Invite your attention to following generally overstated (IMHO) article and my accompanying comments in yellow-highlighted red.
Happy Veterans' Day
How the military isolates itself — and hurts veterans
By Phillip Carter and David Barno, Published: November 8
Phillip Carter and retired Lt. Gen. David Barno are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively, and senior fellows at the Center for a New American Security.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the wire ringing our bases divided two starkly different worlds. Inside the wire, life revolved around containerized housing units, cavernous dining facilities, well-appointed gyms and the distant but ever-present risk of a falling rocket or mortar round. Outside the wire, Afghans and Iraqis tried to live their lives amid relative chaos. They didn’t fully understand what we were doing there. And when we ventured out, we struggled to navigate their world.
The last time I saw American soldiers in Afghanistan, they were silent. Knocked out by gunfire and explosions that left them grievously injured, as well as drugs administered by medics in the field, they were carried from medevac helicopters into a base hospital to be plugged into machines that would measure how much life they had left to save. They were bloody. They were missing pieces of themselves. They were quiet.
It’s that silence I remember from the time I spent in trauma hospitals among the wounded and the dying and the dead. It was almost as if they had fled their own bodies, abandoning that bloodied flesh upon the gurneys to surgeons ready to have a go at salvation. Later, sometimes much later, they might return to inhabit whatever the doctors had managed to salvage. They might take up those bodies or what was left of them and make them walk again, or run, or even ski. They might dress themselves, get a job, or conceive a child. But what I remember is the first days when they were swept up and dropped into the hospital so deathly still.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, in a keynote address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies this week, signaled to military commanders that they should assume the across-the-board, automatic spending cuts imposed by sequester over the next decade will remain in place indefinitely. “We do not have the option of ignoring reality, or assuming something will change.” Before they decide how to shrink U.S. military forces and allocate scarce resources, however, uniformed leaders will have to decipher the lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to apply them to the coming era of austerity and global instability.
Hagel gave a preview of his own thinking when he argued that the Pentagon should protect investments in cutting edge technologies that are central to the evolving, network-centric model of warfare honed in those conflicts — to include space systems, cyber capabilities, “ISR” (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), and special operations forces (SOF).
Following Hagel’s speech, three senior retired generals offered their own thoughts on battlefield lessons. Here are five takeaways from the discussion by Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Peter Chiarelli, former vice chief of the Army; and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former chief of staff of the Air Force.
The Objective force is one which maximizes the SECURITY of the American people. The American Security regime is a con and has been since Korea. All players–including Zion and Saud–have an interest in maximizing the INsecurity of the American people. DHS was the last imperial structure to be put in place. PRISM,et.al. was designed and implemented to enhance domestic domination and insecurity. So long as these “domestic” pieces remain in place and unchallenged there will be no honest assessment of force projection requirements.
Roughead's [February 2013] assessment of Army Force Structure is about right in my estimation, but as far as I know he never comes to grips with a honest assessment of total force requirements which must include a significant growth in an integrated reserve-guard force structure which assumes (from contractors–who profit only with increased insecurity) over the POM the bulk of DHS functions and structure AND simultaneously builds the only force structure sustainment functions (i.e., nation-building)possible for land forces–engineering, civic institution building and maintenance, dispute resolution,etc.
No matter what, there will be no honest assessment of the way forward without an honest lessons learned from the last ten years of institutional manpower failure. The problem? The perps are still in place perping.
The broad outline of citizen-soldier force projection–the most difficult concept to grasp–was surfaced over 25 years ago in this 1986 San Francisco Army Day Speech. This is the only speech I gave that the W-H chopped on. [Speech Below, and as Online PDF]
DLS
Armies are not inherently disciplined, nor responsive to the will of the people in whose name they purport to act.
Armies are not innately well led, nor representative of the societies from which they spring, nor humane in the treatment of those, within or without their ranks,
subject to their power.
Yet all of these characteristics have become accepted norms of performance, duty and responsibility for our Army. When there is deviation or perceived deviation from those norms, it is known to the world, and not simply within the platoon.
This is as it should be for an Army exercising the will of a free people. In this, our Army sets the standard.
WASHINGTON, November 7, 2013 — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry desperately needs a win on the Afghanistan war. Unfortunately, however, it appears increasingly unlikely he will get one.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Despite repeated visits and discussions, Kerry has so far failed to secure a clean Bilateral Security Agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Without an agreement, all U.S. and NATO forces – including the approximately 10,000 that the Pentagon wants to keep in country – would have to leave the country next year.
The immediate sticking point is on whether U.S. troops will receive immunity for misdeeds during the deployment, but the larger issue centers on respect, sovereignty and judicial non-interference.
Local populations are overwhelmingly against immunity for U.S. troops. In Afghanistan, most cases currently slide without reprimand or justice. This includes countless stories of abuse accompanying night raids, which Karzai has repeatedly attempted to ban. As is the case in Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere, local populations want accountability within their own courts for U.S. troops who commit abuses in their countries. Americans would assuredly want the same treatment for foreign troops on U.S. soil.
After 12 years at war with Afghanistan, we continue to miss the mark on four fronts: strategy, cost, accountability and perception.
First, we will continue to focus on institutional reform.
Second, we will re-evaluate our military's force planning construct – the assumptions and scenarios that guide how the military should organize, train, and equip our forces.
A third priority will be preparing for a prolonged military readiness challenge.
A fourth priority will be protecting investments in emerging military capabilities – especially space, cyber, special operations forces, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Our fifth priority is balance. Across the services, we will need to carefully reconsider the mix between capacity and capability, between active and reserve forces, between forward-stationed and home-based forces, and between conventional and unconventional warfighting capabilities.
And our sixth priority is personnel and compensation policy. This may be the most difficult.
