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A blog dedicated to debate and commentary on national security, foreign affairs, veterans' issues, and a whole host of other topics. If you are not familiar with who Sam Damon is, click here. Feel free to post comments or contact Onager via e-mail at whereissamdamon@gmail.com.


Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Suck it up soldier, you are fine...

Injured troops shipped back into battle

From 6/1/07:

Many commanders often pressure soldiers to deploy and go to the field (aka training exercises) in order to keep their numbers up. These numbers form the basis of their Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs) that determine if they will be promoted and if they will get a key job that will allow them to be promoted beyond the next rank upon promotion. Injured soldiers often go to the field with their unit just to do menial tasks so that commanders can say they trained (e.g. 4000 troops trained sounds better than 3890).

When a unit deploys, many less than stellar soldiers attempt to get out of it, but there are always valid reasons and many soldiers are genuinely injured. In this article, it is revealed that SPC Smith seems to be genuinely injured. If his company commander, one of the officers in his chain of command that actually knows him personally, felt that he should not have been deployed, then he shouldn't have been deployed. The problem is COL Grigsby said no... COL Grigsby is the company commander's boss' boss. COL Grigsby is obviously looking to pin on a star. COL Grigsby's actions are yet another example of poor leadership, an example of top-down Soviet style management that is permeating the officer corps and being helped along by technology that allows a brigade commander of over 3,000 troops to micromanage down to the squad level. This breeds leaders who cannot think on their feet, kills initiative, and breeds leaders who always ask their boss what they should do rather than executing a plan and telling them what they did with their unit. After reading COL Grigsby's biography a picture of a soldier that has excelled in the Army system - obtaining two master's degrees from it (why a career officer wouldn't want to obtain a master's degree from a civilian institution is beyond me...) and many of the major war fighting courses offered including SAMS - is painted. Unfortunately, that Army system, which produces leaders who want good numbers for their OERs and leaders who do not want to rock the boat, also produced a brigade commander that does not listen to his subordinate commanders. Captains and lieutenants know their troops and are the key ranks in fighting any war. COL Grigsby's actions are the equivalent of a CEO telling a factory foreman how to staff his men on the assembly lines.

Another interesting part of this article involves the achy backed CPT Smart, who probably is a chemical officer - a branch whose officers are continually mocked and stereotyped. CPT Smart reports the unit status report (USRs) that Headquarters, Department of the Army looks at for each battalion in the Army. While I have serious problems with an officer complaining about his achy back to anyone except his doctor, let alone the press, he makes some valid points about USRs. These reports are often full of lies in order to make a unit seem more prepared than it really is. Units are graded either as Trained (T), Partially Trained (P), and Untrained (U), in a whole host of areas. No battalion commander, most probably a lieutenant colonel with dreams of becoming a brigade commander and general officer, would ever submit a USR consisting mostly of Us. This is reminiscient of the conditions in the Iraqi Army prior to the invasion of March 2003 detailed in a Foreign Affairs article from May/June 2006 entitled
Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside. Here is an excerpt:

This constant stream of false reporting undoubtedly accounts for why many of Saddam's calculations on operational, strategic, and political issues make perfect sense to him. According to Aziz, "The people in the Military Industrial Commission were liars. They lied to you, and they lied to Saddam. They were always saying that they were producing or procuring special weapons so that they could get favors out of Saddam -- money, cars, everything -- but they were liars. If they did all of this business and brought in all of these secret weapons, why didn't [the weapons] work?"

Members of the Military Industrial Commission were not the only liars. Bending the truth was particularly common among the most trusted members of Saddam's inner circle -- especially when negative news might reflect poorly on the teller's abilities or reputation. According to one former high-ranking Baath Party official, "Saddam had an idea about Iraq's conventional and potential unconventional capabilities, but never an accurate one because of the extensive lying occurring in that area. Many reports were falsified. The ministers attempted to convey a positive perspective with reports, which were forwarded to Saddam's secretary, who in turn passed them up to Saddam." In the years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, everyone around Saddam understood that his need to hear only good news was constantly growing and that it was in their best interest to feed that hunger.

Fortunately, the achy backed boo-hoo-hooing CPT Smart is now out of the Army doing his boo-hoo-hooing about his achy back in the civilian world, not in front of the soldiers he should be inspiring. Unfortunately, SPC Smith's company commander, who did the right thing and stood up for his injured soldier, will probably get a bad OER and never be in command of soldiers at the battalion level. Where is SPC Smith? He is probably off fighting the wars that have caused two major problems in the U.S. military today, problems that many of the career officers refuse to state exist: 1. the U.S. military is overstretched causing a whole host of personnel issues stemming from operational tempo, and 2. we are sending untrained troops into battle with units deploying at less than full strength and operating with less than stellar equipment.

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