The Lt. Col.'s remarks are most interesting and insightful. He seems to have the keen eye of an intelligent and reflective observer. Perhaps we could hear more from him.

The only questionable part I can find is towards the end where seemingly sycophantic drooling over the guys with stars takes place. These remarks are so typically ‘corporate’ as if he is fishing for notice and promotion.

If you knew him, you'd know that the last thing anyone would call Coglianese is sycophantic. In my experience he is a careful and independent thinker.

Guys, let's be careful about impugning peoples' motives and character. I mean, especially when they are serving on the front lines, OK?

Thanks,
Tom

I think that this is a very good addition to the points that Major S.R. made earlier, and this was what I have been trying to get across in all of this: it is much too simplistic (and, in my humble opinion, intellectually lazy) to chalk up success as being a product of a "light" or a "heavy" background.

As LTC Coglianese points out, both experiences have something to offer. It is the leader that is most able to adapt to changing environments, bringing to bear the lessons-learned of not ony his own experience but those gained through the study of others experiences, who will succeed. LTC C rightly emphasizes that just personal experience isn't necessarily enough, however. As I said in an earlier post, we have to really hit on nurturing true intellectual development within the Officer Corps (and with our NCOs, too) so that we have fighters who can think critically in order to get to the heart of problems.

This is why I really liked Major S.R.'s observation that one of the best indicators of future effectiveness in COIN is a leader's openness to sharing his/her own lessons learned through personal mistakes. This shows a healthy amount of intellectual and professional humility, and I think both are needed if we are going to get personal ego out of the way. Ego is a huge obstacle to finding ways to solve these wicked problems. When I return to theater very soon, I will attempt to put these principles into practice with me and my unit.

With all respect to Mr. Donnelly (a smarter and more accomplished man that me), I have to say that I believe his earlier comment that he would not like to see a "heavy" Army officer as the next CoS is a really bad way of looking at things. As I said in my initial response to him, I don't care where the next chief comes from . . . as long as he is a critical thinker with vision who is going to help the Army adapt. If we followed the "let's make sure we only pick guys from one particular career path" mentality, we might have been deprived of having "heavy" Army guys like H.R. McMasters, Pete Mansoor, and Sean MacFarland in key leadership positions in recent years. Merit trumps branch, and talent should trump seniority.

Sounds similar (if better constructed) than my thoughts posted under Cranky tankers: an armor officer on light vs. heavy Army (and we're giving those apocryphal horses a workout!):

Adaptive leadership over
by F on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 3:00pm
Adaptive leadership over branch of origin makes sense. Some officers will join the army with that ability. Others will have to learn it. But consider officer career progression before the general officer level. Platoon commanders are typically restricted in the tools at their disposal. A tank platoon can't spare any crewmen for prolonged dismounted work, for example. Companies, depending on attachments, have a little more scope for creative operations, and battalions more yet again and so on. The training experiences at the low levels are similarly diverse. Tankers learn to deal with time, space, communications and logistics very differently from infantry officers, while gunners master effects. Where the ability to adapt becomes apparent is in watching how officers grasp and learn to best manipulate the capabilities of other arms and, today, the capabilities of other government/NGO agencies.

Branch politics just lead to entrenched emotional fist waving, while reducing officers to a sheet of paper listing qualifications and experience (and there's the old saw about Napoleon's mule who went on 17 campaigns, but was still at the end just a mule) is a recipe for mediocrity.

A mechanism recognising and rewarding creativity is required to promote long-term healthy leadership.

Mr. Ricks, this is not an example of "moral courage"; writing things like this:

"but really look at the backgrounds of GEN Petraeus, GEN McChrystal, MG Bolger, BG McMaster, and BG MacFarland among others who have an established record of excellence in this war. Their success is not by accident. It is from relentless preparation over a career."

That is called self-promotion. Perhaps he believes this, but I doubt he worried about using his name.

Perhaps such comments are common among mid-level officers, but this was once considered serious brown nosing.:

"We are not all created with equal ability.) They have had broadening experiences as graduate students and instructors or as fellows and are known to have vast and substantial personal libraries (predominantly, but assuredly not completely, of military and strategic topics) and be of rarefied intellectual capability (today, my Division Chief of Staff and I were just talking about GEN McChrystal, whom he knows, and his almost impossible to imagine intellectual horsepower)."

The most recent book about the Cpl Tillman friendly fire cover up depicts McChrystal as a key player, who knowingly wrote up a bogus Silver Star to please the White House. No one seriously thinks the "surge" in Iraq was a success in winning, it is just a ceasefire. If the LTC wishes to write anything critical of the Army, I will be impressed.

Why are so many trying to attribute LTC C's comments to some form of careerism or, to put it more plainly, "brown-nosing?" I don't know him (and I doubt if anyone else here does either). It is one thing to take issue with his opinions and analysis, but it is quite a different thing to cast doubt on his professional integrity.

We have lost focus on what this discussion was supposed to be about. It is time to end it.

...there's quite a bit of merit in what LTC Coglianese says. But I'd add for the record one of the most interesting things I saw in Iraq was a mech infantry battalion (1-6 IN of 2 BCT, 1 AR DIV) which quickly adapted to long foot patrols through open terrain north of pre-Awakening Ar Ramadi. At the time, there was a fair amount of doctrine being taught in pre-deployment courses, but very little of it could be considered counterinsurgency and almost none was geared toward preparing heavy guys to understand the finer points of working with the population. Instead, junior officers and their noncommissioned counterparts learned how to adapt and combat local insurgents and imported AQI terrorists on the fly.

Debriefing our patrols was a fascinating exercise, and it taught me two things:

1. Soldiers who typically fight as dismounts (scouts and mortarmen in our case) had an edge initially, but this diminished rapidly as the mechanized grunts realized their lifespan could be considerably shorter without the protection of a nearby Bradley or an Abrams. That realization led our company and platoon commanders to cozy up to tribal shaykhs before the late Shaykh Sattar really got the sahawa program off the ground. The locals, in turn, provided security under the guidance of their shaykhs and began to turn on AQI when they learned we weren't just going to shoot anyone for carrying an AK.

2. Well-trained officers are a must-have, but a quick-witted NCO or junior enlisted soldier with a feel for the local population is irreplaceable in COIN. There's a certain visceral aspect to building relationships with the population and enlisted soldiers - in my admittedly limited experience - were every bit as inclined to work with the population out of necessity as were our most thoughtful officers by virtue of schoolhouse wisdom.

None of which is to say that the mech infantry NCO is himself a perfect soldier, but I've seen good leaders and "best practices" emerge from the back of a Bradley to lead the way in the COIN fight. Not bad for guys who still unabashedly (or maybe ironically) use the old motto "death before dismount" to describe their worldview.

V/R,

Brett MacKellar

Tom
We've beat this topic to death. Please write something else that is overly simplistic, broad, anecdotal and offends half of the US military so we have a new topic to argue.

Major S. Rossi