Tom Ricks: U.S. Military Leadership In Decline

well thank you so much and thank you for having Tom and I here at the Hill Center were we're delighted to join you tonight and I feel like I've been on book tour with Tom so um but I have to I have to share something with it with the rest of the audience which is that Tom's book seemed to get a whole lot more relevant just by surprise we our last joint appearance in person together was a few weeks back at the Center for a New American Security where Tom is a fellow and big crowded room filled with lots of military veterans and and people involved in important national security conversations and you know what did we know we talked all about generals and countability and then the next day we woke up and there was this story about General Petraeus which had not crossed our radar but in many ways serves and has served over the last few weeks as tom has been out there on the road talking about his his historical inquiry into American generalship post-world War two I think it has served as a you know it's a certainly a sad story and tom has written a chapter in this book and has been an admirer of general Petraeus's accomplishments but at the same time in many ways it illustrates I think very much so the point that that you were trying to make about accountability in our generals and the US military and what should they be accountable for and what are the best mechanisms to do so so you know I I guess we might as well start with that Tom what what do you think that the Petraeus story tells us okay how's your seatbelt yeah I know you're gonna ask about that anyway so first of all thank you all for coming tonight how many people here actually thought they were coming to the Buddhist meditation I want to know if you can cross register for the the remedial the computer and the meditation it actually a serious question do we have any veterans here of Iraq or Afghanistan tonight well first of all thank you very much so I've said one nice thing about the military now it's inoculations and actually a point I do want to make at the outset is when a critical of the generals I am NOT being critical of frontline troops we have a terrific tactical military today well-trained well-equipped cohesive very professional my worry in the theme of the book is that we're not giving them the leadership that they need and deserve at the top level that were very good tactic we know operationally but we have a generation of generals who do not think strategically who act more like jumped-up battalion commanders like tommy franks but don't do the basic task of generalship which is things like think think ahead think strategically connect the political to the military unfortunately one of the best generals we had at doing that was David Petraeus and what worries me is the lessons that today's army will take away from the Petraeus affair first of all I want to emphasize as far as I know and as far as I've seen David Petraeus has done nothing illegal he engaged in consensual private behavior with an with another adult I don't think he's really susceptible to blackmail as long as other people who needed to know knew about it such as his wife and his boss so it eats me there are there is a scandal here the first scandal is why the hell the FBI was investigating a lover's quarrel in Tampa Florida I want my tax pay monies back you know if that's what they're doing the second scandal I think is that as the onion put it and probably the best headline Americans fascinated by sex scandal among generals shocked to discover war going on in Afghan the third scandal is that we tolerated years of incompetent generalship in Iraq under generals Frank Sanchez and Casey and then had Petraeus yet nobody paid really attention or wondered why the four scandal is we have had 11 commanders in Afghanistan and 11 years I mean that's no one no way to run a daycare center let along a war so there are a lot of scandals here I just don't think that what David Petraeus did has allowed I'm in his own time is any of my business I spoke last week to 900 majors at the Army's command and General Staff College the biggest audience I've had on this book and I began by asking actually another question I'll ask it here tonight who here thinks the David Petraeus was the first CIA director to have an affair okay come on where's the hands so yeah lots of scandals I just don't think David Petraeus really merits being called a scandal I think the scandal is that Americans seem to care more about the sex life of generals than the real lives of our troops and I think we should be ashamed of ourselves for that so when you started writing the book in many ways you know you have a very interesting story to tell about how it was your inquiries about Iraq that actually led you back in time to think about accountability but you start the book with with someone who is much more in your view someone to admire general Marshall are there heroes anymore because I think your point is a very well taken one about Petraeus and you know whether this is really a scandal or not but putting that aside certainly it tarnishes the image of someone who in many ways that's what I heard from people right is well who are we gonna look up to right you know there are no heroes anymore this sort of seems to ratify and to confirm that other there are a lot of heroes but we shouldn't necessarily expect our generals to be heroes and Marshall was a very unheroic figure in a lot of ways he was a rather bland reserved careful man what strikes me most about him is how much he declined the spotlight his refusal to be engaged in politics even to the point of not voting his refusal after the war to take a huge amount of money from henry luce to write his memoirs because he said either I would have to hurt a lot of people's feelings or I'd have to lie and I didn't want to do either a very honest man one thing I really like about Marshall is a habit I don't see in a lot of Washington these days which actually was on my mind when I got in trouble at Fox last week which is speaking truth to power Marshalls core characteristic George Marshall if you're just coming in you know was the