Another Look at Petraeus

Another look at The Petraeus affair from The Economist

Of more abiding interest is what sort of legacy an extraordinary career has left. The general’s status as the epitome of the modern soldier-statesman-scholar was rooted in both real achievement and a myth of his own and others’ creation. Back home after two tours in Iraq, he used the time to digest the lessons he had learned to rewrite the army’s field manual on counterinsurgency (COIN). At the heart of what became known as “population-centric COIN” was the notion that the operational priority should be providing security for ordinary people and thus creating the conditions for a government under attack by an insurgency to earn legitimacy through the provision of goods and services.

By late 2006, faced with what looked like a descent into bloody civil war, most senior American officers were ready to give up on Iraq. However George W. Bush, desperate to try to find a less appalling denouement to the war, saw General Petraeus, supported by a controversial “surge” in troop numbers, as a possible lifeline for his reputation. How much of the (relative) success that followed was due to General Petraeus and how much the so-called “Anbar Awakening”—the rejection by Sunni tribal leaders of al-Qaeda’s ethnic slaughter that had begun shortly before the general’s return in January 2007—is still argued over. General Petraeus may have been lucky, but he worked with the grain of events to bend the history of the war around a narrative of narrowly averted disaster that was more or less true.

In June 2010, when Stanley McChrystal, his dedicated protégé, resigned as commander in Afghanistan after the reporting of remarks by his staff critical of the new administration, General Petraeus was sent for by Mr Obama to repeat his magic in Kabul. A time-limited troop surge was under way, but he knew official patience was running out and that the chances of applying a successful COIN strategy in a country as divided and poor as Afghanistan were slim. Even so, the speed with which he abandoned it in favour of a much more “kinetic” approach aimed at getting a quick improvement in security by killing as many Taliban as possible was breathtaking.

By the time General Petraeus handed over to his successor, General John Allen, 13 months later, a deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops at the end of 2014 had been set. General Allen was bizarrely drawn into the Petraeus scandal on November 13th when the Pentagon revealed that he had exchanged thousands of e-mails over a four-year period with Jill Kelley. Ms Kelley, a Tampa-based socialite who knew both men, triggered the FBI inquiry into the CIA director last May after receiving threatening e-mails from an apparently jealous Ms Broadwell. General Allen’s confirmation hearing as the new supreme commander in Europe has been put on hold because of the “inappropriate” nature of some of the e-mails.

COIN required more time and money than war-weary, economically stressed voters would stomach. As Mr Obama reiterated during his re-election campaign, nation-building now needs to take place at home. Boots on the ground are out again; special forces and drones, used to seek out and kill America’s enemies, are back in. After becoming director of the CIA, which has become the lead agency in fighting the high-tech, intelligence-led campaign against al-Qaeda and its offshoots, General Petraeus had no compunction in helping strangle his own COIN baby when it had outlived its usefulness.

Much more at the link

By: Brant

Surprise!

A birth in a warzone, unexpectedly.

A British soldier who did not realize she was pregnant has given birth to a baby boy at the Camp Bastion field hospital in Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) in London said mother and baby were in stable condition and a specialist "Paediatric Retrieval Team" would fly out from Britain to care for them during the long flight home.
"It is not military policy to allow servicewomen to deploy on operations if they are pregnant. In this instance, the MOD was unaware of her pregnancy," the ministry said.
The Daily Mail newspaper, which first reported on the birth, said the woman herself was unaware of the pregnancy.
The Mail said the Royal Artillery gunner had conceived before her six-month stint in Afghanistan began. Her pre-deployment training included an eight mile march and five mile run. Her job in the field involved providing covering fire for troops fighting insurgents.
She was taken to the field hospital after complaining of stomach pains and was informed by doctors that she was about to give birth, the Mail said, citing military sources.

By: Brant

GEN Rodriguez to AFRICOM?

What would his potential assignment to AFRICOM do to how the US approaches missions on the continent?

Gen. David M. Rodriguez, a former top Army commander in Afghanistan, has been chosen by the Pentagon to take charge of the military’s Africa Command, which in the wake of the Arab Spring has become one of the Defense Department’s most challenging theaters of operation.

