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Posted By Thomas E. Ricks
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - 8:56 AM
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I asked Lady Emma Sky (that's her on the left in the poster) how she thought her old boss, General Odierno, would do as Army chief. As you can see, Emma, a British expert on the Middle East, has come a long way since her old anti-American, anti-Army days. Now she's just anti-American.
By Emma Sky
Best Defense roving
Middle East correspondent
I had hoped that General Odierno would one day become Chief of Staff of the U.S.
Army. Given his love of the Army as an institution, it seemed the job he was
most suited for. He always refers to the Army as his second family and loves
being with soldiers. I remember accompanying him out to the front lines in Iraq
during the darkest days in 2007. He would stop and shake hands with every
soldier he passed. He would listen intently to his commanders as they briefed
him. And when he came to speak, I observed how he lifted up everyone's morale
as he explained the bigger picture, described how important their efforts were,
and elaborated on how their actions at the tactical level contributed to
strategic success. His sheer determination, force of personality and
bulking physique made us all believe that we could achieve the Mission. And I
remember how on the helicopter rides back he would express his amazement at the
young men and women who volunteer to serve in America's armed forces and who go
out day after day in full body armor in soaring temperatures in order to
achieve the mission. He is always invigorated by being around soldiers and
thrives on their energy. He has always been a soldier's soldier and loves the
camaraderie of the military. For him there is no greater privilege than leading
soldiers. And I know that across the Army soldiers will be delighted with his
appointment.
It is funny how these things come about. A few weeks ago, the rumor was that
General Odierno would become the next Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff (VCJCS). But then the top candidate to be the next Chairman fell by the
wayside due to an 'unfortunate incident', and General Dempsey was picked,
opening up the post of CSA and ensuring that the VCJCS could not be from the
army. Back in 2008, General Odierno was supposed to become Vice Chief of Staff
of the Army. But the then CENTCOM Commander Admiral Fallon had an 'unfortunate
incident' which resulted in him stepping down, General Petraeus moving to
CENTCOM, and General Odierno being sent back to assume command of all forces in
Iraq only six months after he had left. How unpredictable the lives of
America's senior commanders can be!
In many ways, General Odierno personifies the transformation and evolution of
the Army -- particularly in the post-2003 period. From his first tour in Iraq,
he learned the limits of military might, the importance of understanding other
cultures, and the need to seek advice and support from outside the military. He
came to appreciate the need to work collaboratively with others. He realized
that if he could not achieve unity of command, he could gain unity of effort by
developing with other branches of U.S. government, the United Nations, embassies
of allied countries, and NGOs a common understanding of the environment and
what was required to bring stability. He instructed commanders to understand
the drivers of instability in their areas, challenging them to understand the
'why' and not just the 'what'. Although at times in the past misunderstood, he has
proven himself to be a flexible and versatile commander who continues to learn.
Whatever job given to him, he has done it well, whether it be breaking down
doors, countering insurgents, stability operations, or closing down an
organization. He has the tenacity to see a job through to the end. But he also
has the intellect and strength of character to let go -- not easy for a Type-A personality.
He has led soldiers through some of the most difficult transitions, through
surges to draw-downs, from leading to advising.
As soon as his nomination was announced, I received a number of messages from
Iraqis delighted that "our General" had achieved the recognition they
believe he deserves. A State Department colleague sent me a note saying
"the personal example of General Odierno's leadership and stewardship of
the national interest meant so much to many of us on the civilian side."
An ambassador wrote: "He is a very good man -- a very decent man
too." British General Lamb, who served with General Odierno in Iraq, wrote
to me: "General Ray set the bar high. We would attempt to reach it and
generally failed. If he saw us struggling he would reach down and offer us a
big hand up. Put simply: fit for Purpose. Always has been -- always will be --
a great American." All of us who have had the privilege to serve with and
alongside General Odierno are delighted and proud that he has been selected to
be the next chief of staff of the Army. He will serve the Army -- and the
country -- well. No finer leader -- no better man.
Baroness Sky, a British expert on the Middle East, served more time in Iraq than just about anyone except Iraqis, most recently as the political advisor to General Odierno during the surge.
