By "Misha N. Komand"

Best Defense guest correspondent

How can we really enjoy the benefits of mission command without the inputs? You don't just 'do' mission command (just as you don't just 'do' Army design methodology). The Germans didn't just 'do' Auftragstaktik.

No, it was built on a culture that held junior officers on up to rigorous accounting of academic and military ability. The Army thinks it can incorporate the benefits of an idea by simply incorporating (or poaching) the good terms or ideas of others, and not have to pay the price in selecting and educating the right officers. There will be no true mission command without a cultural change starting with accountability in education (centering on military history) and better selection and shaping of the officer corps.

"Misha N. Komand" is an active duty Army officer serving on the periphery of the American dream.

The estimable Micah Zenko wants a "first draft" of "the Third War." Actually it has been written, and is being published this week. It is The Way of the Knife, by Mark Mazzetti. It has all sorts of interesting details, like that the United States has the ability to remotely turn on a cell phone in Pakistan and then collect the precise coordinates of whoever is carrying it. 

Here is an interview I did with the author by e-mail:

Tom Ricks: What are we going to learn from your book that we haven't gotten from others, like those by Peter Bergen?

Mark Mazzetti: Peter's books are absolutely terrific, and a hard act to follow! And, there have certainly been a number of terrific books covering the war on terror. What I've tried to do in my book is tell a story of a secret war, and how that war has changed places like the CIA and parts of the Pentagon. The CIA is now at the center of waging covert wars in places like Pakistan and Yemen. The agency certainly has had a history of far flung military adventures, but then it tried to get out of the killing business -- only to come back at it in a big way since the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has become more like the military, sending soldiers into the dark corners of the world on spying missions. There's been a real blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies.

With the "big wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan either over or winding down, I think that these secret wars have become the default way of doing business. And, only now is the pressure growing for the White House to bring greater transparency to the shadow wars.

TR: What was the biggest surprise to you in reporting and writing the book?

MM: I think that the biggest surprise was how much this type of warfare brings various colorful characters to the forefront. When the United States determined it couldn't send the 101st Airborne into a country, it began to rely on private contractors and other types of individuals to do things like gather intelligence on the ground. I spent a chapter on the private spying network run by Duane Clarridge, a former CIA officer and one of the figures in the Iran-Contra scandal. A Pentagon official hired Clarridge's team to gather intelligence in Pakistan because there was a belief that the CIA wasn't up to the task, but the entire operation ended up in recriminations and a Pentagon investigation. It's stories like this that I really tried to highlight in the book.

TR: Why do you think drones have become so controversial only recently in the United States?

MM: That's a good question. I think that up until recently, at least in Washington, you had both Republicans and Democrats uniformly supporting targeted killings and there was no constituency calling for greater transparency and accountability for these kinds of operations. Since the November election, you have seen Democrats become more vocal in challenging the Obama administration on the use of targeted killings. And, of course, there is Rand Paul's now-famous filibuster that captured concerns among Libertarians about secret government operations.

TR: Which of our three wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and "knife") do you think historians ultimately will find the most significant?

MM: This might sound like I'm avoiding giving a direct answer, but all three wars have impacted each other, and so in some ways I think that some historians will look at this entire post-9/11 period as one that fundamentally changed both U.S. foreign policy and how the United States conducts war. Certainly, the Obama administration has relied on these shadow wars because it considers them cheaper, lower risk, and more effective than the big messy wars of occupation like Iraq and Afghanistan. But, so much of the way that an organization like the Joint Special Operations Command does business is a direct result of its work in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They took parts of what they were doing in those countries and brought outside of the "hot" battlefields.

TR: What do you think are the lessons of this third war?

MM: There's no question that the United States has become dramatically better at manhunting than it was on September 11, 2001. There is better fusion of intelligence, and the Pentagon, CIA, and other intelligence agencies are working more closely together. I think, though, that one of the lessons is that secrecy can be very seductive and that it might be too easy for our government to carry out secret warfare without the normal checks and balances required for going to war. As you well know, as much as the Pentagon can be a lumbering bureaucracy, there is a certain benefit of having a good many layers that operations must pass through in order to get approved. When decisions about life and death are made among a small group of people, and in secret, there are inherent risks. 

Nathan Webster does. Check out some of his recent work.

