YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION FORCE CANNOT HAVE FEET OF CLAY

Much has been written about the immense difficulties experienced by the U.S military in occupying Iraq and defeating the multifaceted Iraqi insurgency. While tactics, politics and civilian leadership have all come under fire, most critics have zeroed in on having insufficient numbers of troops, blaming in particular Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for overruling Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki’s recommendation for a much larger invasion force. As it turned out, Saddam’s much-feared but ramshackle regime probably could have been toppled by a lower numbers of troops closer to what had been advocated by Wolfowitz but the occupation of Iraq would have been better served by the larger force recommended by Shinseki. Better served but I would argue not well-served. Numbers alone are not the whole story – something critics and supporters of the war alike have missed entirely.

Dr. Barnett in The Pentagon’s New Map illustrated the “Leviathan” – ” System Administration” division of task and structure that the U.S. military is going to need to adapt to in the 21st century. In Blueprint for Action, Barnett expounds on the lessons Iraq has had for that conceptual division. They are numerous and I will leave them for my future review of BFA . I will however, add my two cents to the discussion. The overlooked aspect of this debate has been the critical misallocation of skills in Iraq – something that will continue even if the military is re-orged into Sys Admin and Leviathan forces unless the problem is recognized and taken into account.

Both Sys Admin and Leviathan forces – or any effective military for that matter – require a continuum of skills to function in the field for any extended period of time. Leviathan would have an overall systemic bias toward very high-end and specialized skill-sets but even so it would still need its share of clerks, cooks and humble enlistees to do mundane tasks like delivering the mail, emptying the trash, pulling guard duty and K.P. System Administration, being very human intensive in terms of security and interactivity with locals, requires a far larger number of personnel to perform low-end skill tasks that while not very glamorous, in the aggregate, if left undone, will create mission failure, low morale and numerous situational hazards. Sys Admin has its high-end skill slots to be sure, particularly in engineering and logistics, but the ratios are skewed differently than with Leviathan.

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