"Tarnished brass"

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 4:44 PM Share

That's the title of a good article about military professionalism in the new issue of World Affairs by Richard Kohn, the great University of North Carolina military historian (and a friend of mine).

I was especially struck by this pungent line:

Iraq has become the metaphor for an absence of strategy."

Plus an depressing fact I'd never known:

William Westmoreland was the first active duty Army officer to graduate from the Harvard Business School."

Bert 2332 is back/Flickr

EXPLORE:EDUCATION, IRAQ, MILITARY

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BILL KELLER

1:04 AM ET

May 9, 2009

West Point is looking to beat Navy......

"Center for Professional Military Ethics at the Military Academy", after Lt Cox's comment on USNA's version and understanding the heat and guile among the Navy alumni's leadership to stop a four decade humiliation from Notre Dame, Army may be adopting the same fund raising strategy to boost the quality of its football teams.

Unless this initiative is placed among and in efforts in mastering literature, foreign language, law and philosophy and away from corporate donor money, its results will be limited to better competition for the Commander's Trophy and a stronger bias for certain brands among weapons and platforms.

This aside, Richard Kohn has identified a strategic flaw in character, that long reach of principles, missing in society from religion to finance and reflected by the military - people powered with quantitative analysis, myths and high technology toys but who no longer understand what is necessary to suffer, prevail and sustain from the bottom up in the world we live.

RUBBER DUCKY

7:57 PM ET

May 7, 2009

At The National War College,

At The National War College, one of the running jokes described the "William Westmoreland Award" ... given to the mediocre Army officer with the best military bearing.

National's Class of '82 was the first to see a curriculum that covered the Vietnam War. Think of it — it took that long for the professional military to get over Vietnam, to the point of even discussing it! In the covering the topic, we had a series of Vietnam luminaries - Westmoreland, his intel chief, Dougherty, Vogt, etc. - on the podium, each offering his version of how our nation and its leaders had failed us in Vietnam.

Then it was Bud Zumwalt's turn, he the primary architect of the Navy's brown-water strategy in Vietnam and its most prominent admiral directly involved. Admiral Zumwalt had two things to say. 1.) "We got our ass kicked militarily." 2.) "Who to blame? Us guys, the military leaders."

As long as the military can point fingers outside its circle, it seems it will do so. Soon upon us will be the discussion of Who Lost Iraq? Be sure the military includes itself in the conversation.

IAN.D.SMITH

5:10 AM ET

May 8, 2009

Having had the wrong strategy

Having had the wrong strategy for a war does not make Westmoreland a mediocre officer in general. It just means he was wrong. It does not make it less costly in blood and treasure, of course. Wars are invariable high stakes, and even following lessons of military history does not guarantee victory.

Interesting that you should paint the naval officer as the reasonable one that started debate. Not parochial at all.

You ask "Who Lost Iraq?" How about those who got us into a war that was not a great idea in the first place. You could say, "Well, it's your job to figure out how to win it." But I would rebut that sometimes an Army is put into a situation with few good options, and it must do the best it can with terrible conditions. It does not get it right the first time, especially when its hand is tied behind its back. But the Army gets its hand free, and figures out its methods again. Under difficult circumstances, it turns the war around, and does pretty well militarily--which is its job by the way.

There is only so much an Army can do. Wars like Iraq are mixed with complex politics as well. Army officers, mediocre or stellar, can only do so much to force a Shi'ia gov't not to be a Tehran puppet; for Sunni to believe that Shi'ia are not Tehran's puppet; for a political culture of corruption and tribalism to turn to rule of law, power sharing, majority rule and minority rights. Army commanders can only do so much to heal the economic wounds Sunnis felt after the fall of Saddam, and so on.

Ten years from now, the American Navy will not have fixed the piracy off the Horn of Africa. But you won't hear Army officers clamor about "Who lost the 'war against piracy,'" because we know that the coast of Somalia alone is roughly the length of the U.S. eastern seaboard; that the Navy's resources are limited; that it is supporting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; that even a coalition task force of Navies cannot cover all thousands of square miles of high seas; that large Navy boats cannot patrol into the very shallow waters right off the coast of Somalia; that a Navy cannot alone defeat a connected network of pirates that thrive on lack of effective governance on shore; that deploying troops into Somalia is a political death trap for a U.S. administration, so your chances of getting help on shore are slim. The American Navy will continue-as it has been for years now-hindered by political reality. Navy officers will say things like, "Our hands are tied," and "This is a difficult situation." They may even "point fingers outside its circle." But you won't hear Army officers smugly, suggest in reply with college freshman rhetoric that the Navy should blame itself for losing or "mediocrity" in a tough situation.

Rubber Ducky, your post is transparent, shallow, self-congratulatory, and smug. Nice cliche Vietnam-to-Iraq comparison, by the way.

Sorry you caught me near the end of a rough week.

Take care.

RUBBER DUCKY

10:32 AM ET

May 8, 2009

Reality sucks, eh?

IAN.D.SMITH

9:28 PM ET

May 8, 2009

You bet it does.

TOM RICKS