By Kyle Teamey

Best Defense department of COIN rehabilitation

1. Regime change IS nation building.

Whether the intention is to stop ethnic cleansing or to affect a change in policy by a rogue nation-state, the result of regime change is the same -- a long period of rebuilding. In a multi-ethnic state with no history of democracy, a period of violent turmoil should be expected after a regime is toppled. It must either be managed directly by the United States (Iraq and Afghanistan) or groups supported by the United States and allies (Libya).

2. A minimal U.S. footprint is the preferred way to do COIN...when feasible.

An overlooked writer on the subject of counterinsurgency (COIN) is Thomas Mockaitis. He took some very good lessons from the United Kingdom's 20th century experiences in COIN and summed them to three best practices that marked successful campaigns: minimal force, civil-military cooperation, and tactical flexibility. The minimal force part of that equation is critical. It often means minimizing the use of third party forces because of the high probability that the third party adds to the conflict simply by being present. An additional benefit of minimal use of force is minimizing the costs to the United States in blood and treasure for a given conflict. Recent efforts in Colombia, Yemen, Somalia, El Salvador, and the Philippines where the U.S. supported COIN and counterterror efforts with few or no U.S. troops are instructive. Minimal use of U.S. forces has been relatively successful and low cost. That said, we really did not give ourselves an option for a small footprint approach in Iraq. There was no other organization to step into the post-Saddam power vacuum and leaving a total disaster in a strategically important part of the world was not an option. See #1 above.

3. Small U.S. footprint or large, the principles of COIN are the same.

Regardless of who is doing the COIN campaign or how the United States is supporting the campaign -- foreign aid, foreign internal defense, advisors, boots on the ground, etc -- the rules are the same. Best practices are best practices no matter who utilizes them. We are constrained by law and social norms to something that looks like population-centric COIN whether we do it ourselves or support a third party. The government has to be legitimate, the people have to be protected, there must be unity of effort amongst the counterinsurgents, intelligence must drive operations, there must be unity of effort amongst civil and military authorities, and the insurgents must be exposed to security forces. The argument that we should "just kill all the insurgents" is noise. Due to aforementioned law and social norms, killing bad guys requires separating them from the populace, which doesn't happen if the government is not legitimate, the people are not protected, etc. It should also be noted that killing bad guys is one of the most important parts of population-centric COIN. The argument that population-centric COIN only means "hearts and minds" where everyone sits around drinking tea and singing together is a strawman. Depending on conditions on the ground commanders may weight their efforts more towards the use of force or more towards stability operations, but there will always be an element of violence, or the threat of violence, in population-centric COIN.

4. War hasn't changed: Good tactics don't matter if you are operationally or strategically inept.

We proved this in spades in Iraq, where some units did things well, others poorly, and there was initially no over-arching planning or coordination for the post-regime era. We did pretty much everything wrong from 2003 to 2007 and got lucky it didn't go worse than it did. Get good generals who know what they are doing. Fire those who don't. Sounds simple but it ain't.

5. If you want to defeat an insurgency, don't let the insurgents have a safe haven.

Pakistani tribal areas, Fallujah in 2004, other "no go" areas in Iraq in 2004-6, the FARC zone in Colombia, FARC camps in Ecuador and Venezuela, etc. Nothing good comes of allowing a safe haven for insurgents. Ever. If we are serious about defeating an insurgency, we should never allow any safe havens. If national goals are limited to keeping the insurgency down to a dull roar or killing some terrorists, then a safe haven may be tolerable.

6. Rotate troops effectively or it will be a "Groundhog Day" war.

U.S. troops fighting overseas need time to rest, relax, and be with their loved ones. In short, they need to regularly rotate out of theater. Unfortunately, this creates a major dilemma when using U.S. troops to conduct long-term COIN operations. As in the movie "Groundhog Day," every rotation can effectively create a new beginning to the same war. New relationships must be (re)forged between the host nation and the incoming U.S. personnel for operations to be effective. The identity and modus operandi of insurgent groups and leaders must be (re)learned. The learning curve is very steep, and by the time the troops know their "neighborhood" it is time to go home -- Groundhog Day all over again. There are ways to mitigate the deleterious effects of troop rotations, for instance, through the use of information technology or by rotating units to the same locations in theater, but they cannot be avoided altogether.

