Todd Greentree, who served as director of the RC-South initiatives group in Kandahar during 2010-2011, offers these recommendations in an article in the Journal of Strategic Studies:

(1) Prepare above all to assist a government through political action and economic development while helping it protect its population from security threats, without taking the job over.

(2) Commit early and decisively, but for the long-term, with clear political and military aims; trying to combat an industrial strength insurgency is much harder, takes longer, and is likely to be unsustainable.

(3) Create organizational arrangements tailored to the specific situation and scale of threat, and are capable of adapting rapidly.

(4) Establish clear lines of authority sufficient to achieve unity of effort, while maximizing unity of command the closer the situation is to war.

(5) Integrate civilian and military efforts at all levels.

(6) In pursuing campaign plans and programs maintain focus on political purpose.

(7) Educate a cadre of civilian and military officials from multiple organizations and elaborate a shared civil-military doctrine.

By "A. Marine Officer"

Best Defense guest columnist

1/9 CO likely deserved to be relieved. The Div CG relieved the battalion commander, the company commander, and the battalion gunner (a chief warrant officer weapons expert). Gunners are responsible for weapons training and employment advice. I haven't heard a peep about the investigation, but it stands to reason that if the Gunner went down, it was an ammo handling issue. If it was a training issue such as safe ammo handling, the CO has to go, and I'm cool with that.

The problem is that there is ZERO fricking information coming out of HQMC explaining ANY of this stuff. Nobody knows what to make of it, so nobody knows how to tighten up their units. That feeds conspiracy theories and loss of confidence in leadership because their actions start to look random and unprincipled. Everyone is cool with a CMC when he fires a commander who screws up -- DUI, banging a sergeant, etc. Everyone knows the deal. These mystery reliefs are harder to stomach. Amos doesn't know it, but he OWES us an explanation as to why he's firing O5s and O6s and hasn't cut a general officer loose on his watch yet. That Gurganus is still drawing a paycheck makes my blood boil.

I really earnestly and truly believe Amos is losing the faith of the Marine Corps. There isn't much support for him that I've heard. People see him flailing and taking folks down with him, not being intellectually honest, not having a whole lot of good ideas or success. His resignation would be good for the service. Paxton could ascend to the service chief level, they could find some suitable aviator (Guts Robling, perhaps?) to be ACMC, and all would be right with the world again. When Dunford is done at ISAF, they can either make him the chairman or move him to an open COCOM like SOUTHCOM if the timing lined up. Dunford is the heir apparent as CMC but a COCOM job would suit him better, I think. I'd follow Dunford to hell. I'm agnostic about the rest, but both Paxton and Robling have good reputations.

"A. Marine Officer" is just that. This article does not necessarily represent the views of the commandant of the Marine Corps, the Navy Department, the Defense Department, or the U.S. government. But ask a battalion or regimental commander what they think.

In discussing my cranky comments about Twitter the other day, the always insightful Jim Gourley summarized how we have embraced the internet: "we decided to use that vast network as a giant repository of pornography and cat videos."

This is the second time I've heard lately about China perhaps deciding that regime change is the best course for handling North Korea. Fine by me.   

Meanwhile, gunmen who may have been members of the North Korean military took over a Chinese fishing boat, stole its food and fuel, and demanded a ransom. "Rogue border guards" are being blamed. The Chinese captain says he was in Chinese waters.

The AP quotes a Chinese officer, Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, as writing that, "North Korea has gone too far! Even if you are short of money, you can't grab people across the border and blackmail."

By Capt. Nick Nethery

Best Defense guest columnist

I'm wondering if the massive increase in sexual assaults over the last few years is similar to the massive increase in suicides in the same period. And I'm wondering if the response to this problem might be similarly ineffective.

Suicides go up for a number of reasons, but rather than address those reasons, we stick a band-aid on a sucking chest wound by reducing it to a powerpoint slideshow and a video introduced by a sergeant major or general. In light of hard data showing increased suicides at the exact same time as requirements on commanders to administer these prevention classes have surged, is it possible that the classes are exacerbating the problem?

I don't mean to imply that the classes themselves cause suicides, but are leaders falling into the trap of thinking that the problem is solved because the brief has been given? That if you force your soldiers to sit through the brief, then you've "done your part" and no further action is required?