Gen Odierno will be a great Chief of Staff. He's a great general who learns from his mistakes. Emma Sky knows this all too well.
However, will there be any dissenting voices to give the President alternatives to COIN and endless war?
I was hoping Cartwright would do it. Will Dempsey?
OCO will have a long gray line connection...
....DCIA, DNSA, CJCS and CSA will all be West Pointers in this next round of stakeholders. With, three threatre combatants and a professional in military intelligence, this is interesting force structure for national security leadership - one that just might cause an enemy's pause before action. It is a portfolio that Sun Tzu and President Lincoln might have appreciated, also.
..... there are too few men of this stature.
Oh to have just one Dempsey-Odierno-Cartwright-Mattis in my own country.
BILL KELLER writes: "one that just might cause an enemy's pause before action"
I am sure these enemies’ are just shaking in their boots at the thought of the long gray line connection. Also, I doubt President Lincoln would have appreciated two idiotic and pointless wars on the other side of the world. And Sun Tzu, he likely would have thought us merely fools the way we have behaved in the past ten years.
But this line up is about discouraging the next enemy...
....without a use of force. These are Generals who will exact a price, learn, readjust and exact more. Suggest President Obama understands pointless wars and a past decade bad behaviour very well and has picked his generals accordingly.
JPWREL cracks me up. I wonder if he realizes how arrogant he sounds.
JPWREL.
PUBLIUS183, do you really believe that the Taliban on one extreme or the lets say the Chinese on the other really give a damn that the DCIA, DNSA, CJCS and CSA wear class rings from the USMA? Thanks for the nomination but I prefer my retirement to a posting as Army CSA.
The Chinese definitely believe in knowing one's enemy.
The class ring is of no import, but I think when you have Petraeus and Odierno leading two of the most important organizations in our national security structure, it'd give any enemy pause.
Petraeus and Odierno did not start the wars they fought. They just fought 'em the best they knew how and did a pretty good job.
Clearly Baroness Sky* is arranging for 'unfortunate accidents' to happen to any general that gets in the way of her puppet, Odierno. Under orders emanating from the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, the baroness' plans are now one step closer to fruition.
___________
* Photos of the Baroness are notoriously difficult to find; but here is one: http://www.google.com.br/imgres?http://aarondembskibowden.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/baroness_cobra_gallery_0029.jpg?w=471&h=728
Tom, this came up the last time you called her Lady Sky. Did she receive a peerage or marry a peer? The only public honours we could come up with listed her as Miss Emma Sky, not a peer. And it's not high enough for her to be Dame Emma, either. So how did she become Baroness Sky?
A baroness can be called either baroness or lady.
Best,
Tom
Tom, yes that's correct but how did she become a baroness, a rank of peerage? There's the two ways I mentioned above (marriage or awarded a peerage in her own right) or inherited one. She's listed in the 2008 Birthday Honours as Miss Emma Morgan Sky, so she wasn't a peer then or married. The official British Monarchy Flickr photostream has her investiture picture listed as Miss Emma Sky, uploaded in December 2010. It's unlikely for such a protocol sensitive bunch not to call her Emma Baroness Sky, Baroness Sky, or Lady Sky if she warrants it. The list of life peerages awarded since 1997 doesn't list her either. Was she awarded one "in pectore"?
I'd like to second the question
There is no Sky on the official Roll of the Peerage. http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Roll%20of%20the%20Peerage.pdf
These accounts fail for utterly lacking the mention of how Odierno did with the 4ID, which in no small part helped fuel the insurgency ... as Ricks himself so wrote extensively on.
As Chief of Staff, at which inning will Odierno do a good job in?
We're looking for adaptive leaders can't assume everyone will have that "finger tip feeling" for complex situations they have never experienced. He has managed to figure some things out.
GEN Ordierno is a pretty good guy. I don't know if he is a rocket scientist, but he has some insight. I remember him talking on the tube when he had 4th ID up North, he said something like "If we just knew where thet were at, we'd just drive down there and blast them". I thought he had defined insurgency (you couldn't say insurgency THEN) in nutshell.
insurgency? You mean civil war?