7. COIN lessons from Iraq have been misapplied in Afghanistan.

The tactics borrowed from Iraq for use in Afghanistan have generally been effective. Applying a lot of flexibility to account for the vast differences between the theaters, many of the tactics seem to work pretty well at the brigade and below. Unfortunately, the operational and strategic lessons from Iraq and prior conflicts have not been as well applied. In the absence of a legitimate government, population-centric COIN does not work. If insurgents have a large sanctuary where they can rest and refit, COIN has a high probability of failing. If there is not unity of effort amongst civil and military authorities, COIN has a high probability of failing. All of these are problems in the Afghan theater. The government is, at best, tolerated. Pakistan provides a massive refuge with endless border crossings. The leadership of Afghanistan has an often rocky relationship with that of the United States and attacks on U.S. troops by Afghan troops are commonplace. Under these conditions, the best tactics cannot succeed in defeating the insurgency. Add to these factors an inordinately large number of theater commanders over the course of the campaign -- five in just the last five years -- and it is clear the U.S. goal of defeating the Taliban did not align with practical realities. See #3, 4, 5, and 6 above. It seems we ignored first principles in Afghanistan and just hoped good tactics would win the day. Not a good approach. It is understandable strategic leaders might judge it is too costly to do population-centric COIN in the Af/Pak region "correctly," and that dealing with the Pakistani tribal areas directly is infeasible. Under such circumstances, we should be honest with ourselves that we cannot defeat the insurgency outright, align goals with what is possible, and field a force that makes sense for the more limited goals.

8. Detainee operations are much too important to be left to amateurs.

We have completely messed this up since 9/11. Our tactics in dealing with detainees have had such undesired effects as alienating allies, angering large portions of the U.S. electorate, alienating portions of the local population in countries where we operate, and reinvigorating Iraq's insurgency with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. We also conducted detainee operations poorly for long periods of time. Initially large numbers of people in Iraq were rounded up and sent to detention facilities for no good reason. Later in the conflict we released a very large percentage of insurgents within 6-18 months of capture...often because the capturing unit had rotated back to their home station. See #6 above. Insurgents came back from prison better connected and with greater street cred. It was like a nightmarish National Training Center rotation where the bad guys get a re-key and our troops get shot or blown up by now better-trained insurgents. I thought Catch-22 was funny until living it! Our poor detainee tactics in the time after 9/11 had very negative operational and strategic impacts. If we ever do COIN again using U.S. forces, it is imperative we get this right. To borrow from David Galula, "Under the best circumstances, the police action cannot fail to have negative aspects for both the population and the counterinsurgent living with it...these reasons demand the operation be conducted by professionals..." -David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice.

9. Democracy and governance start from the bottom.

In Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority made a huge mistake by disallowing local and regional elections until there was a national constitution in place. We created a power vacuum that could only be filled by traditional leaders (sheikhs and imams), insurgents, and coalition forces. During the years it took to get a national government in place, we should have been encouraging local elections to build experience with democracy, form political parties, and create locally legitimate governance. Rule by the people has to be built from the bottom up. The U.S. experience is instructive. The presence of functioning state and local government allowed national leaders the time to hash out a constitution. It took our founders about 12 years to get a constitution written and approved... and that was with two tries because the first attempt failed. We expected the Iraqis and Afghans to get it done in a year or two and create an effective system of governance though they have no experience in democracy, no political parties, traditional leaders or U.S. troops trying to fill the role of local government, and a raging insurgency that leaves a large portion of their population disenfranchised? That's nuts!

10. Maintain training and doctrine related to COIN.

We will do it again. We always say we won't and we always do. It's too costly in lives and dollars to not keep this in the doctrine. Don't make another generation get maimed unnecessarily.

Kyle Teamey is a major in the U.S. Army Reserves. He served on active duty with the 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment and 1^st Infantry Division from 1998 to 2004. After leaving active duty, he served as a civilian counterinsurgency analyst from 2005-2006, co-authored the 2006 edition of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, and assisted DARPA in the development and fielding of the Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR) from 2005 to 2009. He is currently the chief executive officer of a chemical technology company.

Michael Howard, one of the great military historians, gives Emile Simpson's War From the Ground Up about 10 thumbs up in a new review, calling it "a work of such importance that it should be compulsory reading at every level in the military; from the most recently enlisted cadet to the Chief of the Defence Staff and, even more important, the members of the National Security Council who guide him."

It was put together by "A Smart Army Major" who clearly is enjoying the sequester.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Earlier this week, ISAF Deputy Chief Lt. Gen. Nick Carter warned against a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying:

It would be unforgivable if we allowed the gains of the last three years to be lost because we were not able to provide the Afghans with the support to take this through into 2014."

