Sunday, October 14, 2007

Army Officers at Fort Leavenworth Soul Searching over Iraq; Should the war have been fought?

Article in New York Times today, which caught my attention for the obvious reasons. I am pleased to see young Army Officers having the discussion. And I appreciated the article. I was struck as I was reading it that it referenced an article by Lt. Col Paul Yingling.
Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, “A Failure in Generalship,” written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran and deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results,” Colonel Yingling wrote.


I was struck by that because I well remember the article by Lt. Col Paul Yingling, blogged it here, and it seemed to me the article received little notice in the public arena, nor among the media that help shape public opinion. So I was pleased and surprised to see the article referenced in today's New York Times article calling attention to how young Army Officers are actually asking themselves the hard questions.

What also struck me though, was a missing element in the discussion. I didn't see mention of the young Army Officers discussing the actions of young Army Officer, Lt. Ehren Watada, who as an Officer of the U.S. Army, did exactly what is cited in today's article at New York Times;
Discussions nonetheless focused on where young officers might draw a “red line,” the point at which they would defy a command from the civilians — the president and the defense secretary — who lead the military.

“We have an obligation that if our civilian leaders give us an order, unless it is illegal, immoral or unethical, then we’re supposed to execute it, and to not do so would be considered insubordinate,” said Major Timothy Jacobsen, another student. “How do you define what is truly illegal, immoral or unethical? At what point do you cross that threshold where this is no longer right, I need to raise my hand or resign or go to the media?”


Lt. Watada, based on his strident training under battalion commander Lt. Colonel Matthew Dawson that as an Officer he had an obligation to knowledgeably discern orders given him. Rising to the challenge of doing the research and upon his researching, Lt. Watada did discern that the Iraq war is illegal and to execute his orders to deploy to Iraq and order soldiers under his command to execute fire support orders would be to execute illegal orders.

Lt. Ehren Watada: ‘Experience Makes You Stronger’


In January 2005, Watada received orders to Fort Lewis, Washington, in anticipation of deployment to Iraq. Watada felt neither frightened nor anxious, but extremely unprepared. “I was detailed to be a fire support officer with an infantry company,” Watada explained.

Watada applied his “insatiable appetite for knowledge” to his future duties in Iraq. He felt it was his obligation and duty as an officer to know what to anticipate. “I did this to better prepare myself and my soldiers. That’s what I was taught in Korea.”

He haunted the Fort Lewis library, which contains an extraordinary number of military documents, archives and databases, and scoured volumes on military history, particularly in Iraq. “I read the history of units that have gone during the initial invasion to gain a broader knowledge of what I could expect,” he said.


For myself, raised what is called affectionately a military brat, for myself, the young military wife of a young husband drafted and sent to combat in Vietnam, and for myself, as the mother-in-law and aunt of two returning Iraq veterans - one who is leaving for Iraq in his second deployment - I am relieved to see that the new young 'volunteer military' Army Officers are having these kinds of discussions, making these kind of decisions and facing up to what are hard questions that should be asked by every freedom loving American - military or civilian. We owe this dialogue, discussion to ourselves. It is so relevant to this and future generations in light of talk of 'long war', 100-year war, urban warfare as the new tenet of military deployments, and repeated revolving door deployments for a volunteer military that does not have enough service men and women to sustain the 'new wars'.

Note also though, comments by Col. Fontenot in the NY Times article because this is indeed a relevant question and very much a part of the discussion. Thus my contention of how this Administration has in less than honorable service to our country so badly exploited the ideals of the military to push so hard as to have all proud American citizens wonder when/if/should military ever be pushed to the brink of having to decide if following through with the rest of the oath they take to defend against enemies foreign - and domestic - would be a consequence American citizens could/would abide or tolerate. Or for that matter advocate for - which, imo, is not something to advocate lightly. I am thankful that military discipline and Constitutional tenets are in place that would make such an action a very, very last resort for the military, preferrably a tactic never to be used at all:
“Yeah, we’d call it a coup d’etat,” Colonel Fontenot said. “Do you want to have a coup d’etat? You kind of have to decide what you want. Do you like the Constitution, or are you so upset about the Iraq war that you’re willing to dismiss the Constitution in just this one instance and hopefully things will be O.K.? I don’t think so.”




At an Army School for Officers, Blunt Talk About Iraq


By ELISABETH BUMILLER

published Oct 14, 2007

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Here at the intellectual center of the United States Army, two elite officers were deep in debate at lunch on a recent day over who bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq — the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him.

“The secretary of defense is an easy target,” argued one of the officers, Maj. Kareem P. Montague, 34, a Harvard graduate and a commander in the Third Infantry Division, which was the first to reach Baghdad in the 2003 invasion. “It’s easy to pick on the political appointee.”