Under plans that still need formal approval from the White House and confirmation by the Senate, General Rodriguez, who is now head of the Army’s Forces Command, which trains and equips troops, would take over early next year from Gen. Carter Ham in what two American officials said was a routine change of command.

Because of the presidential election and the need to get the necessary paperwork ready, General Rodriguez’s expected nomination would probably not go to the Senate for confirmation until the postelection session, the officials said. In his current job, General Rodriguez, whose troops call him General Rod, is responsible for training and equipping 265,000 active-duty soldiers, as well as training and overseeing the readiness of 560,000 soldiers in the Army Reserve and Army National Guard.

But the general, a West Point graduate, also has extensive combat experience. He served two tours in Iraq and two tours in Afghanistan, including a stint in eastern Afghanistan as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division and later as deputy commander of allied forces there with responsibility for the day-to-day management of the war.

General Rodriguez was one of the architects of the operation in which President Obama ordered an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in late 2009.

By: Brant

USAF Appoint Female Commander to Training Unit Rocked by Scandals

The USAF is trying to clean up Randolph by putting a woman in charge of Air Force basic training after the sex scandal there.

The Air Force chose a woman Saturday to lead its basic training unit at a Texas base where dozens of female recruits have alleged they were sexually assaulted or harassed by male instructors within the past year.
Col. Deborah Liddick is taking command of the 737th Training Group, bringing a distinctly new face of authority to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Six male instructors have been charged with crimes ranging from rape to adultery, and there are others still under investigation.
The Air Force announced Liddick's appointment in a statement that didn't mention the sex scandal or highlight choosing a woman to lead a unit where the number of women identified by military investigators as potential victims is approaching 40.
About one in five recruits at Lackland are women, while most instructors are men.
"I look forward to and have the utmost confidence in having Col. Liddick take the reins of basic military training," Col. Mark Camerer, commander of the 37th Training Wing at Lackland, said in the statement.
Lackland is where every new American airman reports for basic training, graduating about 35,000 each year.
Liddick is already stationed in San Antonio, where she serves as chief of the maintenance division at the former Randolph Air Force Base. She is scheduled to take command Friday.

By: Brant

US Army Gets First Female Deputy Division Commander

The new DCG-S of 1 CAV is BG Laura Richardson.

Thursday marked a pivotal moment in Army history, as the role of women in leadership was forever changed.

Fort Hood's 1st Cavalry Division welcomed the Army's first ever female deputy commanding general of a division.

BG Laura Richardson is giving credit to all women who proudly wear the uniform.

The first round went off at Cooper Field early Thursday, marking the moment GEN she changed history, though she says all women have come a long way.

"It almost doesn't feel like paving the way, because women have been serving in combat, been doing some incredible things in our units and in our Army already, and it just feels like I grew up in a division, and it just feels like this is home to me," she said.

And to make it even more special, the one passing over the reigns is her own husband, BG James Richardson.

He was just as gracious.

"This ceremony is not about Laura and I, it's about the very special people who helped us along the way. We haven't had the help of ordinary men and women, we have had the help and served in the company of heroes," he said.

By: Brant

Another Facepalm-in-Hindsight from 5/2 SBCT

We've chronicled the insanity coming out of 5/2 SBCT several times before.

Now there's a book coming out, and Slate's got some excerpts. This particular anecdote makes your blood boil, if you know anything about COIN ops.

On the second week of the operation, I met with Lt. Col. Patrick Gaydon, an artillery officer who had been put in charge of the Stryker brigade’s special troops battalion, which was responsible for governance, reconstruction, and development. After he spent an hour telling me about the universities at which his fellow officers had taken classes before deploying and the sophisticated computer network that allowed soldiers to send and receive vast quantities of data while in the field, I mentioned that I would be heading to Arghandab in two days to attend a shura, a meeting of local elders. Gaydon asked how I was getting there. I told him the general who was Tunnell’s boss had arranged a flight. Gaydon was delighted; it meant he’d have a chance to get there as well. Gaydon’s unit had been in Afghanistan for a month, but it had not yet received any vehicles suitable for travel beyond the Kandahar Airfield. Because his team’s mission was not to kill bad guys, it was at the end of the list for supplies.

