Duck: Agreed. Particularly down range. Short of some UCMJ violation, we all "did a great job". We know that isn't true.

To my knowledge in the Iraq and AFG wars, only one General has been fired: McChrystal.

I think one issue with "rewarding failure" is the method we use to judge it vs. success; also consider variables.

Was GEN Petraeus more successful in Iraq than GEN Casey? Yes. Does that mean that Casey failed? Some would say no, he just had a less effective method than Petraeus. Others would say that yes, he absolutely failed because he saw that his method didn't work and kept with it. "Stay the course". Everytime I heard anyone say that I wanted to puke...as if there was only one way to fight in Iraq. The variable to consider is how deep were Rummy's hands into Casey's execution of the war? Should we blame Casey for everything that happened during his tenure? Maybe that's not fair. Others would say he's got four stars and that's what he gets paid the big bucks for. The same could be said for the current vice-chief Chiarelli. He was 1CD commander and MNCI under Casey. Was he a failure? Hard to say. But he was there when it wasn't going well...and whatever changes he implemented didn't work, obviously.

Then there are good "second chance" stories, like GEN Odierno. His first tour could be considered by many as a failure...at best not effective at all. But his subsequent posts as Corps and MNFI commander were considered successes. We could all say the he "learned his lesson". Conventional wisdom then would say it's wise to continue to count on the guys with experience because they'll improve the next try, over the guys with less experience, hoping they come in with some new, great ideas or approaches.

I have cursed many, many General officers while I was on the ground in Iraq. Particularly in 05-06 just prior to Odierno's arrival. I was initially pissed that Casey wasn't fired and forced into retirement. I've cooled off since then and realized he's probably a pretty good General; he just wasn't very effective as MNFI commander. Maybe that was his fault, maybe it wasn't. I believe that Rumsfeld's removal, not Casey's, that was the real reason why we were able to change our approach in Iraq.

At a lower level, there have been some Battalion Command level firings...but none to my knowledge for tactical failure; mainly for misconduct or some other reason not related to unit performance.

IT IS the Army's mentality right now that as long as you don't screw up ethically or legally, then you will keep your job. Your tactical performance has nothing to do with promotion, because like I mentioned to Duck: The Army believes that every Soldier does a good job; which we know of course isn't true...we should be the hardest on ourselves for command performances in combat. But like I said, who will hold the measuring stick and what criteria will they use?

Thanks,

DD

Additions:

1. I realized that I just wrote an entire post clouded in the very ambiguity that Tom was talking about.

2. Obama fired the GEN that was running AFG when he took office. Can't remember his name.

As someone who served from 1978 to 1998, and came is a an E-1 and retired as a Captain, I can agree 100%

The Whole Military, to include the Contractors, has become a type of "Special Olympics" where everyone gets a medal.

Good work...I was too lazy to use the Google Machine

McKiernan and Casey couldn't ask for more men, without bucking their commander's intent that they operate under 'economy of force' rules. In McKiernan's case, Petraeus was clearly backing Odierno's position in Iraq, protecting the surge gains (and our strategic position in the Gulf), and angling for his own guy McChrystal to take the ISAF command. McKiernan couldn't get 10,000 men shifted from Odierno's FOBS, while McChrystal got CENTCOM's backing to press for 60-80K (and tour extensions), and settle for 40K.

Casey's command in 2006 was the rearguard in the political fight to prevent a Republican revolt over the Iraq fiasco. Sen's Hagel and Warner were openly threatening to pull the plug on Bush's war, and it was clear the post-election climate would be even worse.

To judge a theater commanders performance, we need to see the communications history. No one's seen more than Petraeus' wanted to reveal, which stops at the mask of the general. Certainly George W isn't talking yet.

"To judge a theater commanders performance, we need to see the communications history."

No. We need to see the progress towards victory. If that seems a bit nebulous, it's because 'victory's' definition has become evanescent, a vaporous ghost time-shifting down the road. That alone condemns the whole lot of losers.

In nearly all modern situations, the idea of trial by combat has been set aside. God help us if we add war to that list.

perhaps the Army could pick up a few ideas and/or lessons from the Navy in terms of responsibility and accountability.....the Navy has been firing/relieving quite a few skippers lately.....UMM

but what followed.

9/11 itself has less to do with the Army than the operations that followed it.

Had we chosen not to invade Iraq and not to use conventional forces in AFG, nothing would have changed for most of the Army, outside of the small SOF community.

However, the trials and tribulations the Army has gone through in Iraq/AFG exposed our personnel system, organization (MTOE), training, manning and readiness at exponential levels. Tom just scraped the surface. There are a lot more layers to peel back.

The Army is not going to be rescued by outside forces.

Though badly in need of wholesale reform, there's no Goldwater/Nichols/Skelton to ride in to the rescue. It will have to be the most difficult kind of reform: bootstrap. In the most risk-averse and brain-dead of the Services, one in which dusty doctrine substitutes for thought, this is a tall order. (Maybe that's another reason for a draft: to get some open minds and agile actors into the Army.)

The inside-fix that maybe sorta might could get it started is in blogs like this, and at SAMS, and - can't believe I'm saying this - Carlisle: Never Underestimate the Power Of A Crank Letter! Young Turks, uninspired by the current leadership and fed up with their outfit's failings, need to lead a quiet revolt in print and on the web. Go ahead, blurt out the truth in public. Either that or see the mission deficiencies and derelictions and defeats that have become the Army's norm be ossified. For those who fear the career consequences I would offer the motto of the Navy fighter pilot: "Death! But never look bad!"

were in Mosul at the same time. I was in B 3/502.

I think a lot of the push to get American forces out of town and consolidated onto the super-FOBs was an early knee-jerk response to the IED threat. The transportation units and logistics contractors were spending many hours a day on the roads running hot chow and resupply out to the company camps in town, and making contact more than the rifle companies were.

Keeping with Abazaid's theory that US forces were an "irritant" in Iraqi society, between our convoys in city traffic and our little camps in every neighborhood, shortening the supply lines by pulling everyone back onto the big base camps was a logical move.

That isn't to say the whole premise wasn't completely flawed. After our move off Camp Zed in early December, we kept the same patrol sectors, so we had to commute off the airfield, across the Tigris River bridge, and back to our old neighborhood. 45 minutes of driving each way to run a four hour mounted patrol.

And since more soldiers slept close to the big chow hall (the same one that was suicide-bombed after we left, killing a former 3/502 officer who was then with the Strykers), and more soldiers were eating hot chow and going to MWR and such compared to living in abandoned buildings, I bet some genius down in Baghdad in LTG Sanchez's JTF-7 thought "We're improving quality of life for our soldiers, that's a good thing!"

I've always been reminded of a fictional NVA officer's line from the Kent Anderson novel "Sympathy for the Devil". "The Americans were amateurs. They were far more concerned with survival than killing the enemy."