Might it be the same with sexual harassment and assault? Are leaders "checking the block" by administering these classes, choosing to believe their command is safe afterward, rather than addressing the underlying issues behind a rise in harassment and assault? I am no psychologist or sex abuse counselor, but I am a leader who tried to care about my soldiers when I had the fortune to lead them. During my time in command, I was skeptical of the Army's solution to this problem. I took a more dynamic approach. I knew all my soldiers, their families, their birthdays, their kids' names, what their goals and aspirations were, what kind of music and beer and cars they liked. I had male and female soldiers, of all ages and backgrounds. Not to be too sappy, but we were family. And you know what? We never had any of these problems.

Again, I just see my little lane. I'm no general. But I realized the limitations of the Army's answer to suicide prevention and sexual assault, and took a more active approach, one where I knew my soldiers down to the tiniest detail. I trusted them -- and showed them I did -- and they trusted me. I don't flatter myself that all my soldiers liked me. I didn't have perfect commands, and we had some other minor discipline issues, but in four years leading soldiers I never had a single incident of suicide, suicidal ideation, or sexual harassment/assault. It worked for me. My own bosses saw that my method worked, and were supportive as long as I was meeting the Army's required training guidelines.

Capt. Nick Nethery commanded the 737th and 722d EOD Companies, both at Ft. Bragg, and took 722d to Iraq from May 2011 to June 2012. This article represents his own views and are not necessarily those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

By Capt. Michael Carvelli, U.S. Army

Best Defense guest columnist

It is true that the U.S. Army does not follow its own doctrine, and it continues to do so even at the misfortune of soldiers. The stark lack of critical tasks degrades even the best of units as they plow through their deployments. It is not complacency, as most senior officers and NCOs consistently suggest to their commanders and first sergeants. It is laziness and the belief that "we are good." Wake up: You are not as good as you think!

This is my third deployment to Afghanistan, this time as a company commander. The lessons about being prepared have been taught to me in school and during my time as a platoon leader. They are hard remembered lessons, several times taught through my own failures or from an almost disastrous experience. However, I am determined to continually remember these experiences and ensure those under my command make every attempt to know them as well.

At this current point in time, the Army has digressed into creating a CONOP -- a unique misinterpretation of the Concept of the Operation paragraph contained within the Operation Order (OPORD). At all levels, from division down to platoon, leaders believe that a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow containing multiple images, sketches, and a verbose explanation sufficiently replaces an OPORD. In fact, it replaces the entire planning process itself at the cost of detailed planning, war gaming, and rehearsing.

I make this request: Please go back to the basics. Set an operational endstate with respect to enemy, friendly, terrain, and civilian considerations; conduct pre-combat checks and pre-combat inspections; and conduct rehearsals.

Ask these questions: Why are we here? Do we have what is needed to conduct the mission? Have we thought through the important aspects of the mission to ensure we are achieving the endstate and have the correct tools and equipment to reach it?

We, as a collective organization, have broken all tenets that are taught in our leadership schools, professional military education courses, and written in our own doctrine. First, span of control is three to five. My current battalion operates with nine companies. That is only to conduct route clearance. We are not even a real maneuver unit. Secondly, the creation of the Company Intel Support Team has replaced the entire function of the battalion intelligence section (S2). We create our own named areas of interest, layer on the various types of intelligence (human, signal, imagery, electronic, etc.) and attempt to target the enemy without a defined situational template (SITEMP). Lastly, brigade commanders have withheld the approval authority for platoon missions. There is even general officer approval for company and battalion missions. So much for ingenuity, delegation of authority, and confidence in lower level commanders.

The lack of pre-combat checks (PCCs), pre-combat inspections (PCIs), and rehearsals in forward deployed units is astounding. PCCs and PCIs are the first step in assuring that your subordinates are prepared for their mission. Are their sensitive items tied down? Extra batteries present? Optics and night vision operational? Weapons clean? Schools preach these, but I watch the leaders around me fail to apply these lessons.

Rehearsals are sessions in which a unit practices expected actions to confirm the plan, reveal unidentified coordination measures, synchronize the overall plan at key points in time and space, and update all aspects of the plan. Most units show up 20 minutes before their departure time, make sure everyone is present, tell them what they are doing today, and leave the base.