“But he’s the one that’s responsible,” retorted Maj. Michael J. Zinno, 40, a military planner who worked at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the former American civilian administration in Iraq.

No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public.

“You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said.

As the war grinds through its fifth year, Fort Leavenworth has become a front line in the military’s tension and soul-searching over Iraq. Here at the base on the bluffs above the Missouri River, once a frontier outpost that was a starting point for the Oregon Trail, rising young officers are on a different journey — an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq.

Discussions between a New York Times reporter and dozens of young majors in five Leavenworth classrooms over two days — all unusual for their frankness in an Army that has traditionally presented a facade of solidarity to the outside world — showed a divide in opinion. Officers were split over whether Mr. Rumsfeld, the military leaders or both deserved blame for what they said were the major errors in the war: sending in a small invasion force and failing to plan properly for the occupation.

But the consensus was that not even after Vietnam was the Army’s internal criticism as harsh or the second-guessing so painful, and that airing the arguments on the record, as sanctioned by Leavenworth’s senior commanders, was part of a concerted effort to force change.

“You spend your whole career worrying about the safety of soldiers — let’s do the training right so no one gets injured, let’s make sure no one gets killed, and then you deploy and you’re attending memorial services for 19-year-olds,” said Maj. Niave Knell, 37, who worked in Baghdad to set up an Iraqi highway patrol. “And you have to think about what you did.”

On one level, second-guessing is institutionalized at Leavenworth, home to the Combined Arms Center, a research center that includes the Command and General Staff College for midcareer officers, the School of Advanced Military Studies for the most elite and the Center for Army Lessons Learned, which collects and disseminates battlefield data.

At Leavenworth, officers study Napoleon’s battle plans and Lt. William Calley’s mistakes in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Last year Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top American commander in Iraq, wrote the Army and Marine Corps’ new Counterinsurgency Field Manual there. The goal at Leavenworth is to adapt the Army to the changing battlefield without repeating the mistakes of the past.

But senior officers say that much of the professional second-guessing has become an emotional exercise for young officers. “Many of them have been affected by people they know who died over there,” said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the Leavenworth commander and the former top spokesman for the American military in Iraq. Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the conflicts in the Balkans and even Somalia, General Caldwell said, “we just never experienced the loss of life like we have here. And when that happens, it becomes very personal. You want to believe that there’s no question your cause is just and that it has the potential to succeed.”

[Just on Friday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, criticized the administration’s handling of the war as “incompetent” and “catastrophically flawed.”]

Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, “A Failure in Generalship,” written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran and deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results,” Colonel Yingling wrote.

The article has been required class reading at Leavenworth, where young officers debate whether Colonel Yingling was right to question senior commanders who sent junior officers into battle with so few troops.

“Where I was standing on the street corner, at the 14th of July Bridge, yeah, another brigade there would have been great,” said Maj. Jeffrey H. Powell, 37, a company commander who was referring to the bridge in Baghdad he helped secure during the early days of the war.

Major Powell, who was speaking in a class at the School of Advanced Military Studies, has read many of the Iraq books describing the private disagreements over troop levels between Mr. Rumsfeld and the top commanders, who worried that the numbers were too low but went along in the end.

“Sure, I’m a human being, I question the decision-making process,” Major Powell said. Nonetheless, he said, “we don’t get to sit on the top of the turrets of our tanks and complain that nobody planned for this. Our job is to fix it.”

Discussions nonetheless focused on where young officers might draw a “red line,” the point at which they would defy a command from the civilians — the president and the defense secretary — who lead the military.

“We have an obligation that if our civilian leaders give us an order, unless it is illegal, immoral or unethical, then we’re supposed to execute it, and to not do so would be considered insubordinate,” said Major Timothy Jacobsen, another student. “How do you define what is truly illegal, immoral or unethical? At what point do you cross that threshold where this is no longer right, I need to raise my hand or resign or go to the media?”

General Caldwell, who was the top military aide from 2002 to 2004 to the deputy defense secretary at the time, Paul D. Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq war, would not talk about the meetings he had with Mr. Wolfowitz about the battle plans at the time. “We did have those discussions, and he would engage me on different things, but I’d feel very uncomfortable talking,” General Caldwell said.

Col. Gregory Fontenot, a Leavenworth instructor, said it was typical of young officers to feel that the senior commanders had not spoken up for their interests, and that he had felt the same way when he was their age. But Colonel Fontenot, who commanded a battalion in the Persian Gulf war and a brigade in Bosnia and has since retired, said he questioned whether Americans really wanted a four-star general to stand up publicly and say no to the president of a nation where civilians control the armed forces.

For the sake of argument, a question was posed: If enough four-star generals had done that, would it have stopped the war?