I was astounded. Given his focus on government and reconstruction, Gaydon seemed like the officer who really needed to attend the shura. Over in the Marine areas, then-Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson had insisted that his battalion commanders hold districtwide shuras within 48 hours of their arrival in Nawa and other parts of the central Helmand River Valley. But Tunnell did not regard community meetings as a priority for his operation. The brigade’s State Department political adviser, Todd Greentree, had to meet with Tunnell three times to persuade him to authorize the shura. His ability to flout COIN, despite McChrystal’s unambiguous embrace of it, revealed the lack of control the supposedly disciplined U.S. military had over officers who were spread across a vast country and sometimes reported to non-American generals. Tunnell was fighting the war he wanted to fight, and nobody stood in his way.

Gaydon spent the day after our meeting drafting a speech he would deliver to the crowd of turbaned elders. “I want you to know that we are undertaking this military operation so that we can create an environment where we can work shoulder-to-shoulder with district leaders, elders, and the people of Arghandab over the long term,” he wrote. But the morning we were supposed to leave, we learned our flight had been canceled. A delegation of visiting members of Congress wanted to fly around the south, and our helicopter had been reassigned as an airborne tour bus. We settled for an early breakfast in the chow hall with Greentree, who fumed over an omelet and hash browns that the brigade was missing an opportunity to win over residents and steel them against Taliban intimidation. “This is really, really bad,” he said.

He couldn’t understand why a few vehicles could not have been diverted to transport them to the meeting. “Is this the most important thing we could have done in the operation today? Absolutely.”

Gaydon tried to put the best spin on it. The shura would go on, he said. He planned to have an officer in Arghandab read the speech he had written. At least Tunnell will be there, I said consolingly. He’s the one who matters. The Afghans always want to talk to the man in charge.
“Tunnell won’t be attending,” Greentree said. “He said he’ll be too busy directing the combat operations.”

The next day, I asked Greentree how it had gone. Fine, he said, for the first 30 minutes. Then two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters strafed a nearby building, and the attendees fled.

So there's been a recent intense discussion over on the MilGames mailing list for wargaming professionals about exactly these sorts of issues with subordinates. Basically - how do you accurately model subordinate behaviors. Not modeling what we all say our unit should do - because, I mean, really, how could my unit ever behave in such a fashion after the perfect training and mentorship I've given them. The thing is that these things do happen, and the fact that they can happen at the O-6 level tells you that there's absolutely the possibility / likelihood / certainty (take your pick) that they're happening at the O-3 level or the E-6 level, or any other level of command.

So how do you wargame this?

By: Brant

Professional Intel Operator, oh yeah, and "Mom"

Just in time for Mothers' Day, and excellent article from CNN's Security Clearance blog about the intel communities female operators.

Nada Bakos used to go work with a Glock strapped to her thigh. The former targeting officer for the CIA started her intelligence career as an analyst in 2000. But then September 11 happened.

"Everybody's life changed," said Nada Bakos, who, like many other women who were serving as analysts prior to 9/11, moved to the counterterrorism and eventually made the switch to the operations side, which meant she wasn't just analyzing the data on the bad guys, she was going after them.

She didn't yet have a family when she accepted her assignment as a targeting officer in Iraq, working alongside special forces in the hunt for the now-deceased terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. She won't share the details of exactly what she did to help find him, but she saw definite advantages to being a woman in the arena, noting that she sometimes had a very different experience than her male counterparts when it came to working within the norms of the culture.

"I got a completely different response than the men did," said Bakos, describing one particular effort to gather information. "How is a 26-year-old white male gonna walk up to a woman in the Middle East and say 'Hey, why don't you talk to me?' "

After a couple of years, Bakos realized that she knew more about Zarqawi than she did about many of the other men in her life. That, in part, was a wake up call to do something more: She wanted to start a family. But she was deep into her career on the operations side. That was a problem."The difference between men and women is that it's really hard for women to live the lifestyle of a case officer," said Bakos. "If you have a significant other, it's hard for you both to be employed. I was 37 then and I can't really say, 'Hey, let's interrupt your career and you can carve out what you need."

