I found the following story in the print version of the Washington Post, which a had a link to the source: Serving Lt. Colonel in Army Rips Flag-Level Officers. Since then, I've noticed a reference to it on CNN.
This article, by Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling, essentially lambasts his superior officers for what he sees as their failure to serve the country's best interests by a) failing to anticipate the next war and b) telling those in the civilian chain of command what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear.
According the bio at the end of the article,
Yingling is deputy commander, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Operation Desert Storm. He holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago.
Before I go too deep into his article I want to point out one basic tenet on which I am almost certain Lt. Col. Yingling and I disagree. Yingling is angry, and rightly so, that the US is losing in Iraq; however, I would argue (and this is where I believe we may disagree) that even if the Bush adminstration weren't incompetent and its generals weren't sychophantic and we were winning in Iraq, the war would still be unjustified. Politically, I'm sure, such a victory would be marked by a much improved standing in the polls and continued majorities in the House and Senate, but I would still see an immoral war whose immorality would be masked by success on the battlefield. In my view, success is not, in itself, justification.
On to Yingling's thesis, which is essentially an exploration of how a war on terror (by definition an asymetrical war) should be fought. Not being an expert on military matters, I will only say that what he says about preparation, creativity, long-range thinking, anticipation, and "moral courage" (defined by Yingling as telling your bosses what they don't want to hear) seem to me to be self evident. In fact, the argument isn't much different from what you might learn in business school or even law school.
I am more interested in what is at the edges of his article. The article assumes a current civilian leadership that is myopic and disinterested in hearing what reality might be like from experts, and Yingling accepts that what is being reported in the press is actually LESS dire than the reality on the ground. Quoting the Iraq Study Group, he cuts to the chase:
After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."
All too true in my view, and all indicative of the kind of Govt. BushCo is setting up or trying to set up on all levels. The military was only first in a long line of attempts to set up what can only be called an American version of a Commissariat. I recall Dan Senor, who served as Director of the Coalition Information Center during the actual combat phase of "Iraqi Freedom."
Wiki on Dan Senor
Senor was acting as minder for reporters and their military liaisons to ensure the story reporters received and distributed met the party line. What is that but a Commissar?
Now we are learning of politicos controlling or attempting to control career bureaucrats in a number of departments: Justice, NASA, NOAA, and many more. They are going beyond the setting of policy goals to the control of the message departments distribute to the public (even to the massaging of facts on the ground) and to making an end run around the Hatch act to ensure that those career positions agree with the massaging of the message, or, better yet, will shape the appropriate message themselves.
My point is that what Yingling sees as a lack of "moral courage" (which it may well be) in one branch of Govt. service is actually only part of a much larger attempt by BushCo to subvert the whole machinery of Govt. -- civilian and military -- to its political aims. I'm starting to wonder whether Bush can see Putin's soul because he's actually Putin's soulmate. Russia may have been primed for Putin's return to strongman rule, but all of BushCo's moves regarding political control of career people in Govt. departments are a step in that direction. I don't think I'm being alarmist in saying this. What's more alarming is that if the military had been better prepared for Iraq and had achieved victory, Bush may well have succeeded.
Zirc