army chief of staff and World War two actually formally took office September 1 1939 the army was about 185 thousand people at that point including the Air Force when he stepped down the army was 8.5 million people he basically is the father of the modern American the superpower military and George Marshall more than anything else the characteristic that strikes me about the man the defining characteristic is speaking truth to power and this is a habit of his something off someone you could acquire as a general it's only one thing we were discussing 11 worth when I was out there last week was um the generals become conformist or - conformist become generals and the point of that is you can't suddenly wake up and say well I'm a general now I know I have to start being honest it's a habit of mind that you have to have in Marshall hotter than World War one he didn't like something General Pershing was saying he thought it was unfair Pershing turned his back on him and Marshall reached out and grabbed him by the arm they said wait a minute I have something to say here captain Marshall had grabbed this commander and France and afterwards everybody said sorry your career is over because they assumed it was and actually Pershing sought him out on subsequent visits this is a guy who's so you know concerned with making sure that the truth is knowing that he's willing actually to put his career up for grabs on that likewise FDR picked Marshall to be army chief of staff partly because as a brigadier general Marshall stood to FDR in the oval office and a meeting at one point Roosevelt who is a real good artist and knew it and knew he could be manipulative he said isn't that right George and Marshall made a number one my name is general Marshall not George and B no it's not right now I disagree in here is why and that's that caught Marshalls attention we caught Roosevelt's attention Marshall was not the natural choice to be army chief of staff it actually was a you drum who was the more senior better knowing god but FDR liked Marshalls habit of speaking to it which Marshall kept up in 1940 really confronted in the Oval Office over a mobilization of the military things that needed to be done Marshall also for always sort of courtly Virginia gentlemen this was very much a destabilizing figure in the army he took office determined to move out 600 senior officers he called quote-unquote Deadwood and he did and that was of a piece but the way he ran the army in World War two basically in what were - you had about 90 days as a general to be successful get wounded or killed or get moved out some guys only got a week for a poor guy in the 19th division get fired after a week as successor got fired after a month the third guy stuck of the hundred fifty five men who commanded army divisions in World War two in combat 16 were fired for combat and effectiveness but in a forgiving system five were given other divisions in combat later in the war so it's a very dynamic very Darwinian system show-me success or get out of the way and this is why people today don't know names like Lloyd Fredendall unless you're a military buff and even military buffs don't know who Major General James Chaney was anybody here know do you know Major General James Chaney CH ane why was Eisenhower's predecessor as the American commander in England Marshall fired him and he wound up committing a boot camp in Wichita Falls not quite Siberia better but pretty difficult and flash-forward to the Wars of the last decade what are the do you have equivalent numbers for the rotation of senior leaders or just sure didn't happen zero zero right nobody goes far for combat haven't affected us anymore that generals do get fired for zipper problems so early our conversation yeah well this is the problem I have which is the message people will take away is you can be mediocre as long as you keep your pants on that personal behaviors will be monitored and have great consequences but public execution of your duties we won't measure we won't call you we won't hold you accountable on partly because as a system we don't know how to do that anymore and the reason I like the relief of generals is not because I like firing people it's because you want to reward success and move-out failure when you do that you have accountability when you reward success you have a competent organization when you don't reward success you JIT you gravitate towards the center you discourage risk-taking and you have a culture of mediocrity that tolerates incompetence and believes it's impolite to talk about performance of one's duties when did the system change it started changing in the Korean War and this is one problem when you fight a big existential conflict like World War two everybody's involved everybody understands the stakes well that's right in the road to success is you often point out went through Berlin yes so you had to stay until your Road home goes through Berlin everybody's leaning forward taking risk you start finding Korea Vietnam Iraq Afghanistan small messy unpopular Wars with Matthew Ridgeway who's one of Marshalls closer friends and protegees is goes into Korea to try to turn the Korean War around he does in the spring of 1951 but when he tells the Pentagon he wants to relieve five of the six division commanders he has out there the Pentagon gives him real grief about it I actually found the document in quoted in the book where the army writes back to him look we thought about this you can get rid of these five generals but do it on the down-low be really careful here disguise that we're going to lie about it back here until Congress that it's planned rotations it wasn't one they couldn't disguise because Ridgeway fired a general who'd only help the division command for a month but the other ones they did disguise they said I would plant rotations were sitting to the training camps and so on but that's really the end of it the army loses the tradition of relief in Korea nobody gets fired in Vietnam or subsequently another trivia question is who is Major General James Baldwin the answer is the last American General relief for combat and effectiveness and commanded of the division