“Yeah, we’d call it a coup d’etat,” Colonel Fontenot said. “Do you want to have a coup d’etat? You kind of have to decide what you want. Do you like the Constitution, or are you so upset about the Iraq war that you’re willing to dismiss the Constitution in just this one instance and hopefully things will be O.K.? I don’t think so.”

Some of the young officers were unimpressed by retired officers who spoke up against Mr. Rumsfeld in April 2006. The retired generals had little to lose, they argued, and their words would have mattered more had they been on active duty. “Why didn’t you do that while you were still in uniform?” Maj. James Hardaway, 36, asked.

Yet, Major Hardaway said, General Shinseki had shown there was a great cost, at least under Mr. Rumsfeld. “Evidence shows that when you do do that in uniform, bad things can happen,” he said. “So, it’s sort of a dichotomy of, should I do the right thing, even if I get punished?”

Another major said that young officers were engaged in their own revisionist history, and that many had believed the war could be won with Mr. Rumsfeld’s initial invasion force of about 170,000. “Everybody now claims, oh, I knew we were going to be there for five years and it was going to take 400,000 people,” said Maj. Patrick Proctor, 36. “Nobody wants to be the guy who said, ‘Yeah, I thought we could do it.’ But a lot of us did.”

One question that silenced many of the officers was a simple one: Should the war have been fought?

“I honestly don’t know how I feel about that,” Major Powell said in a telephone conversation after the discussions at Leavenworth.

“That’s a big, open question,” General Caldwell said after a long pause.
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Friday, October 12, 2007

What if Military Ads had Disclaimers like Pharmaceutical Ads?

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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Democracy - Senator Murray missed it - Darcy Burner saw it - citizens felt it - General Paul Eaton made it real

My military family friends up there in Seattle area didn't plan it to go the way it went, but it sounds like a lot of the Eastside Democratic fundraiser attendees got a glimpse of democracy in action, courtesy of Maj. General Paul Eaton's instincts. (Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.) General Eaton, was a primary speaker at the fundraiser, along with Keynote speaker, Patty Murray. General Eaton chose to welcome and invite returning Iraq veteran, Josh, to join him rather than dismiss him as Senator Patty Murray has been inclined to do weekly.

It also sounds like Darcy Burner didn't do such a good job either of making a returning Iraq veteran, a veteran Gold Star father, and a veteran father with son deployed to Iraq for a third time feel welcome. I expect more of Darcy, as she is, after all, a military family herself and I expect that time honored military culture courtesy to be extended to other military families and veterans.
Report from my military friend, David, and let me give you the setting. There are four men, veterans and fathers of veterans, in the Tuesday Vigil group who stand vigil every Tuesday at the Federal Court House in Seattle. Others join them, but these four are the core group who are faithfully there every Tuesday, rain or shine.


David - Vietnam veteran and father of son who is now on third deployment in Iraq. Father and son are from Washington state.

Joe Colgan - veteran and father of Lt. Benjamin Colgan, killed in Iraq in 2003. That makes Joe a Gold Star Father. Father and son are from Washington state. from Seattle Times article Among the soldiers is Lt. Ben Colgan, 30, a 1991 graduate of Des Moines' Mount Rainier High School. Colgan was killed by a roadside bomb Nov. 1, 2003, just weeks after he was filmed in Iraq. (war documentary, "Gunner Palace.") instincts. (Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.) General Eaton, was a primary speaker at the fundraiser, along with Keynote speaker, Patty Murray. General Eaton chose to welcome and invite returning Iraq veteran, Josh, to join him rather than dismiss him as Senator Patty Murray has been inclined to do weekly.




Joshua - returning Iraq veteran, Washington state.

Howard - he stays in the background and is a trusted friend to all three, as well as crucial to the organizing the Tuesday Vigil.

They took their Tuesday Vigil to the recent Eastside Democratic fundraiser at the Westin in Bellevue. Below is his email account to me of that event;

Hi All,

It was supposed to be dark and stormy day, but it wasn't. Therefore the turnout was good. I counted 15. The sidewalk traffic is decreasing, however. I did speak with a tourist from England today who discussed P.M. Brown's decision to reduce by half the number of British soldiers in Iraq. She thought it was a good thing. I thought it was a great thing. The British do have a way with understatement.

But there is more. Last Sunday several of us from the group attended the East Side Democratic Fund Raiser and Dinner at the Westin in Bellevue. It seems that Patty Murray was the keynote speaker. The main speaker was General Paul Eaton who retired so he could speak out against the war and Bush's war policy.

We thought that it would be a great opportunity to speak to Murray given that she has dodged us for so long. A generous soul paid for our entrance and dinner. While several of the Tuesday Vigil Group stayed outside in the rain to hold banners, it was decided that Joe, Josh and I would speak when Murray had finished her speech.