In the wake of Carter's comments the news that British Forces are not pulling back their canine forces but fortifying them is of particular interest. As part of the overall NATO drawdown, British troops are set to pull back nearly half their forces by the end of 2013. But last month, the remaining combat-ready dog teams of the 104 Military Working Dog Unit deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Herrick, bringing their number to 90 teams in all. Perhaps more noteworthy still is that this number is relatively higher than that of dogs on the ground two years ago, when British Forces had approximately 70 dog teams in Afghanistan in 2011.

The newest British dog teams in Afghanistan will be part of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Task Force, which pulls its canine teams from a total of "15 units from all three services." The job of these dogs is really no more special or any different than it's been throughout the war -- they will be "patrolling the bases where fellow British soldiers are based, searching vehicles at checkpoints and going out on patrols on the front line." But now that NATO forces are preparing to disengage, these dog teams will also play a role in "mentoring the Afghan National Security Forces" and helping to facilitate the coming transition.

Many of these British handlers who deployed in March are going into combat with their dogs for the first time. They've had one full year of training and their commander Major Ian Razzell has full confidence in their abilities as well as their certain success. "I am proud of every single soldier," he said. "They will do a good job, there is no doubt about it, they are first rate professional soldiers as well as dedicated handlers.

Bonus Note: The 1st Military Dog Regiment's motto is Vires in Varietate: Strength in Diversity.

Rebecca Frankel is away from her FP desk, working on a book about dogs and war.

It was underwhelming. Got it, he admires Ike. So do I. As a friend of mine said, "This was a terrible speech.  Said nothing and awful delivery."

Not a good sign for a SecDef leading a Pentagon on the budget roller coaster.

I see the Spanish seem to be contemplating a replay of the battle of Trafalgar.

That reminds me of something I read the other day, that Lord Nelson's form of mission command was very intensive conversation before the fight, very hands off once it began, observed A.B.C. Whipple:

Nelson believed in sharing tactical options with his captains, discussing every possible situation and emphasizing that when battle was in progress, every captain would be on his own. If a captain saw an opportunity to do damage to the enemy, he was free to attack without awaiting signals from the flagship's masthead. The old line-ahead dogmas of each ship's blindly following the leader was not only dead, it was replaced by something previously unheard-of in the Royal Navy: delegation of authority.

By Brig. Gen. James D. Campbell

Best Defense Guard columnist

One of things I find most interesting, and even objectionable, in the entire discourse between these two senior officers is the fact that, clearly, neither of them recognizes or even considers the reserve components as part of "the Army."

Many of the talented young officers and NCOs who are choosing to leave the active force are, in fact, transferring to the National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve. So in that sense, "the Army" isn't losing these experienced young leaders. That is, we're not losing them if our active counterparts view the Guard and Reserve as part of the wider team. Even more of these junior leaders would choose the Guard and Reserve if active duty senior leaders actually tried to present service in the Reserve Components as a viable option for those who want to keep serving but also want stability for their families along with different career and educational opportunities. Unfortunately, as judged by these essays in FP, most senior Army leaders don't ever even think of the reserve components as really part of "the Army." Personally, along with many of my peers I left the regular Army in the early '90s after almost 10 years of service and have been in the Guard ever since. I've managed to have a full, reasonably successful career, and have gotten to do a lot of things on the civilian side I never would have done had I stayed on active duty.

This paradigm of leaving the reserve components out of the equation has all sorts of corollaries: The refusal, for example, of senior Army leaders to consider that, based on the recent Reserve Forces Policy Board report showing that the reserve components (RC) cost only one-third the amount of the active components (AC), shouldn't we seek to grow the RC as we must shrink the AC in order to retain the military capability and force structure at less cost, and therefore have a flexible "surge" capacity for emergencies? Aside from the fact that this is effectively what we have done post-conflict throughout the entire history of our nation, the cost pressures alone would dictate that it is a very intelligent option. In addition to saving force structure and capability, we would also be saving enormous numbers of proven, combat-experienced officers, NCOs and soldiers by keeping them in the uniform and having them around for the long term. Unfortunately, what we are hearing from senior Army leaders is that they want to keep the AC as large as possible, even if that means cutting the RC -- an idea that flies in the face of fiscal reality, the past 12 years of actual operational experience, U.S. military history and tradition, and serves as yet one more glaring reminder that our current generation of senior leaders has never accepted the RC as equal, capable elements of the overall force. Cutting off the nose to spite the face...