My first sergeant and I have "thumped" each of our platoons for their lack of attention to detail concerning PCCs and PCIs. They have all had to construct a Platoon Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) for vehicle load plans and rehearse the reloading of ammunition to the gunner, conduct rollover and fire drills, and practice every SOP they have developed. Almost every time, each platoon has changed or enhanced their SOPs solely through their rehearsals on the base. We are actually achieving progress! Although it is quite painful and creates more gray hairs than I wish to admit.

I express this frustration in the hope that someone reads it and realizes that they, too, are not as good as they think. Above all else, this sobering idea has captured the essence of my company's issues and has put us on a path to success.

CPT Michael Carvelli is an engineer officer currently deployed in Afghanistan. He has deployed in conventional and special operations units. This article represents his own personal views and not those of the Engineer Regiment, the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

In the ever-growing category of things I didn't know:

The first time British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain ever flew in an airplane was on 15 September 1938, to see Hitler at Berchtesgarden. Seeking to bolster his policy of appeasement, Chamberlain flew to Germany twice more that month, first to Bad Godesberg and then to Munich.

Also, Churchill, stunned and alone after the Munich agreement, retreated to his country house, where his first visitor was Guy Burgess, then a producer for the BBC, but of course also a Soviet spy. No indication that Churchill knew anything about that.

Both facts from Martin Gilbert's fine Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years.

A SFC who was working in sex abuse education was running a prostitution ring on Fort Hood? Someone needs to stop making this stuff up. Oh, that's right, you can't make up stuff like this.

I am surprised that SecDef Hagel isn't slugging four stars as they walk in his office, and then giving them noogies and banging their heads into the wall. This of course comes on top of the allegedly butt-grabbing AF LTC who was his service's sexual assault czar. Can you imagine the damage a guy like that could allegedly do during a year-long tour at Bagram? ("ILB because someone has enough time during their deployment to run this website.") And probably has.

Part of the problem: For years, the services have been dumping non-performers into EO and sexual harassment billets. In other words, they weren't taking this stuff that seriously. Now they are reaping what they have sowed.

Or, as Gen. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told reporters yesterday, "We're losing the confidence of the women who serve that we can solve this problem. That's a crisis."

I always thought that President Obama wanted to model his domestic policy on Lincoln and his foreign policy on Eisenhower.

But the news this week of the IRS harrassing right-wing groups and the Justice Department harrassing the Associated Press evokes the Nixon era for me.

On the other hand, Nixon had better relations with the military (despite contemplating firing Creighton Abrams in Vietnam).

This is me really going off the Obama reservation.  

By Jason Fritz

Best Defense guest respondent

When my copy of the January-March 2013 issue of The CAVALRY & ARMOR Journal (the U.S. Cavalry and Armor Association version of ARMOR Magazine) arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago, I was also a bit puzzled by the article titled "How to Eat Steak with a Knife and Fork!" Not only because the title motif "How to Eat X with Y" has become quite tired, but because I expected it to be the beginning of an onslaught of "Armor Rulz!" articles in future issues. Of course, reading the article you can see that it is not a paean to maneuver warfare but rather is only a plug for three schools offered by the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, written by the commander of those schools.

To me the biggest issue was not that ARMOR ran an article about "core competencies," but rather that the publishers used valuable space in a branch journal to advertise schools that officers and NCOs should be going to anyway. I do not share Tom's lament on the tactical focus of ARMOR as it is a journal for armor units, which are by definition brigades and below and therefore tactical formations. But his post brings up a prevalent problem: the demise of the branch journals.

Anyone who subscribes to their branch journal has probably noticed this decline. Articles are becoming repetitive. Issues are becoming thinner. I certainly can't think of a single article in the past two years in ARMOR from which I felt I learned something. In the case of ARMOR, which was first published in 1888, this demise is ill-timed. For the first time in over a generation our armor force has extensive and varied combat experience and we should not lose these lessons.  And this is true for every branch.  In an introduction to the Association version of the issue that Tom linked to earlier in the week, MG (R) Terry Tucker, former chief of Armor and current president of the U.S. Cavalry & Armor Association, wrote:

I would like to take a moment to thank all who contribute to this Magazine and participate in the important discussion of our Mounted Force. However, as important as it is for our contributors to submit articles based on history, "tactics, techniques and procedures," or personal experience, our mission challenges us to exchange critical thought among our members. I believe we too often fall short in this area in our Cavalry and Armor Journal and in ARMOR Magazine. We want discussion, differing opinions, and even heated debate when appropriate.