Much more - go read.

By: Brant

US Focusing on Troop Discipline

From the SecDef on down, they're getting the troops back in line.

From tasteless photos to urinating on dead insurgents, bad behavior by U.S. troops in Afghanistan has hampered America's war effort over the past year, triggering a broad new campaign by defense leaders to improve discipline in the ranks.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in his first personal appeal to troops on the issue, is expected Friday to remind U.S. forces that they are representing the American people and they must behave up to military standards.
Panetta will speak to soldiers at Fort Benning, Georgia, and he is expected to urge them to act as leaders and look after their comrades. His remarks are expected to reflect recent talks by the Army and Marine Corps chiefs telling their commanders to get their troops in line.

The Marines less flowery.

Marine Corps Commandant James Amos was blunter.
"We are allowing our standards to erode," he wrote his commanders. "A number of recent widely publicized incidents have brought discredit on the Marine Corps and reverberated at the strategic level. The undisciplined conduct represented in these incidents threatens to overshadow all our good work and sacrifice."
Senior leaders have warned for several years about a deterioration of discipline that may have contributed to increased substance abuse, suicides, domestic abuse and other problems.

By: Brant

Goodbye

Goodbye, Best Friend

Yeager, an improvised explosive device detection dog, lies in front of a battlefield cross as Staff Sgt. Derick Clark, a kennel supervisor with Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, and 26-year-old native of Hillsdale, Mich., and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Michael Dale Reeves, a kennel officer in charge with 2nd Bn., 9th Marines and 41-year-old native of Mt. Pleasant, S.C., observe a moment of silence in honor of Lance Cpl. Abraham Tarwoe, a dog handler and mortarman who served with Weapons Company, 2nd Bn., 9th Marines, during a memorial service here, April 22, 2012. Tarwoe, who became Yeager's handler in July 2011, was killed in action during a dismounted patrol in support of combat operations in Helmand province's Marjah district, April 12. Tarwoe's fellow Marines remember him for his contagious laughter and smile, and his unfaltering courage on the battlefield. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alfred V. Lopez)

By: Brant

MG(R) Scales Lets Loose on US Army Professional Military Education

At a recent forum journalist Tom Ricks, General Scales, former commander of the Army War College, let loose on US Army PME.

--These days, "the Army War College is a great place for pre-retirement training."

--"The Army War College fell of the cliff when it was subordinated to a trainer" (that is, to the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, which, he indicated, doesn't understand education).

--The Army should bring together its history offices, its military research entities, and related offshoots, and put them all under the Army War College commandant, in part so that research and teaching can inform each other. Right now, he said, research and education are "ripped apart."

--For officers, "the object of the PME system is to be selected but don't go."

Just a note on Scales... he lived 2 doors down from me at Ft Sill in the late-80s, and I went to high school with his younger daughter for 2 years.
By: Brant

USMC To Send Women to Infantry School

The Commandant of the Marine Corps has said that they are sending women to attend infantry school.

The Marine Corps school that produces infantry combat officers will enroll its first-ever female students this year, Marine Corps Times has learned.

As part of the service’s extensive research campaign to determine what additional jobs could be opened to women, an undetermined number of volunteers will attend the Infantry Officers Course in Quantico, Va., said Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Corps’ assistant commandant. There, Marine officers are groomed to serve in direct combat roles and lead troops into battle.

“We are in the process right now of soliciting volunteers,” Dunford said on Wednesday.

It’s a monumental — if controversial — move for the Marine Corps, which until now barred female Marines from the program and required instead that they attend other courses aimed at preparing them for assignments in support roles such as logistics, personnel administration and aircraft maintenance, among others.

Soon, enlisted women also will have an opportunity to attend infantry training, Dunford said. Marine officials are developing plans to assign female Marines to the Corps’ Infantry Training Battalions, which fall under the Schools of the Infantry.

Officials don’t yet know how many women — officer or enlisted — will be put into the academic pipeline for the Corps’ “03” infantry occupational code, Dunford said. All will be volunteers — and it remains to be seen how many will answer the call, he said.

