{"id":2714,"date":"2008-05-16T03:46:56","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T03:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2714"},"modified":"2008-05-16T03:46:56","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T03:46:56","slug":"the-new-generalship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2714","title":{"rendered":"The New Generalship"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Washington Post<\/em><\/strong> <\/a>via the SWJ Blog<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

“The choices suggest that the unusual decision to put the top U.S. officer in Iraq in charge of the promotions board has generated new thinking on the qualities of a successful Army officer — and also deepened Petraeus’s imprint on the Army. Petraeus, who spent nearly four of the past five years in Iraq and has seen many of the colonels in action there, faces confirmation hearings next week to take charge of Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Army Secretary <\/strong>Pete Geren<\/strong><\/a> asked Petraeus to head the board, which convened in late 2007, and instructed it to stress innovation in selecting a new generation of one-star generals, the officers said. Several of the colonels widely expected to appear on the resulting promotion list, which has not yet been released, are considered unconventional thinkers who were effective in the Iraq campaign, in many cases because they embraced a counterinsurgency doctrine that Petraeus helped craft, the officials said. <\/strong><\/p>\n

They include Special Forces Col. Ken Tovo, a veteran of multiple Iraq tours who recently led a Special Operations task force there; Col. H.R. McMaster, a senior Petraeus adviser known for leading a successful counterinsurgency effort in the Iraqi city of Tall Afar, and Col. Sean MacFarland, who created a network of patrol bases in Ramadi that helped curb violence in the capital of Anbar Province, according to the officers. “<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

General Petraeus has been given an opportunity to shape the worldview of the Army in a way that is historically, quite rare. The USAF being formed out of the old Army Air\u00a0Force\u00a0in the aftermath of WWII with a strategic bomber, “Air Power” ethos is one example. Another would be General Marshall’s<\/strong> handiwork as the\u00a0father of the “Benning revolution<\/a>” and the architect of the mighty WWII U.S. Army, where he ruthlessly cashiered deadwood, timeservers and elderly\u00a0colonels to make way for a new generation of rising talent.<\/p>\n

The scale of Petraeus’ efforts are far smaller, of course, as the current Army is only a fraction of it’s Cold War size, to say nothing of Marshall’s gigantic force built by conscription; but it looks like\u00a0Pertaeus will leave his mark on the institution of the U.S. Army as surely as did Marshall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Washington Post via the SWJ Blog: “The choices suggest that the unusual decision to put the top U.S. officer in Iraq in charge of the promotions board has generated new thinking on the qualities of a successful Army officer — and also deepened Petraeus’s imprint on the Army. Petraeus, who spent nearly four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[350,20,126,161,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-coin","category-counterinsurgency","category-swj-blog","category-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}