in 1971 and so we sort of have these wars that kind of meander on towards stalemate nobody really owns the war everybody goes in does their years tour says well I was successful the guy after me must have screwed it up and the deal is in return the American people don't pay attention let's take it the other day if I wrote a book about the last ten years of war trying to encompass at all I'd call it the one percent war one percent fought the war ninety nine percent in pay attention went to the shopping mall well I think that's such an important point is eleven commanders in eleven years in Afghanistan you know clearly you're not going to come in in one year and and you know sort of a three decades of war in that country right I mean you know that just you're by design not going to achieve some out-of-the-box success even if you were better by some percentage than your cuz it takes a while to learn I mean one of the lessons of World War two is marshal in on our two generals I greatly admire both made a lot of mistakes in 1942 so you're not saying just to be clear fire generals when they make a mistake fire generals who have a demonstrated record of incompetence and as ridgway's say if you have somebody better on tap this way said don't fire but if you don't nobody else's take in but Eisenhower had been picked by Marshall he wasn't just he'll here's a general who seems to be available Marshall was a real strategic thinker in the sense of he matched personalities to jobs you know there's a reason that George Patton was not named Allied commander Europe even though he's much more senior to Eisenhower first of all George Patton had been named supreme Allied commander Europe we would have been at war with England I was kissing Patton you know they picked for a very specific reason he was a lousy staff officer even in his military records he was not good in the defense he was not good in a offense against a fixed position but he excelled at one thing the pursuit of enemy forces in retreat and Eisenhower and Marshall knew for several years at some point in this war we're going to be chasing the Germans across northern Europe and George Marshall is going to be our man they kept him on tap for that one job the pursuit they called it and they in Eisenhower and Marshall command Patton were very close friends for decades they made bathtub gin together at Fort Meade in the 1920s they wrote articles on the tank together which nearly got Eisenhower fired as a young officers the infantry parents that if you keep on writing these articles we will court-martial you and so Eisenhower desisted but Eisenhower in his memoirs is very narrowing his praise of Patton saying he was excellent at the pursuit not his favorite general of World War two in fact eventually decided he could protect him anymore and government of him yeah do you think looking back at the last ten years that a different system was required or do you believe that by actually strategically going in and getting rid of bad leadership we could have had different outcomes or a faster exit from Iraq or a better position in Afghanistan right I think we could have for example in a system which was adaptive rather than a mindless bureaucracy that is plotted on would have said probably in the spring of 2004 Sanchez is not working in Iraq Petraeus is working he's been successful up north let's put him in charge there's for example what happened to world war ii with collins a very successful young general at Guadalcanal then they move joe collins to europe partly because macarthur thought he was too young to be a general joe collins joe collins very quickly ends up commanding a corps very successfully at d-day which is a core is three divisions usually so I can see in Iraq were at Petraeus taken over another 300 for you could have seen the military and start adapting and say okay well who Petraeus was very good at saying what's working out there let's go look who's succeeding and who is not okay that guy's doing it well and they probably would have said you know HR McMasters done very well let's promote him instead it's not his turn and actually and I'm quoting turned him down three times on the ground was the quote unquote he was a smartass I mean I don't care you know Patton was technically insane but very good at what you wanted out of him and Generals you were too smart with so what we have is a generals today who were not really generals in many ways the first job the general is to think and actually notice it with Marshall and other good generals of World War two they purposely find time to think Marshall leaves the office every day at 3 p.m. he goes horseback running almost every day he's not out there just mindlessly he's thinking what kind of guy do I need to put into the European position Eisenhower's pick because he's young determined ambitious and cooperative he understands team playing yet he also can represent American interest and you don't get that these days the sense of what's the job here that ie what's the person you want an adaptive military and that's why relief is good not because it's fun to fire people because it makes them adapt Clausewitz says the first foremost job of the supreme commander is to understand the nature of the war in which he is engaged what is the war what is the conflict in front of me on that grounds tommy franks two F's afghanistan and iraq sanchez f kc probably d- but incomplete because he got fired Petraeus actually understands the war and I was thinking today actually I don't know the Afghan war well enough but I wrote this in the blog I worked for Susan by the way so I have to be nice to her um I run in my blog and find pause I can't fire him though I wrote my blog in foreign policy magazine today that uh I think what happened is Petraeus in Iraq used local factors to his advantage and that he said okay we know what are the things I want to encourage that I can use as leverage like the Sunni insurgents need a home and I'll give it to him in Afghanistan I think by fighting corruption he fought local factors and so he actually lost his mojo in Afghanistan as you put it that it was his fat Elvis period that'll make Petraeus after year