Fabius Maximus:

May 2nd, 2007 at 4:35 am

I’ll take the other side of this debate, siding with Yingling.

“I think Paul would have been more effective had he focused on the civilian leaders’ roles in the “failures” he cites.”

Just like everybody else, Yingling should blame Bush & Co. Who of course deserve much of the blame, but our senior general were not innocent puppies — dragged along by the scruff of their necks.

An excerpt from an upcoming article:

“One thing at which the upper echelons of the US military establishment excels is producing industrial grade excuses. Excuses of mass destruction, as they divert pressure that might otherwise lead to reform. Here the late Col. Hackworth was, as in so many things, in the vanguard of documenting and sounding the alarm about this.”

phil:

May 3rd, 2007 at 12:52 am

I agree with Fab Max on this, Yingling’s focus is right on.

“I think Paul would have been more effective had he focused on the civilian leaders’ roles in the “failures” he cites.”

We are not in any danger of our civilian leaders escaping public scrutiny. In fact my main concern has been that the incompetence of Bush & Co. would suck all the attention their way and the generals would slip out the back door. The generals can’t have it both ways: they can’t endlessly congratulate themselves for rebuilding the post-Vietnam army that gave us victory in Gulf War 1 and then scapegoat the civilian leaders for decades of negligence on post-war/small war ops. If they had the ability to “rebuild” the military then they had the ability to develop doctrine, training and to prepare our troops to wage the kind of war we have seen in Iraq, and they didn’t do it. So they need to man-up and accept responsibility for their negligence. And if they won’t do it then it will be done for them and they are just going to have to suck it up.

The fact is that when our military has devoted the time developing doctrine, training, and equiping our troops for a form of warfare then we succeed. We marvel at Army Special Forces for their performance in Afghanistan 01-02, but they were successful because they had spent decades training for that kind of mission. Rangers have performed airfield seizures in Afghanistan and Iraq and they were successful because they had spent decades training for that mission. We were successful during the intitial 3 weeks in Iraq because our troops had spent decades training to do conventional, mechanized warfare. But we have been struggling with the post-war/small-wars/COIN aspects of this war-why? Because we didn’t devote any time to training for that mission. And the responsibiility for that rests directly on the shoulders of the officers who determined how our military would train in the decades since Vietnam.

deichmans:

May 3rd, 2007 at 3:29 pm

For Fab Max and Phil: I respectfully disagree with your approach to the civilian side of this issue. My reference is not to the highest echelons of the National Command Authority (Fabius’s “Bush & Co.”), but rather to the preponderance of Senior Executive Service civilians (and not just Schedule C Congressional appointees) who implement the machinations of our government. These are the civilian leaders that are almost completely insulated from public scrutiny — contrary to Phil’s assertion that “[w]e are not in any danger of our civilian leaders escaping public scrutiny.”

Our representative democracy demands accountability from our designated representatives. Yet our sprawling bureaucracy is so vast (nearly 4,000 SES civilians within the Executive Branch) that is is too easy (and convenient) to focus solely on the apex of Bush & Co.

In business, corporate officers have to demonstrate effectiveness in the marketplace and to Boards of Directors. Our highly competitive economy is the result of this kind of proactive performance monitoring. I would like to see our government achieve such effectiveness.

mark:

May 5th, 2007 at 2:18 am

Ok- I’m familiar with what Shane is talking about.

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was intended to give the President more flexibility with running the executive branch. In many ways it did, extending his appointments further down in the bureaucracy and creating the SES “superclass” of federal bureaucrat ( some, like Larry Eagleburger, reach the heights of power).

Unfortunately, the CRSA and the SES class have not lived up to their potential thus far for several reasons:

For one, the confirmation process has been dragged out to ridiculous lengths; It is not unusual for the process to last until the administration’s second year just to get it’s people in place.

Secondly, few administrations have deliberately used the leverage that CRSA gives them to remove obstructionist bureaucrats. Presidents are generally disinclined to fire ppl and the prospect of long term vacancies lead them to tolerate semi-functional malcontents.

Third, the graybeards who compose the SES know how to game the system much better than do political appointees ( excepting folks like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Kissinger, Scowcroft etc.). They run rings around them and unlike the appointees, are effectively invisible.

phil:

May 5th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

Shane,
Well, then there probably isn’t much of a disagreement, just a minor misunderstanding. When you said:

“I think Paul would have been more effective had he focused on the civilian leaders’ roles in the “failures” he cites.”

I interpreted “civilian leaders” as referring to political leaders, when you meant civil servants. I think everybody who holds a position of responsibility needs to be held accountable, without exception. So I would agree with you and add civil servants to my original comment as a group which we need to make sure doesn’t escape proper scrutiny and reform.