It’s not immediately clear either what the next steps will be for those women who successfully complete the Corps’ infantry training programs. Marine officials at Quantico, who have led the service’s effort to explore lifting restrictions on women in combat, said these details are finalized, but declined to discuss them pending an official unveiling in the coming days.

The Marine Corps’ top general, Commandant Gen. Jim Amos, traveled Wednesday to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where among other business he was expected to meet with Marines and explain the service’s plans for expanding women’s career opportunities, Dunford said. Amos was joined by his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Mike Barrett.

Wow. What do y'all think? Good idea? Bad idea? Dumb idea? Great idea?

By: Brant

Sound Off! Officer Pilots

Do aircraft pilots have to be officers?

Sound off below!

By: Brant

US Army, After 10 Years of War

Comparing the state of the Army today to about 1974 or so (after 10 years of Vietnam), and Abu Muqawama notes that it's not in bad shape. That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement, mind you. An excerpt:

The survey makes explicit what has been implied in defense policy conversations for the past several years: The all-volunteer force, which was never intended to fight a decade of continuous conflict, has nonetheless succeeded beyond all expectations in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of maintaining its health and professionalism. High-profile stories such as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ massacre of civilians in Afghanistan have convinced many Americans and others that a decade of war has broken the Army and Marine Corps. But military officers are quick to point out that Bales is the exception, not the rule, in an Army in which 51,270 other soldiers have seen four or more combat deployments, and in which an additional 81,000 soldiers on active duty have seen at least three.

Six out of seven soldiers and Army civilians, the study reveals, trust their senior leaders to make the right decisions for the Army, and 90 percent of those surveyed remain willing to put the Army’s needs above their own. Whereas the soldiers who fought in Vietnam considered themselves amateurs and conscripts, 98 percent of the soldiers in the Army today consider themselves professional fighting men and women. As such, those who serve in the U.S. Army today are in no danger of losing their pride, heart or soul. And based on personal observations from the field, I can report the U.S. Army is today more combat effective than it was when I myself first led a light infantry platoon in Afghanistan in 2002.

There is still cause for concern, though. Among them is the common complaint that, due to the focus on the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan, combat units are losing some of their traditional core skills. And indeed, I spent some time a year ago with an armor unit that, having been retrained as light infantry, had not touched its tanks in a year. But also worrisome is the fact that, according to the survey, the Army as an institution is not enforcing high standards in its initial training. New soldiers, commanders have told me, often report to their first units with low levels of physical fitness, which would be less of a concern if many of those units were not walking up and down the hills of eastern Afghanistan each day. Anecdotally, two friends who recently completed Army basic training at Fort Benning -- traditionally, the more difficult Army post for such training -- described the program as easy and reported that their levels of physical fitness had actually declined during the training. I have a tough time believing folks at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island are saying similar things.

In terms of their leaders, meanwhile, soldiers report that their commanding officers are tactically and technically sound in combat, but that they have lost some of their willingness to teach, train and mentor those beneath them -- all critical to preparing the next generation of leaders.

Good article - go read the rest.

By: Brant

This Story Doesn't Add Up

There's some really, really fishy about the "American" who has been "released" in Iraq.

A militia loyal to Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr freed an American former soldier on Saturday after holding him captive in Baghdad for nine months.
The American, identified as Randy Michaels, was shown on television in a U.S. military uniform with no insignia, flanked by two members of parliament from Sadr's movement, including the parliament's first deputy speaker.
He was handed over to the United Nations mission in Baghdad, which transferred him to the U.S. embassy. Washington confirmed he was a U.S. citizen but released no further details.
In brief remarks to Iraqi journalists hastily convened to witness his release, Michaels said he had deployed to Iraq in 2003 and initially served there as a soldier for 15 months.
He remained in Iraq "in a civilian capacity from then until June of 2011, when I was taken hostage by elements of Yom al-Maoud," he said, referring to the Promised Day Brigade, an offshoot of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
"I was taken inside Baghdad and have been kept in and around different locations within the city by al-Maoud. It was explained to me that my release has been for humanitarian purposes and there was no exchange involved."
Sadrist lawmakers repeatedly described him as an American soldier. However, the Pentagon says none of its serving troops have been listed as hostages in Iraq since the remains of the last missing soldier were recovered last month.

