U.S. Congress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will Palmer/Flickr

I've thought for awhile that Robert Gates is the best defense secretary we've ever had, kind of a William Perry but with a killer instinct. I like the determined way he took on the pork barrelers in the fight over the F-22 fighter.

Two of his recent observations only confirm my opinion.

First, from his July 16 speech in Chicago, this warning:

...The president is the eighth president I've worked for, and I do not recall a single time in my entire professional career when I felt that the country faced as complex and, in many respects, dangerous a time as we do now."

I also find the following comment Gates made at a press conference on Monday quite interesting. I hadn't seen this thought expressed this way:

...We're living in a time not only of great change, but also great simultaneity. Many things are happening all at once in many different places; and though we may be tired, we must stay focused."

Not bad for an old Sovietologist.

Update: In this item, the second quotation, about "simultaneity," was not said by Gates, but by Adm. Mike Mullen in the same joint press conference. I apologize for the error.

Jason Reed - Pool/Getty Images

Finally, Americans may get the right to carry concealed loaded weapons in National Parks. How did we get so far without this privilege?

The irony is that the National Park Service doesn't even allow kayaks on the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park. But now we can pack pistols with our picnics.  

Savannah Grandfather/Flickr

There's a bill before Congress now to turn six former military bases into emergency shelters. I have a better idea: Turn them into holding tanks for aging baby boomers, especially those whose retirement nest eggs have been evaporating. Several of the bases in the congressional bill appear to be in Florida and California, perfect homes for those formerly golden years.

I am about to get into real inside baseball, so skip this item unless you care about the plumbing of policymaking.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 governs the U.S. military chain of command. It was devised in response to operational problems seen in the botched hostage rescue mission in Iran in 1980 and the screwy U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. There is no question that the act improved the "jointness" of the U.S. military, making the services work better with each other. The Iraq war has subjected the act to its first sustained test. "War is the great auditor of institutions," Corelli Barnett writes in his great history of military leadership in World War I, The Swordbearers.

So, how has the law done? My guess, based on a review of the formulation of strategy in the war is that it has been more of a hindrance than an aid in strategic decision-making. But this question needs a lot more study before any conclusions can be reached. I'd welcome reader suggestions on how to go about this. I think the question is especially important because so many government officials, especially at the Pentagon, talk about a "Goldwater-Nichols Act for the interagency" that would make different departments work with each other as well as the military services have under the act. Before we leap into that, I'd like to know how well this thing has really worked.