Branch journals may not be Foreign Affairs, Parameters, or even PRISM, but they are and have been the primary outlet for professionals at the tactical level to disseminate, discuss, and debate their tradecraft. Theirs being such a focused audience, you won't find academics rushing to get published. That leaves it to those of us who have been there and done it to keep these forums alive; you don't know who needs to know what you know or what doors writing will open for you. I wrote one article for ARMOR in 2008 while I was still in the Army. In addition to earning a free year's subscription to the magazine, this article played a significant role in my securing my first job out of the Army. The article, titled "Measuring Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare," has been the publication prospective employers have invariably asked about first because they recognize ARMOR and because they are interested in the topic.  Recognizing this success, I shouldn't have stopped at one article -- something I intend to fix this year.

If you are a commander in the force, find a way to incentivize your officers and NCOs to write for their journal -- prospective writers need to know that writing is valued in their organization.  Whether you are a commander or not, submit articles to your branch's journal (make sure you abide by their submission criteria). Get your good ideas and your name out there and put it in print.  Branch journals provide an opportunity for you to influence your community, work on your writing skills, and maybe help someone who needs the information or idea you're holding on to.

Jason Fritz served as an armor officer in the U.S. Army for six years. He is now a defense consultant focusing on land power issues and a contributor to the Ink Spots security blog.

It is interesting. I'd like it even if I didn't have a book on it.

By Bing West

Best Defense guest commenter

Re Benghazi and the military (a matter of much lesser import than the deceptive talking points): On ABC on 12 May, George Will and retired General Cartwright excused the military by saying 10 hours was not enough time to react. The general said it takes up to "a day or two" to arm an F-16, file flight plans, arrange for refueling, etc.

Therefore the solution is to pre-stage the right kinds of forces, which requires a much larger military and a knowledge beforehand about the location and severity of the threat. By this reasoning, we do not have general purpose forces; we have special purpose forces.

Benghazi thus raises the question: Do we need more forces staged around the world or do we need senior officers who can respond to emergencies outside their normal checklists?

Last week's congressional testimony included two new revelations. First, four Special Forces soldiers en route to Benghazi to help our wounded were ordered not to go by a Special Operations officer in Stuttgart. Not only did that manifest being afraid to take a risk for your beleaguered comrades, it also raised the question of authority in the chain of command during battle. What is the authority that permits an officer thousands of miles away to override the commander on the ground?

Second, Mr. Hicks testified that Secretary Clinton approved, at about 8 p.m. Washington time, the evacuation of the embassy in Tripoli, due to terrorist threats. That was a dramatic, escalatory decision. It is unknown whether the president or the secretary of defense was notified.

In the event, the U.S. military took no new, immediate action, even though the embassy was being evacuated in addition to the chaos at Benghazi. The military has justified itself by saying the battle was over by the next morning. But no human being could predict the night before when the battle would end. That the embassy in Tripoli was not overrun was a matter of fate/luck/enemy decisions that had nothing to do with the prescience or actions of the Pentagon staff. The tardiness of U.S. forces was a failure to improvise, which in turn is a basic test of leadership in battle. 

One question illustrates the inertia: Had it been President Obama who was missing in Benghazi, would the military have taken only the same actions and later offered the same rationale; to wit, "we knew the battle would be over in 10 hours, (inside our OODA loop)"?

The military at the highest level must examine its ability to improvise, and not rely on the enemy to give us "a day or two" to prepare.

Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, has written seven books about ground combat.

It occurred to me that the characteristic phrase of our time may be "body parts." Journalists just love to use it, most often I think in reporting on car bomb explosions. That strikes me as lazy -- why not say "arms, legs, heads, jawbones, and so on"? (Unless, of course, you can't tell what they are.)

I always read the Pentagon's flag officer announcements, mainly to see if someone I know has gotten an interesting job. (It is nice to see people I knew as majors are now making three and four stars. Unfortunately, it also reminds me that people who joined the military when I started covering the Pentagon are retiring.)

In this case, I don't know Rear Adm. Metts, but I sure found the move of this information warfare specialist interesting. Maybe the U.S. government is going to respond more actively to the stream of Chinese intrusions into American government and business computers:

Rear Adm. (lower half) Willie L. Metts will be assigned as director for intelligence, J2, U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii.  Metts is currently serving as deputy chief, tailored access operations, S32, National Security Agency, Fort Mead, Md. 

And yes, that is the way the press release spelled Fort Meade.