although he's not fat we can say that no no right but he was tired yeah um well but that's a question though and there are two questions right first of all how much as we're looking for sort of blame to cast about where does the balance lie between what the general should be accountable for and what the civilian leaders who ordered the generals to invade Iraq or to keep going in Afghanistan without the resources perhaps to do what was required early on a where's the line between at the fault of the generals and what's the fault of the civilian there's no question that the civilians screwed up both Iraq and Afghanistan hugely you know I wrote a whole book on the mistakes the Bush administration made in Iraq called fiasco that said I think it's too easy to allow the military to continue to say as they are saying we did everything right this civilian screwed it up it's a modern version of the stab-in-the-back and I you're the same thing about Vietnam and it wasn't true there either our generals really have made a lot of mistakes and I don't think they fest up to them one huge mistake for example in Iraq Paul Bremer rightly or wrongly we didn't with the Revolutionary mission the transformer Iraq into a free-market democracy no I think it was an insane mission but the military rather than saying timeout let's talk about this because your mission is nuts so they just redefine the mission our mission of stability well no your mission is revolution it's the opposite of stability if you want stability Saddam Hussein give you stability that's right so we had eliminated the most stable factor in Iraq we were revolutionizing it and this came down to very concrete things like the Fallujah brick factory was supported by the Saddam Hussein government and it was as money-loser Paul Bremer came in and said we're going to close down inefficient government enterprises so they closed the Fallujah brick factory on the fall of Oh three well who is hiring in Fallujah at that point only one company was called the Iraqi insurgency so people we put out a business they put out of jobs wouldn't found jobs planting bombs as as Petraeus said to Bremer in the spring of Oh for your policies are killing my soldiers that means let's stop and talk but we never did they just kind of turned on at war with each other so the first job of a general is actually to recognize that in our system is to say we got to have a talk here a serious candidate auch good civil military discourse is incredibly important it's probably one of the few leading indicators of how well a war is going to go when you have good civil military discourse decisions are made that are implemented well in world war ii just goes back to FDR picking marshall we had very good military discourse that doesn't mean friendly discourse necessarily if you're having a good strategic discussion there's going to be some bloody noses in some tears Marshall profoundly disagreed with some of Roosevelt's decisions but also had taught his subordinates when you agree with the decision you implemented a hundred percent when you disagree you implement hundred ten percent you have to consciously be even more vigorous but these guys explore problems it surfaced their differences and explored their assumptions what are we thinking and what are we assuming here they did a good job of that in Vietnam we did not explore differences in assumptions for example we went to war in Vietnam on an assumption that Hanoi would have a breaking point before the United States did an entire war of attrition and body count was based on that assumption turned out it wasn't true we broke before they did likewise 1991 there was an assumption Gibson was saying a good something and he will fall from power fair not not to be true and in fact the 1991 war I would argue the Gulf War never ended it was the beginning of a 20 year long with Iraq 21 year long war with Iraq and we now know that the nineteen one war remember that great triumph the Gulf War Schwarzkopf Saddam Hussein believed he had won we know from the captured he couldn't understand that the captured tapes of his cabinet meetings yeah I don't know what the Americans are doing but the gave me a ceasefire well in the Arab world to take on the Americans the British and the Saudi Arabians and not to be topped and survived that's a victory no no Arab atever done it before who could take on the United States and lift this is great he thought I don't know what's going on but it's great so we thought we won he thought he won that's a sign that the outcome isn't quite what it should have been so good discussions where you really say what are we thinking what are we assuming what are we trying to do here for example I think before we invaded Iraq somebody might have said to George Bush if you knock off sadame Hussein what's going to prevent Iran from expanding westward it's a basic strategic question the answer is we just gave Iraq to Iran basically look at the problems right now with a your husband's newspaper is reporting that Iraq is now becoming the main channel for weapons going to the Syrian government that's right they're giving them tip-offs there a big agreement was to inspect flights except that now they're letting them know which flights fell into practices yeah I mean they don't need this but the flies don't even need to land in Iraq they can just fly a fly over and you don't pay attention yeah so and then on Afghanistan just quickly and I want to get to your question soon so start thinking of good ones Afghanistan similarly it feels like there was almost a rather than that good vigorous debate discussion back and forth between the civil and military said that there was almost a default position 11 commanders in 11 years but also I've heard it said by many many members of the sort of military establishment when I've asked them about this over the last several years well yes you know it's really not fair to say to criticize us for having already fought in Afghanistan for a decade and not having achieved more because really we've only been there for you know one year you know pick now it's two years and they say that as a point of pride my I always want to challenge