best officers to broaden their experience. When officers who pursue opportunities outside traditional career paths command more frequently, the army demonstrates a new set of values to junior officers.

3. Renewing mentorship as a foundation to the profession of arms:

In a culture that promotes "gardener-leaders," mentorship is critical. Model airplane building provides step-by-step instructions for the novice to follow. Gardening is something that can only be learned through experience and tutelage.

Lack of mentorship appears near the top of many surveys to explain the decision of junior officers to leave. To reverse this trend, the army should include mentorship in its holistic review of the profession of arms. What better way to build adaptive, creative, and humble leaders who reflect Army values than through active and genuine mentorship?

These three steps cultivate a culture where leaders are not wedded to "the way we do things," but are able to adapt, think creatively, and approach challenges with humility. All are "must haves" if the army expects to apply the right lessons from the last decade and safeguard its profession of arms.

For more on this, read the longer version of this article here.

Major Joseph Bruhl is a strategic planner in irregular warfare and security force assistance at the army's Security Cooperation Plans and Concepts Division. He holds a B.A. from Truman State University and an M.P.A. from Harvard. He is a Next Generation National Security Leader fellow at the Center for New American Security.

One of the more interesting relationships in DC is the running battle between Donald Rumsfeld and his former aide and friend Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman. As I recall, it went public when Adelman, once a very loud Iraq hawk, began questioning the Bush team's conduct of the Iraq war around 2006. For example, he said of the Bush administration's national security officials that, "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

The feud recently surfaced again in the letters section of the Wall Street Journal. One letter this week began, " Ken Adelman's rebuttal (Letters, June 18) of Donald Rumsfeld's June 13 criticism of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea repeats two persistent myths about this deeply flawed and unnecessary treaty . . . . "

This may seem an obscure fight between figures of the past, but could be relevant if Mitt Romney wins the presidential election. He strikes me as the kind of guy who would think it would be great to have Rumsfeld around as an elder statesman.