I invite all high-caliber junior and mid-grade leaders in our Army (and Air Force) who are seeking a change and want more stability for their families, more interesting assignment and career opportunities, and challenging educational opportunities to look into joining the National Guard in their home states or the states where they'd like to live. We have been the key component of our nation's military since 1636, we are in many ways the sole remaining repository of many of the best traditions of the service, we listen to our people (we have to in order to keep our high-performing, traditional part-time leaders in uniform), and we are still on the front lines around the world. We are also still the only part of the force which can legally and rapidly respond to assist our local communities when they are in need.

BG James D. Campbell, Ph.D. is the adjutant general of the Maine National Guard.

From a blog comment posted on Sunday evening:

I crave autonomy, a sense of meaning in my work, and to have some semblance of self-determination in my career. My first two desires were met more often than not while I was deployed to Afghanistan for the last nine months. However, I'm not entirely sure that will continue now that my unit is back in garrison and no longer on a patch chart. We have returned to an environment of repetitive briefings and seemingly endless bureaucratic forms, and all the while there are whispers of funding problems canceling opportunities for military schools and substantive training events. Time will tell if we head the way of incessant drill and ceremony practice augmented by pay day activities and area beautification. Truth be told, I do not know because I have never been in a unit that is not preparing to go to war, but this is the fear. The fear is we will spend hours laying out and cleaning equipment that we can't train with. That our training will be on making perfect Powerpoint slides instead of rolling up our sleeves to enable sergeant's time.

By "Si Syphus"

Best Defense junior officer panel

"Let's get ready to RUMBLE!" I can just picture Michael Buffer announcing the upcoming "prize fight." In the blue corner stands Lt. Gen. (R) David Barno and in the red corner stands Lt. Gen Fredrick ‘Ben' Hodges. The main event: Are we losing talent in today's Army?

Reading the differences between senior leaders is quite hilarious. I would equate it to watching two dudes argue about (insert sports teams here), in an alcohol-induced stupor, less the possibility of violence. Both bring up valid points, yet one uses "how they see the facts" to support their argument. However, no matter who is right and who wrong, what is lost in translation is the actual premise of the argument -- in this case junior leaders -- and nothing is done to rectify the situation. The end result is an epic 12-round bout with a split decision resulting in a draw, and a re-match likely on the horizon in a couple of years.

Lt. Gen. (R) Barno's "Military Brain Drain" echoes the position of Tim Kane's Bleeding Talent, stating that "if you ignore the expectations of today's young, combat-experienced leaders as you shrink the force, your most talented officers and sergeants will exit, stage left." Both Barno and Kane lament protecting the "crown jewel" of talented junior leaders is required for future success.

On the other hand, Lt. Gen. Hodges disagrees with Barno's supposition that there is a "brain drain" in the Army based on four main points: 1) junior officers are doing good things deployed, 2) there are "broadening" opportunities, 3) what his peers have to say, and 4) senior leader examples.

My response, for what it's worth:

Round One: Yes, junior leaders are doing exceptional things while deployed. That is because there is "freedom of maneuver." Problems are complex and our junior leaders are excelling with the opportunity to demonstrate their innovativeness, adaptability, and unique ability to solve the complex issues. However, when these junior leaders come home, this ability is stymied due to the fact of not being at war. The "garrison" Army was, is, and will continue to be a polar opposite to war-time. Junior leaders, ones that currently have less than 12 years of service, know absolutely NOTHING about "garrison." We are operationally minded, doing one of three things: prepare to deploy, deploy, recover. This has been the cycle, but that is about to change. Bottom line: There is not enough money or incentives in the world that will be able to keep 100 percent of the targeted group to stay in the Army, unless there is a change.

Round Two: Lt. Gen. Hodges mentions various things that the Army is offering to junior leaders -- "the best and most expensive" universities, fellowships, and training with industry. Let's be honest, all of these things are pretty cool and the fact that it is an option, also pretty cool. However, let's be realistic. The Army has the Olmstead Scholarship -- one per year. Congressional fellowships -- 25 per year. Advanced civil schooling -- a generous figure would be 400 per year. A realistic amount of junior leaders receiving this "broadening" any given year would be about 600. However, when applying for these opportunities, a junior leader is grouped with a total of about three year groups' worth, or about 6,000 other people. So this "broadening" is available to about 10 percent of junior leaders. If the target is to retain the "top 20 percent" and this is all the incentive, then we are falling short. Don't get me wrong, this is a good start. But let's not use this as the be-all end-all answer to saying quality junior leaders are not leaving. This is more of a "look what we are going to keep some of the talent."