them and to say what are you talking about you know were you not in charge of how we would fight there I mean you know well what we impart is it was a ward of an attention as Andrew Exum put it of casual arrogance to think that we could go in and sort of fight a war with our left hand without really paying much attention to it um I this happened I lived in Afghanistan Afghanistan as a kid and it always struck me that in Afghanistan warfare is the national sport and I think the Afghans are kind of cranked off that they can't have it in the Olympics because they'd be really good at it I always think back to the British officer who was fighting in Waziristan in the 1930s John masters wrote that one day the Pashtuns came across the border these were their pashtu an enemy has been fighting them were very angry and they said what's the matter he said well we just found out after our last war with you ended you gave all our cousins who fought on your side medals they said yeah we gave the medals because they were good fighters on our side they said where's our medals you couldn't have had a good war without us yes that's very much the partial attitude and we still have to figure it out I mean 11 commanders and 11 years makes me think of warren buffett's saying if you've been fighting if you've been playing poker for half an hour and you don't know who the patsy at the table is year the patsy if you put 11 commanders in the 11 years what you're doing is making each year commanders the Patsy because Afghanistan is not a place you figure out in 12 months even if you did you're leaving out to 12 votes well that's exactly right I mean I think if you go back and in in time and you think about after September 11th and if you asked anyone would we still be in Afghanistan 11 12 years later there's no one I mean what percentage of people you know even well-informed people would have said that like 1 to 5 percent I remember we were in Moscow at the time before we went into Afghanistan and I wrote an article it this was the week after September 11th it was September 20th I think 2001 and I went and talked to a number of Soviet generals who were still around in various positions including Boris Gro mph who was the last commander of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan and he was the guy in the famous picture who walked by himself across the friendship bridge from northern Afghanistan back into whose Beckenham at the time in the Soviet Union and that was the end of Soviet involvement he had then become the governor of the Moscow region when I talked to him in 2001 and he and everyone else I spoke with for the story buried deep inside the Washington Post you know way back in the a section somewhere so I'm sure you didn't read it ah you know and he basically said Americans beware you know this is you should never get into sending ground forces into Afghanistan this was right before even the bombing had begun and he said you know fine bomb killed bin Laden get al Qaeda whatever you do don't get into you know a land war in Afghanistan and really you have no idea but it will bog you down just like it bugged us down and that was absolutely what he said and all the other people said and you know I really felt like no one ever read that story I myself wasn't quite sure about it the only person that I heard from when I wrote that story was David Halberstam and he not only sent me a nice note but he went he was on TV he was on the radio and he just talked and talked and talked about these Soviet generals and we we were going to ignore them at our peril and I always think of that when when we have this conversation about generals and Afghanistan so just a quick editor David helped her stop after my book fiasco I was kind of shocked like Rumsfeld like publicly denounced being a press conference when I try to ask questions it was an odd time and I ran into David Halberstam and I said what do you do about this I mean I'm getting you know being like banned from like certain commands and people are telling me they can't see me in public and interviews being cancelled Rumsfeld's people are like they actually called Petraeus and said don't talk Tom wrecks me you're talking to me at that moment he said thank you very much back next question but I said to hover some what he do and he said Tom you've written a book that steps on the toes of powerful people they are not going to thank you suck it up those great advice and have you by the way have you heard much from this maligned category of generals of the last decade have you gotten any direct feedback yeah more in sorrow than anger the interesting thing to me is how interested the military isn't it I mean I I've spoken may be engaged at the Pentagon and the army commander General Staff College this later this week I'm going to the National War College next month I'm going to the Army War College yeah the Colonel's and majors love talking about it I'm not sure generals I mean Robert scales is a retired army general a smart guy and a friend actually wrote a piece for foreign affairs in which he thought he was defending the army I think he's defending army generals oh yeah no I thought I read that and I thought it was more in the vein of an apologia for them rather than well he said I was cherry picking up those six inner pages that's a hell of a lot of cherries we should get the Q&A yeah absolutely we want to hear from you uh please if you can give us a question not a bad speech and tell us who you are and where you're from sir you say that david petraeus bullet less is the best general in the last 60 years I thought Norman Schwarzkopf was the best man since they have they starched camouflage fatigues is he not the best because his war golf won that reward whether military ventures the short answer is yes Norman Schwarzkopf like Tommy Franks was the model of what the army was trying to produce after Vietnam and it was an interesting model they said we have to get good tactically really fast now other army generals said no but the guy in charge de PUE said we're going to really this was a broken force we have to really recreate the army and they did they react with us new set of