Civil war took shape after Saddam lost the 80's war with Iran, and the Badr Brigade formed out of 'deserters' in Iran. Civil war was what happened after we cracked the lid on Basra in 1991, and it was a biggie. 100K+ killed, with Baghdad losing control of all but their core Sunni provinces at its height.
Civil war was the high probability outcome when the Anglo-americans decapitated the fascist welfare state in 2003. I'm pretty sure the Brits would have mentioned the 'been-there-done that' shiite risk, but it was common knowledge down to the sgt level in our own Special Forces.
Brigadier Odierno had an occupation hammer, and that's what he used, in trying to scare his Tikrit-Samara locals into staying quiet long enough for the US to declare victory and get out. Petraeus' 101st was dealing with civil war up North, as was Dempsey's in the Bagdad-South zone.
The three 2003 division commanders experimented, came back with each new promotion. But no one named the problem, in 6 years. Not Col. McMasters, nor Lady Emma. Bush's generals ended up brokering a weak leader deal, straddling the fence, making promises and payoffs to Kurd, Shiite and Sunni warlords. With JSOC and JDAMs killing the diehards and foreign jihadis.
Brigadier Dempsey made headliness in '04, when he opined from the battlefield that enemy ops showed evidence of pre-planning, strategy and intent, not an ad-hoc uprising. Using the word 'insurgency' in 2004 made Dempsey sound like a DoD maverick, but actually reflected measured new-speak.
Civil war was door #3, the worst of the CIA's late 2003 long-war assessments. Occupation and civil war was what Petraeus, Odierno and Dempsey faced in all of their Iraq deployments. Today's Baghdad gov't doesn't control the South, West or North of Iraq. It will still be facing the WH/Nat Security team in 2013, as new civil wars threaten to spread down the Gulf. 80's Lebanon or the 90's Balkans, on oil-funded steroids.
Reading St. Clausewitz as a rank amateur, I see that 'figure out what kind of war you're fighting!' is pretty near the top of the war-of-choice decision tree, just below 'what do we get if we win?' Top hands who are successfully promoted up thru wartime combat commands aren't as clueless as us little folks at BD. The American public has been the target of a highly successful and ongoing public information operation, if we're still talking about Iraq in terms of liberation, insurgency, and COIN.
I remember having to plan out where you would sit in a particular HMMWV during a patrol through a market.... Odierno and his party were supposed to come to our AO and I was the S3 Air. The patrol got canceled, but I still remember typing your name into a specific seating chart for the vehicles.. Anyway, that's all! I'm sure Odierno will do fine. I just hope he has the moral courage to tell people what he really thinks, and hopefully what he really thinks is that it is time to end the Forever War. But I'm not counting on it..
RCCO
Is she an aristo? How did she get to become a Lady or Baroness?
Is she an aristo? How did she get to become a Lady or Baroness?
Tom, this one reads beneath your ordinarily excellent analysis. Why the snide tone toward Emma Sky? Her opinion piece on General Odierno doesn't sound unreasonable. It almost gushes as a postive view of who he is, what he's done, and how he likely will fare as Army COS. The quotes all present an entirely favorable review of what he has done to advance his own command presence. Particularly in the notable way he worked with American civilian governmental folks in Iraq. But, then, the comment about Emma Sky's picture. Was she to be represented by Shrek or Shrek's spouse? Either way, the reference fails. The anti-American views she holds. All in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
You are misreading my intro! I am not being snide. I am fond of Emma, admire her thinking, and am just teasing her. Otherwise I would not have invited her to file a guest column or have named her Best Defense's roving Middle East correspondent.
Best,
Tom
Tom needs no defense, but the real joke isn't against Sky - it's against Odierno who has a passing resemblance to that green giant fellow in the photo. Tom diplomatically didn't SAY that in his intro, but those of us in the Army know that one all too well.
Speaking of Odierno, I remember fondly when he gave Stephen Colbert a matching haircut - at the direction of the Commander in Chief. That's some good TV, don't care what side of the partisan issues you are on.
Thank you for the answer. I am sorry for having misread your piece. It really didn't sound like what I would have ordinarily expected from you. I suppose I should read some of her other writings to see just how far off base I was. In any event, thank you.
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