As we find out more, we'll post the updates here.

By: Brant

Whither "Free Speech" in Uniform?

How much of your Constitutional right to free speech do you surrender when putting on your uniform? That's the issue at hand in a politically-charged case in California.

Marine Sgt. Gary Stein first started a Facebook page called Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots to encourage service members to exercise their free speech rights. Then he declared that he wouldn't follow orders from the commander in chief, President Barack Obama.

While Stein softened his statement to say he wouldn't follow "unlawful orders," military observers say he may have gone too far.

The Marine Corps is now looking into whether he violated the military's rules prohibiting political statements by those in uniform and broke its guidelines on what troops can and cannot say on social media. Stein said his views are constitutionally protected.

While troops have always expressed their views in private, Stein's case highlights the potential for their opinions to go global as tech-savvy service members post personal details, videos and pictures that can hurt the military's image at home and abroad.

"I think that it's been pretty well established for a long time that freedom of speech is one area in which people do surrender some of their basic rights in entering the armed forces," said former Navy officer David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

"Good order and discipline require the military maintain respect for the chain of command," Glazier said. "That includes prohibiting speech critical of the senior officers in that chain of command - up to and including the commander in chief."

Stein has not been asked to take down his statements yet. I also wonder if he would've said the same thing while Bush 43 was in office.

By: Brant

Cutting a Deal With the Taliban?

Maybe. And Qatar might be in the middle.

The family of a U.S. soldier held captive by the Taliban for over two years said on Wednesday they were optimistic about the possibility of talks between the Afghan insurgent group and countries including the United States.
They expressed hope that Bowe Bergdahl would be freed "as soon as possible" in a statement issued a day after the Taliban said they had reached a preliminary agreement to set up a political office in the Gulf Arab country of Qatar.
"We are optimistic about the possibility of diplomatic discussions between Taliban officials and government officials from other nations, including the United States," the family said in a statement released through the Idaho National Guard.
"Our only son, Bowe Bergdahl, has been held captive for two and a half years. We hope he will be released as soon as possible. We know that serious discussions among diplomats are the most likely way to make this happen, and for Bowe to be returned safely to us, his family," it added.
Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was a member of the 1st Battalion of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment in Afghanistan when he went missing in June 2009. Three days later, the U.S. military declared him captured by the Taliban.

By: Brant

Michael Hastings is NOT Looking Good After This

A lot of military folks hated Hastings after his infamous hit piece on McChrystal. What comes out in the review of his new book The Operators over at the Wall Street Journal isn't going to make anyone like him any more.

In the Rolling Stone article, Mr. Hastings sketched a trip to Paris in April 2010, when the McChrystal team allegedly made the inflammatory comments, without attributing most quotes to specific individuals. In "The Operators," he names names. We now discover that the large majority of the incendiary statements came from a 33-year-old lieutenant commander. In "The Runaway General," Mr. Hastings attributed the lieutenant commander's assertions at various times to a "team member," an "aide" and an "adviser," leading readers to conclude that the statements emanated from a broad range of Gen. McChrystal's staff members. Moreover, an investigation by the Defense Department's Inspector General found insufficient evidence to attribute some of the offending quotes to team members and determined that other quotes had been taken out of context.

According to members of Gen. McChrystal's team, Mr. Hastings represented himself as a supporter of the Afghan war and the U.S. military upon meeting the team in Paris. When "The Runaway General" was published, he dismissed accusations that he was antiwar, explaining that his views of the war "are critical but that shouldn't be mistaken for hostile." In "The Operators," he states unabashedly: "I hated the war."

Most telling perhaps, is the final paragraph of the review. If Hastings hated the war, he sure found an excellent way to torpedo it.

Like David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, Mr. Hastings ignores the harm that his reporting caused to America's overseas interests. The firing of Gen. McChrystal removed the one American who enjoyed the confidence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and of Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of staff of Pakistan's army. It also widened the gulf between Mr. Karzai and Washington. Mr. Karzai became convinced that the White House had removed Gen. McChrystal as another slap in his face for disregarding American lectures. To the Afghan president, it was inconceivable that the U.S. government would fire its top military officer because of unattributed quotes in a pop-culture magazine.