weaponry they we trained it with realistic training centers and most significantly changed the way they got their people they move from a draft to an all-volunteer force so a really magnificent rebuilding to the force magnificent but insufficient the one thing they didn't do was change generalship which was a tragedy because we had a collapse of generalship in the Vietnam War both I'd say intellectually and morally a collapse so they really didn't get new generals what they did was create a generation of guys kind of confused battalion command tactical leadership with generalship strategic leadership a guy like tommy franks who really didn't who really thought it was someone else's job to think I have Colonels who think for me and the army was very consciousness we're going to create an army that can win our first battle all these guys called themselves war fighters and actually turned out they were battle fighters Norman Schwarzkopf and Tommy Franks were great at winning the first battle clueless about what to do the day after and in fact Tommy Franks explicitly thought it was someone else's job I get to Baghdad and then the war's over and someone else's job actually I get to Baghdad and as soon as he leaves the real war begins and they were conscious the army was caution to this in the 70s and 80s as they were rebuilding tepee was saying I've got to focus on tactically Jack Cushman who's still alive actually and came to mark politics and prose talk like 93 had opposed to pure oneness and said no you also have to teach these guys to think and and deep you said I don't have time and the tragedy army is they didn't manage to figure out their differences and do both things so we really have a lot of generals who aren't generals these days it's like a military without a head a great powerful body and but a lot of them did simply no head at the top I would argue that the US military in oh three oh four was basically a Hulk without a brain and so it did sort of mindlessly in Iraq plotting along doing what it had knew how to do not what it needed how to do we have a lot of generals who were trained but not educated and I would say the bush Schwarzkopf and Frank's as generals were trained but not educated they did what they knew how to do they didn't do what they needed to do and they seemed incapable of thinking and strategic critical terms what is the problem the army hasn't give me the tools to address it so I need different tools so how do I get those tools and apply them okay lots of questions here will do in the first row and then here sir good Patera trencher first question is the in our military fight insurgents in other words we did great planning to fellow Russians so that's a hold the cap and so forth but have we really changed enough we don't know the language we don't know the customs let me let me dress that first because otherwise I'll forgive me and the question tom we're gonna repeat for the thing is can the military fight insurgents the answer is an adaptive military can do both conventional warfare and fight insurgents even without knowing the language exhibit a for me would be HR McMaster as a captain in the 1991 war led the Battle of 73 easting a tank charge against her rocky armored vehicles you couldn't have a more conventional fight than armor or an armor in the desert anyone there was a good it was a brilliant slaughter I like is one person called it fast forward to Iraq he's a colonel commanding an Armored Cavalry Regiment and he's one of the first commanders to do an effective counterinsurgency campaign same god what's what's the key here I think it's an adaptive officer who's able to recognize that the fight he's in and do what needs to be done he says I'm going to Iraq and he trains up his troops counterinsurgency sounds like a big fancy word that you need to speak French to understand it's not I remember McMaster saying to his 19 year old troopers every time you disrespect an Iraqi you're working for the enemy there's counter insurgency in a nutshell don't create enemies they went out of their way they actually had a customer information form for their detainees you know they weren't beating the hell out of these guys like an Abu Ghraib at the end of each detention they were the detainee what he's about to release how were you treated was the food adequate were you comfortable did you feel disrespected you know and a guy would say everything was cool with me but you guys say you're going to release me to the Iraqi police and they are Shiites and they are going to beat me up they would escort him to the police they showed him the police they were releasing him if this guy gets beaten up we're coming after you up in the suddenly they started getting information now speaking the language I was talking to a platoon in Baghdad during the surge once and I was very skeptical of the surge I actually did not think that the military will be able to change sufficiently to carry out the news tactics that were needed and so I was with one platoon in Baghdad and I said you're in this little outpost with one platoon which is like 35 guys none of you speak Arabic and your interpreters not worth their death so you know he's like you know a guy from Sudan who didn't speak really speaking rocky Arabic at all how could this really work and they said you're right we were kind of skeptical too we moved off this big fob a base where we were coming in for one hour a day to the city the other 23 hours we were back on our fob so here we are in this little outpost but we are persistent presence at all given times we have one squad out there moving around in this little neighborhood they have a fairly small area to patrol and one morning we started noticing spray-painted circles on the road somebody was telling us is showing us where the insurgents had planted bombs overnight we didn't even know who it was but no complaint so you can do it with good leadership I actually think we the opposite aren't our troops were so tactically effective that we were enabled our strategic leaders to do there for years and years because we never even had asbestos liquid a squad wiped out but we never really had losses much larger