Defense cuts could lead to military draft, House Armed Services chairman says

I seriously doubt this will happen, but it would end the wars pretty quickly if you ask me. Suddenly people would care a little more because they could have some skin in the game... e.g. their children.

Eliminate the Air Force? Call to Service?

The author makes three great observations: the Air Force needs to be fully integrated into the joint service team, the up or out system of military promotion is broken, and a call to national service is needed.

While I do not go as far as calling for the elimination of the Air Force (it is politically untenable; once you create a bureaucracy it can never be eliminated) in order to get the Air Force to play well with its sister services, Secretary Gates (pbuh) has gone very far. He fired the the Secretary of the Air Force and Air Force Chief of Staff last year and then made a cargo pilot (BLASPHEMY!!!) the new Air Force Chief of Staff. If this didn't send a message to the fighter pilot elite (and to a lesser extent bomber pilot elite), I don't know what does. It tells them that air power (Airp!) alone will not win wars, you are not as relevant as you think, and you better support your sister services through logistics (e.g. flying C-130s and supporting the ground war with UAVs).

I would love to know what my old graduate professor, a retired Air Force Colonel working at Northrop Grumman that gave me a B+ for arguing against a leap ahead defense planning, is doing right now. I'm very proud of that B+...

The "Winnable" War

I know Mr. Brooks means well, but he is obviously being given a spectacular inside the wire tour of Afghanistan by a spit and polish diplomat or military officer.

First, Mr. Brooks agrees that Afghanistan has always been "warm and welcoming" to the U.S. during their adventure in Afghanistan. I assume he agrees then that supporting a drug trade that is directly linked to terrorist organizations qualifies as warm and welcoming behavior.

Second, he claims that the "screwing up" is done in Afghanistan. Far from it, Mr. Brooks. President Obama is throwing more weary combat troops, who are already a shadow of the force that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, at the problem thinking that somehow this will help. Yes, it will, but to what extent? India has maintained over 250,000 counterinsurgent troops in Kashmir for decades... What has this done? Also, with a diplomatic corps that hates to deploy to war zones or conflict areas, how are we going to do the building and friendship repairing that must be done? Perhaps we could hire the thousands of Army Captains that left the Army in the past few years to do diplomatic functions - they, afterall, won't be afraid to go outside the wire and meet with the locals. Here is an excerpt from the article describing the sorry state of aid workers in Afghanistan:

Western aid workers seem to spend most of their time drawing up flow charts for each other. They’re so worried about their inspectors general that they can’t really immerse themselves in the messy world of local reality. They insist on making most of the spending decisions themselves so the “recipients” of their largess end up passive, dependent and resentful.
Every element of my skepticism was reinforced during a six-day tour of the country. Yet the people who work here make an overwhelming case that Afghanistan can become a functional, terror-fighting society and that it is worth sending our sons and daughters into danger to achieve this.

Unfortunately, President Obama still has not taken the steps needed to "win" in Afghanistan, which involves calling the entire nation to make sacrifices (e.g. a draft, forcing anyone working in the State Dept. to do "combat" tours regardless of region of specialty, perhaps legalizing drugs and taxing the shit out of them...). He could also threaten to disband NATO, remember that organization? You know, the second-rate international fraternity we pay a ridiculous amount of dues to every year so that we can prop up our free-loading fraternity brothers' seemingly more extravagant frat homes (also known as quasi-socialist nations)? How can President Obama force the entire nation to make sacrifices with the economy in shambles? Perhaps high paying jobs in Afghanistan for the unemployed?
Well, I think he has the political capital to sound the call to service by arguing that the two main reasons the economy is in shambles are underegulation, which is being taken care of, and two ongoing wars. He can use his massive popularity ratings to say, "I promise this type of thing will never happen again, but we need to fix this mess. Once we fix this mess, it will never happen again." Sadly, this sounds like Woodrow Wilson's plea for a League of Nations, to prevent more wars. Sadly, with armchair generals and diplomats still glorifying war, it probably will happen again. Everyone loves to be the armchair general, or the learned diplomat smoking a pipe while sitting in a leather chair by the fire... nobody wants to put their life on the line to... um... wait what exactly is the desired endstate in Afghanistan?

"Fine, Mr. President. You're the president."

A dysfunctional family

While I have not yet read Bob Woodward's latest installment on the presidency of George W. Bush, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, The Washington Post's excerpt from September 8, 2008, gave me new faith in the military officer corps (well, at least the service chiefs).

While reading this piece, my jaw dropped - I never expected that so much opposition to the surge had been voiced by the senior brass. It seemed as if Woodward was describing a dysfunctional family... This dysfunctional family included the uncle that just wouldn't go away, retired General Jack Keane, former Army vice chief of staff, who circumvented the Joint Chiefs of Staff to pitch his "plans" to the president.
A well-meaning, but ineffective General Peter Pace, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who laments about having no fallback plan on the surge... if it doesn't work, he laments, "then you are forced into conscription, which no one wants to talk about." He appeared to be the flag officer equivalent of Beaver Cleaver telling W. Cleaver, "Gee, Dad, I have enough trouble keeping myself in line with your plans without keeping all the other chiefs in line."
A brazenly outspoken General Peter Schoomaker, then Army Chief of Staff, who criticized General Pace, and was always thinking of the future. "Folks keep talking about the readiness of U.S. forces. Ready to do what? We need to look at our strategic depth for handling other threats. How do we get bigger? And how do we make what we have today more ready? This is not just about Iraq! I feel like Nero did when Rome was burning. It just worries the hell out of me," Schoomaker said doing his best impression of always contrary Alex P. Keaton.
A forward thinking chipmunk named Simon, played by Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chief of Naval Operations, questioning, "How does a five-brigade surge over the next few months fit into the larger picture? We have so many other issues and challenges: Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, and places we are not even thinking about today."
And finally, General John Abizaid, then CENTCOM commander, and General George Casey, then commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq, who had lost control of the war (which was quite obvious to the servicemembers on the ground during his reign...). They were the equivalents of Statler and Waldorf of Muppets' fame watching the play unfold from their palatial balcony.

General Pace explaining to then MNF-I commander, General Casey, what his new strategy is... as directed by Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, and Meghan O'Sullivan

The scene culminates with the surge being briefed to the service chiefs. President Bush came "armed with what Hadley called 'sweeteners' - more budget money and a promise to increase the size of the active-duty Army and Marine Corps." General Schoomaker fought the president arguing that the Army was at its breaking point saying, "I don't think you have the time to surge and generate enough forces for this thing to continue to go."
The conversation ended with, "Pete, I'm the president," Bush said. "And I've got the time."
"Fine, Mr. President. You're the president," Schoomaker replied.

I have not had this much faith in the Army Officer Corps since I was a cadet. It appears that General Schoomaker and Admiral Mullen fought the good fight, and General Pace attempted to at his level, albeit with little success. I am proud that the service chiefs are thinking 20-30 years down the road... Unfortunately, they lost. I have a feeling that they see the same thing I am seeing in my crystal ball - emerging regional hegemons that are near peer competitors and a broken Army and Marine Corps with a hollowed out officer corps unable to fight and win America's wars in the relatively near future.