If you have sipped the green Kool-Aid and are immersed in current Army rhetoric, now might be a good time to stop reading. Otherwise, you might berate me as a junior leader who doesn't know shit.

The following two examples are used by Lt. Gen. Hodges to support his argument that I take issue with the most:

Round Three: Lt. Gen. Hodges starts his argument saying he is "disappointed" in Barno's position because it is not something he sees or hears in his "dealings with senior Army leaders" or his peers. (Ok, I am going to believe it now because a bunch of crusty old men are saying it's not true. Sure.) I'm pretty sure this is the whole "group think" mentality we are trying to go away from. What about "outside the box" thinking? Apparently this only applies to junior leaders. What do other senior leaders and other generals know about why junior leaders are staying in? I got an idea: How about asking them and not your peers.

Lt. Gen. Hodges also claims that Barno's comments about the best leaving are "an insult to the thousands staying." Not the case. I stayed, and I'm not insulted. Lt. Gen. (R) Barno or Tim Kane never referred to me as "not talented" because I chose to stay. I understand where they are coming from when they point out the facts that quality junior leaders have left up to this point (true) and quality junior leaders will continue to leave until this situation is rectified (also true). I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid and buying into a senior leader telling me I should be insulted for something that is the truth. I'm also not buying it just because a bunch of them are saying it.

Round Four: The justification I most take exception to is the "this worked for me" approach.

"Senior Army leaders have emphasized this repeatedly and are setting an example by doing it themselves. My own experience validates this. In 33-plus years of service and about 25 different duty positions, there were only two times when I ended up in a duty position I had specifically requested or pursued. Every other assignment was the result of personal intervention of commanders, mentors, or some senior leader in the span of my career who wanted to invest in me and prepare me for greater challenges. That has been my experience- indeed, that is the norm I have witnessed for over three decades- and it's the legacy I have tried to pass to others."

This statement is what is wrong with our current Army and exactly the premise that Barno and Kane are using to explain the exodus of talented junior leaders. Just because this worked for Lt. Gen. Hodges does not mean that it will work for all current junior leaders or for that fact even the majority. While this style might have worked for Lt. Gen. Hodges's three decades of service (20 of which were predominantly during times of peace), this should not be the direction of the future.

The Army currently is structured in such a way that in order to be successful, you have to meet certain "gates" at certain times. If you don't meet them, no matter how much talent you possess, you are considered "at-risk" for advancement, as well as ineligible for any of the extra incentives Lt. Gen. Hodges invoked. Likewise, it doesn't matter who you are, if you checked the right block at the right time, then you are good to go. Hypothetically speaking here, what is wrong with a captain who doesn't want to be a commander but makes a great intelligence officer, signal officer, or whatever staff position? If he or she had the opportunity to continue as a staff officer, he or she could be an integral component of the team. Why must that individual be a commander, where he or she might not excel, just to be eligible for promotion?

Let's take an example of two Army captains. In this example, all things are equal. They are in the same year group and have the exact same jobs. Captain #1 has been stationed at Ft. Hood (heavy) for 3 years, and wouldn't mind staying for another 3 years. Captain #2 has been stationed at Ft. Drum (light) for 3 years and really wants to go to Ft. Bragg (also light). Captain #1 receives orders for Ft. Bragg because he doesn't have light experience. Captain #2 receives orders for Ft. Hood because he doesn't have heavy experience. Why is it not possible for the two to switch and be happy? Well, it has been determined that in order for both to be successful, they need to be diverse. The outcome of this scenario: two disgruntled junior leaders who might end up deciding to get out. On the other hand, had the opportunity presented itself to get what they both wanted, both might stay in.

Nowadays people want stability over anything else, especially as we begin to emerge from a decade at war. I would venture to say that this is the driving factor over anything else on one's decision to "stay or go." Being obligated to pick up and move (children are deep-rooted at a school and/or a spouse is well-established in a career) just to check the block for promotion presents an officer with an undesirable choice. Nobody should fault that individual for choosing to get out -- that is, putting family first.