than that platoon or company size losses as we had even in the Vietnam War for example late in the Vietnam War one outpost I think about 130 guys had about 85 casualties one night 37 dead and about 50 wounded we never had anything like that in Iraq and so they were insulated from their strategic failure practical effected by being such a just an adept force good tactics can't fix bad strategy but they can enable bad strategy to kind of deter along good strategy by the way we'll fix bad tactics you know if you're supposed to protect the Iraqi people killing them doesn't work and so you say that well that's probably an effective to go out to kill Iraqis you know large numbers of Iraqi civilians the thing I liked about Marshall as leadership of world war two was he knew his stock he knew these guys he had guys in the chute and if Eisenhower trailed and I was there at one point thought he was going to be relieved in North Africa he had other guys in the chute ready to go and the notion was this is too important and he actually says explicitly when Sony complains to him about not promoting somebody said this is too important to war to worry about couriers of officers or even their feelings number one comes the country number two comes the people number three comes the army number four comes the enlisted because it's a war for democracy number five comes the officers far behind that Depew by contrast argued that the Vietnam War was run for the benefit of the army officer corps rather than for the army or the nation so for example officers were given six month tours of leadership in combat we know statistically that if you have a new leader as an enlisted soldier you're more likely to die if you have a green leader yet we did this to the to our soldiers we killed more soldiers in order to give more officers short combat tours sir summarize it well I think the question has to do with isn't this in many ways the best-educated force that we've ever had in history and what does that tell us about whether having more education more sense of the geopolitics is shaping what the Joint Chiefs and what they do in terms of rules of engagement or you know what is the pressures in the other direction I think it's a well-trained force and the difference between training education training prepares you for the no one education prepares you for the unknown you know training is how do I shoot a machine gun how do I organize a tank attack education is how do I go into a chaotic difficult environment think critically and sort out the trivial from the important the true from the untrue and then it divides a response that uses force or the threat of force and other resources at my at my hands to alter the situation and how do I convey that to thousands of soldiers and carry that out that's what a generals supposed to do what strikes me is we have a fairly well credentialed force but there's a lot of sort of BS master's degrees you know basically mail-order master's degrees it's not really a well-educated force in the sense that if you look at the interwar force these guys in the interwar period really knew their stuff I mean Eisenhower pretended to this sort of I'm just a jovial guy who reads dime-store westerns if you actually go back and look especially when it is service in Panama he sits on the back porch and reads the works of his profession he reads Clausewitz twice a friend of his walked into his apartment when he lived over on 16th Street and up at the 1920s and looked at the living room there was stack of books about Belgium and Luxembourg and the Netherlands and that geography and geology and he said Ike what's with all the books on the the lowlands of northern Europe and Ike said oh that's what the next war is going to be fought I mean this is an educated guy who's thinking Omar Bradley I think spent about 17 to 25 years in the interwar period in classrooms either as a teacher or as a student if you look at when Marshall around the school of infantry there was a real intellectual rigor to it there were people who failed and people who didn't the instructor in machine guns was Omar Bradley the instructor in tactics was Joseph Stilwell these guys knew their stuff and took pride in it at Leavenworth last week you know everybody in the Army basically gets 11 worth education now no one fails it's Lake Wobegon everybody's above average there's no class ranking to speak of they like publish the top 20% they don't publicize or fail the bottom 20% and it's basically a year sabbatical where you can dip into a few books if you care to but it's no big thing if it doesn't happen you can get a master's degree if you want to but don't worry about it I'm all for giving soldiers arrests we have put these guys through a lot five six seven combat tours but don't pretend you're educating someone if you know remember guy wrote to me and said from the year war college what we really need is a year of bonding here and I said fine I'll buy the cake let's put a keg out on the lawn and you guys bond for a year but don't tell me you're getting an education and this is actually goes back to HR McMaster the officer I cited as a tank officer in the 91 war is a good counterinsurgency officer in Iraq if you look at his background he has a PhD from a good civilian University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Rohde probably one of the best books in the Vietnam War dereliction of duty about the Joint Chiefs which goes to your second point I don't see in the Joint Chiefs of the last 50 years the qualities of George Marshall of speaking truth to power and being assured that the presidency and the people the people around the president would take it in the spirit in which was offered of respectful inside dissent so Lyndon Baines Johnson and probably a low points of a military discourse treats his Joint Chiefs is basically a lobby he at one point he says you're all Johnson men no I said I said no we're professional military officers we are here for the Constitution of the country not for Johnson when he curses them in 66 and throws them out of his office after calling them things like and worse no one resigns George Marshall had even spoken to like