No doubt the Rolling Stoners will claim that they're more than a "pop culture" magazine. But if they are, then it's only to become a very strident and partisan voice on one side of the political spectrum, and not in a good way. Rolling Stone used to have some excellent reporting - even about national security topics - but since 9/11 has made a hard left turn into the culture wars and alienated a lot of readers who preferred their serious writing about entertainment topics and read other sources for serious writing about serious topics.

By: Brant

Good Questions from the Fairer Sex

An anonymous female junior officer penned a column for Rick's blog, The Best Defense, and asks some pointed questions...

Because being a maneuver officer is a de facto requirement of strategic leadership, graduating three months of Ranger school increases one's chances of becoming a strategic leader far more than does five years of doctoral education.

A diversity of backgrounds in senior leadership would combat group-think and increase options for new leaders. It's too bad there's not a group of officers who've had the time to devote to strategic studies because they've been barred from maneuver branches.

But wait -- there is! Female officers tend to have spent disproportionate time on strategic issues, because they are excluded from most tactical jobs. In a post littered with generalizations, here's the biggest: female officers tend to be more interested in enhancing their strategic skills, because they know that their chances of making brigade command are slim, division command microscopic, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff laughable. So why not do a stint as a speechwriter, get a PhD, or spend time in unconventional but challenging jobs?

What sayeth y'all? Should females be considered for senior leadership posts? The broader question really is, should non-maneuver/combat officers be consider for senior leadership posts? And if would such a process hamstring male officers in, say, the Ordnance corps, who have to compete against male maneuver guys as well as female support folks?

By: Brant

The Last Casualty

Go read about David Hickman, the last US casualty in Iraq.

As the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on Sunday, friends and family of the first and last American fighters killed in combat were cherishing their memories rather than dwelling on whether the war and their sacrifice was worth it.

Nearly 4,500 American fighters died before the last U.S. troops crossed the border into Kuwait. David Hickman, 23, of Greensboro was the last of those war casualties, killed in November by the kind of improvised bomb that was a signature weapon of this war.

"David Emanuel Hickman. Doesn't that name just bring out a smile to your face?" said Logan Trainum, one of Hickman's closest friends, at the funeral where the soldier was laid to rest after a ceremony in a Greensboro church packed with friends and family.

Trainum says he's not spending time asking why Hickman died: "There aren't enough facts available for me to have a defined opinion about things. I'm just sad, and pray that my best friend didn't lay down his life for nothing."

He'd rather remember who Hickman was: A cutup who liked to joke around with friends. A physical fitness fanatic who half-kiddingly called himself "Zeus" because he had a body that would make the gods jealous. A ferocious outside linebacker at Northeast Guilford High School who was the linchpin of a defense so complicated they had to scrap it after he graduated because no other teenager could figure it out.

Hickman was these things and more, a whole life scarcely glimpsed in the terse language of a Defense Department news release last month. Three paragraphs said Hickman died in Baghdad on Nov. 14, "of injuries suffered after encountering an improvised explosive device."

By: Brant

Skippy Gets Serious

You need to read the latest from Skippy's list.

SGT Biddle was not my friend. He had in fact stated that expressly on more than one occasion. He felt we were “buddies” which is to say people the Army forced together whether they liked each other or not, but who were entitled to the same type of loyalty and decency as a friend.

SGT Biddle did not always appreciate my sense of humor, but he liked it enough to encourage me when I wasn’t interfering with anything pressing, and even suggested that comedy might be a good career choice for when I got out.

SGT Biddle was never my supervisor. In fact, when we first met I technically outranked him, due to a mishap that occurred just before he finished Special Forces Medical Sergeant training. But he did teach me how to field strip an M-60, how to operate it properly, and pretty much every useful skill I needed to learn as I transitioned from a Mutli-Media Illustrator who worked in an air conditioned office to a soldier who could be depended upon on a Tactical PSYOP team.

Go read the rest.

By: Brant