Rather than argue and maintain a stubborn mindset that there is nothing wrong, or that the Army is better off without the junior officers who choose to leave, my first recommendation is that current Army senior leaders LISTEN to what Barno and Kane are saying on the subject. Barno said it perfectly in his 13 February "Military Brain Drain" article:

There is no reason not to listen and respond to the concerns of younger officers -- while also fully meeting the needs of service. But you can't do it with a World War II mindset, an insular outlook, or an industrial aged personnel system- all of which are markedly in evidence today. And in the coming years, throwing money at the problem is not likely to be as easy as in the past.

The decision: Talk to junior leaders and find out what THEY want. Continuing down the current path won't "break" the Army; however, it certainly will hinder it for future generations.

"Si Syphus" is the company-grade officer sitting just a few desks away from you. Go ask him what he thinks.

I've long wanted to know more about what the Iraq war looked like from the side of the insurgents. I actually had hoped one day to write a book about this in collaboration with Anthony Shadid, but he was killed about 13 months ago while trying to cover the fighting in Syria.

But I got a bit of insight, unexpectedly, when reading Ernie O' Malley's On Another Man's Wound: A Personal History of Ireland's War of Independence, which was recommended recently by one of this blog's guest columnists. (I didn't know when I learned that the book and his other memoir were the basis for the great film The Wind That Shakes the Barley.)

Here is O'Malley's net assessment of the war. It sounds kind of familiar, no?

The enemy could have regular meals, a standard of comfort, the advantage of numbers and training, more than ample supplies of ammunition, and well-cared-for and efficient weapons, but they were...operating in a hostile countryside when they left the shelter of their barracks....The British could defeat some of our columns and round-up our men, but they could not maintain civil administration when they had lost the support of the people.

Tom again: O'Malley found that the British army, though full of veterans of World War I, was slow to adjust to the situation in the Irish fighting, where the rebels could move among the people. "Few [British] might be elastic enough for guerrilla fighting," he concluded. He detected in the British soldiers "a glum, swarthy melancholy."

As a captive, he concluded that, "Soldiers make bad gaolers," or jailers. He eventually escaped. The British never even figured out his true identity, even though they beat him and threatened to torture him with a red-hot poker, holding it close enough to his face to burn his eyebrows and singe his eyeballs. Calling Abu Ghraib!

What did victory look like? One day early in 1921, the fact that the fence-sitters were coming over to the side of the rebels made O'Malley realize he was winning: "We were becoming almost popular. Respectable people were beginning to crawl into us; neutrals and those who thought they had best come over were changing from indifference or hostility to a painful acceptance."

One important difference, though I don't know quite what to make of it: The British soldiers and their Irish foes were much closer culturally than were the Americans and Iraqi insurgents. They could even speak to each other, which meant that O'Malley could sort of apologize to some British officers held prisoner before executing them. O'Malley's brother had even been in the British army.

I recently picked up the memoirs of General Curtis LeMay, partly out of guilt that I don't know more about the history of the Air Force. My problem is, I still don't.

The book is mainly pablum. I gave up about halfway through and skimmed the rest, something I rarely do.

I did learn a few things:

--Alamogordo, New Mexico, seems to be the only Air Force base so lonely that even the chaplain once deserted.

--LeMay had a contempt for professional military education typical of the fast-rising officers of World War II. "It was utterly absurd, sending a lot of people to the War College after the war, when they'd already been through the mill." I wonder if the seeds of the Vietnam War are contained in that view -- that if you fought in the big one, there was nothing more to learn?

--I didn't know that he actually wrote that the solution to the Vietnam War was to threaten "to bomb them back into the Stone Age." He did.

--He did seem to use mission command, and see it as particularly American. "My notion has been that you can explain why, and then you don't need to give any order at all. All you have to do is get your big feet out of the way, and things will really happen. Forever I took the same course. Get the team together. ‘There's the goal, people. Go ahead.'"

That said, much of the rest of it is the type of claptrap that H.L. Mencken made a living destroying. I had expected that having Mackinlay Kantor, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Andersonville, as co-author of the memoir was a recommendation. I didn't realize that Kantor was a hack.

So I would rate this memoir as even worse than Douglas MacArthur's, which at least gave the reader a strong sense of that general's querulous grandiosity. And also worse than Tommy Franks' book, which had some memorable passages that inadvertently revealed that man's ignorance of his profession. (Plus, you can buy it used for one penny.)