that by a president would have said I'm sorry sir clearly I've lost your confidence you need somebody else in this job who work with you better because I can't do this anymore and would have asked for a reassignment and would not have spoken publicly about it I think that the Joint Chiefs of recent years have been chosen specifically for their pliability and manipulative ility I want to say that Marty Dempsey the current terminal Joint Chiefs is an exception to this as in Israel a year know the current army chief of staff : Powell's scared American politicians both of both parties buying this politically independent chair of the Joint Chiefs the senior military officer in the country and since then we've seen a lot of guys here for one reason or another would not be challengingly politically you Shelton general joint cheese was a great American but terribly inarticulate and hated Washington Pete Schoonmaker a chief of staff for the army was fond of saying I have my saddle in the back of my pickup truck and I'm ready to leave at any moment you don't want a chief of staff who hates and lows Washington you want a chief of staff who understands that this is where the nation's business is done and that when Congress asks you a question they're not messing in your business you're messing in their business Congress and the executive owned the military in the name of the people and today we have generals who think more like no I'm lucky University president with tenure you know because I can sort of do a lousy job and not show up for work or whatever but I'll do fine as long as I keep my pants on and fundraising I think we have time for one more quick question and then we're going to do book signing so uh sir one question what's the what's the more important more interesting one mega dittos I'm all for I wrote a piece about this for the New York Times about a year ago calling for a resumption with the draft not a you know this I got I got a round of applause for this in Seattle too and I said so interesting and also for increasing taxes yeah what was yeah I was in Seattle they actually because speaking of the Central Public Library there and the person seduced me began by thanking the people for their vote that week because I'm speaking right about the election they just voted to increase taxes and the she was woman from the library was sent we will now be able to keep branch libraries open on Saturdays and the Central LA door open on Sunday because of your vote and I just come from California which has no roads anymore that mean people in California have to get their cars realigned every three months now because there are so many potholes it's like a third-world country so some taxes would be good also public service would be good my point in the New York Times piece was you don't have to have a vietnam-era style draft you could have a giraffe that said we only need you know ten percent of the potential cadre of eighteen year olds so we're going to have it being drafted will almost be like winning the lottery you serve two years and you get totally free college and mortgage subsidies the rest of your life and things like that maybe ten percent off in your income taxes for the rest of your life second is a libertarian choice you don't want to serve in the middle of second is a national service choice you don't want to serve in the military do alternative service bring me daeul's to shut-ins clean up the inner city help out in schools you know specific programs and see is a libertarian opt-out you don't believe in any of this not a problem just check here I'm a libertarian get lost and Uncle Sam will never bother you again just don't bother Uncle Sam don't be looking for college loans federal home loan mortgages and everything I think you could work it out now people tell me it's a pipe dream but my wife is a 19th century historian and she points out that abolitionism was a pipe dream in 1918 35 it was reality 30 years later so I think you could do it this has really been brought home to me by watching my sister lives in Santa Barbara husband's a University of California professor you know liberal Volvo driving bumper sticker wouldn't it be greater the Pentagon had a bake sale her son graduates from Berkeley and rebels by joining the Marine Corps this is this is the equivalent become a hippie in the 1960s and I said to Hannah and taught her some phrases specifically you got skin in the game mofo because she learned what skin in the game meant suddenly she paid a whole lot of attention to Afghanistan in the Marine Corps I actually had to tell her time at once she started referring to civilians as they but her certainly her identity changed the only ball was in a Barbara the still has the Pentagon bake sale bumper sticker the other one says my son is a Marine so I think the skin in the game would make a big difference and also I think it's morally reckless in this country to fight wars without paying attention to them to conduct drone strikes in a fire-and-forget foreign policy I'm all for drone strikes against al-qaeda I think is a good thing but I think we need to pay attention to them I'm going to do the signing now and I'm going to vote a rule I learned from Ann Patchett which is if you want a book signed great get in line if you want to ask questions great but don't get in line wait until all the books are signed it's not fair to the people who's want to get a book signed I'll meet you out there line up in the hall

Channel: HillCenterDC

Views: 81,779

Rating: 4.8812861 out of 5

Keywords: West Point, Military, Leadership, Clausewitz, George C. Marshall, Robert Kingston, George B. Cris, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Gen Joseph P. Hoar, J. H. Binford Peay III, Anthony Zinni, Tommy Franks, John Abizaid, William J. Fallon, Martin E. Dempsey, David H. Petraeus, John R. Allen, James Mattis, Central Command, Boris Gromov, Iraq, Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, Susan B. Glasser, Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, Omar Bradley, David Halberstam, Bush, Laden

Id: OZbhIr04B5g

Length: 52min 39sec (3159 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 04 2012