COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Big Lizards has an excellent and perceptive take on the motivations and mores behind the four generals who have come out against Rumsfeld:

Even before the Iraq War, Secretary Rumsfeld embarked upon a revolutionary reformation, not only of how we fight wars but also the entire organization of our military forces. He is pushing towards smaller units, more unit independence (moving command decisions down the ranks), much greater reliance on Special Forces, and a reorganization of units to be self-sufficient rather than specialized.

It's hardly surprising that some men who have invested so much of their lives in one particular way of running a war would be angry, rebellious, and confused by a completely different way of running a war...

Zog confused! Zog not like new flint-tipped spears. Zog want hit mammoth with rock.

Seriously, I think it's easy to overplay the "Clintonista" card - at least in a doctrinal sense. After all, it was the Clintonistas, under Shalakish-touchy-feely or whatever his name was, that really pushed to develop Operations Other Than War doctrine, and get ahead of the game on the whole "nation-building" meatball, while the troglodytes from the Reagan/Bush I era picked fleas out of each others' silverbacks and brachiated, dreaming about putting an armored corps on line.

Some of these guys like Zinni might have some fond memories of Clinton's glory days. But they were also responsible for much of the groundwork for Rumsfeld's transformation.

The Unity of Command point is far more telling. In the old days, an officer took orders from ONE direction - the chain of command. But in Iraq, everything a commander does has to be carefully coordinated in several directions: He gets his orders from the chain of command. But he must also coordinate carefully with the State Department (via the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and his representatives) the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police, and a whole host of other sheikhs representing a smorgasbord of tribal interests - not to mention the mullahs.

The successful combat commander is going to be comfortable dealing with and coordinating with and getting cooperation and buy-in from all of them, while simultaneously understanding and engaging with both western and Arab news media.

It's a lot for a drooling Infantry cro-magnon like me to wrap his brain around. And the competing interests and simultaneous efforts do combine to ensure that unity of command -- in the very limited sense that we've always understood it -- goes out the window. But - and this is key - it's the only way to ensure unity of effort.

Captains and colonels and generals all operating within a single, simple, linear chain of command would fail, because that system would do nothing to ensure unity of effort among all pro-Iraqi forces, military and civilian alike. It would do nothing to foster local cooperation between U.S. units and Iraqi police. Indeed, it would only breed suspicion and ignorance, and rapidly ensure that the Iraqi police and militias and Army and sheikhs and mullahs and the U.S. all operate at cross purposes even more than they do.

Engaging all sources of authority, Iraqi and Western, into the command structure is the only way to ensure the execution of a common strategy.

This simultaneous engagement of military and civilian authority, Iraqi and American, at the national level all the way down to the municipal, from Prime Minister down to the local grammar school headmaster, along with the media, is the mark of the consummate modern day warrior, from the general all the way down to the lieutenant and very often below that.

The ability to grasp that dynamic, intuitively, and to master it, is the essential quality that differentiates officers who "get it," in General David Petraeus's words, from officers who don't.

If they're still griping about "unity of command" on today's multi-polar battlefield in which U.S. troops are operating as guests of an Iraqi government sovereign over its own territory, then maybe - just maybe - they still don't "get it."

Splash, out

Jason

More from me, here