Our comments were to address Murray's continued support of the war through her votes on supplemental spending bills while maintaining that she is only supporting the troops but opposing the war. Joe, Josh and I planned to identify our personal stakes in this war then Josh would make the statement.

The speech ended and Murray quickly exited the stage and out of the room not to return. I think she smelled us, or it could have been that we were introduced by the moderator prior to her taking the stage. We found this doubling strange since she spoke so highly of General Eaton but didn't stay to listen to his comments. In any case, she took what will be referred to in the future as "A Murray." This development put a slight kink in the plans.

Darcy Burner then took the stage to introduce General Eaton. When she gave a slight pause, Josh seized the moment, stood and made his statement. God bless the courage of youth. Darcy tried to shut him down by telling him to sit down and she would explain how the war was going to be stopped. Josh, to his credit, did not sit down. He completed what he had to say, then sat down.

The General then took the podium and said that this was what democracy was all about and pointed at Josh, asking him to join him. Josh went to the stage where he saluted the general who returned the salute then hugged Josh.

Following this, the General told Josh to take the podium while he stood back. Josh went to the podium, collected himself and gave the most eloquent, impassioned and moving speech one can imagine.

I couldn't see Darcy Burner's face during this, but she must have felt as though the General had taken her to the woodshed. It was priceless.

Following his speech, Josh left the podium. General Eaton again hugged Josh and Josh returned to the table with the applause of the audience. Josh later described this as an out of body experience. One man at our table was reduced to tears.

During General Eaton's speech he made reference to Josh several times. He also noted that one of his sons is named Josh and that he is soon retuning to the Iraq theater (he has two sons in the Army). Following the speech a man stood and made an anti-war statement. Joe stood and made a statement about the loss of his son in Iraq and his disappointment in Murray for dodging us at every turn.

Following this I stood and was told to sit down by one of the organizers who was standing behind us (There must have been some fear that we were out of control.). I did not sit but made my statement. By this time the crowd was no longer focused on the fund raiser. Our planned event had become something much bigger than planned thanks to Josh's courage.

At this point the auction was supposed to have started, but a woman in the audience stood and said that given how things had developed, we should all stand in a moment of silence for the fallen in Iraq. It should have become clear at this point to all in attendance that the dinner was about an immoral and illegal occupation for which few are paying the price.

It's only too sad that Murray did not have the courage to stay to take a few comments from those of us who are in the 1% club who are sacrificing. Her rhetoric of "I support the Troops" must not be allowed to go unchallenged. After all, funding this war is killing out troops and she knows it. And it's ironic that an Army general had to identify to a person who wants to go to Congress what democracy is.

Following the dinner, and as we were leaving, several people approached Josh and thanked him. There were no negative comments. You could say that the East Side Democrats provided a forum for we of the West Side Tuesday Group. We will be forever grateful.

Today Joe and I went to Murray's office in another attempt to talk with her and to get a sense of how the event was viewed by Murray and her staff. Ardis talked with us because Murray was "out of town." She said that she didn't know much about the event. She didn't even know that General Eaton was there. We expressed our regret that Murray won't meet with us. She said that we have a great deal of access to Murray through her. I reminded her that she is not Senator Murray. I also reminded her that my son is returning to Iraq for the third time next week and that being a member of the 1% club can be lonely when the other 99% are asked only to go shopping.

What can we all take from the Bellevue theater event and our visit to Murray's office today?

Primarily we can always count on the courage of youth to bring us through. This is something that the military has known forever. We can also know that there are no limits to the depths to which a politician will sink in pursuit of power and the maintenance of office. There are some exceptions, but I can't think of them right now. For a Democrat like me, I am sad to make these observations about fellow Democrats.

Carry on the good fight and don't let the bastards wear you down.

In Peace and Solidarity,
Dave


my comments - would be Congresswoman Darcy Burner and Senator Patty Murray - maybe it would be better to embrace us (military families in Washington state with skin in the game) than what seems to be efforts to try to distance from us since we all share in common our grave concerns for our military at time of war. If General Paul Eaton can embrace us, if General Wesley Clark can embrace us, then it no longer makes political sense for either of you to seemingly wish to keep distance from us. Our messages may not be exactly the same, but all of us share in common those values of integrity, courage, honor, duty and service to our country.... we have more in common than we don't.

Speak to Joe, speak to Joshua, speak to David - all have served our country as are you and some have paid a heavier price for doing so. They are not your typical anti-war activists, for some their authentic experiences are so compelling as to have them make the difficult choice to be a military family speaking out; countering the very culture of bearing it all in stoic silence, exactly so others won't have to keep bearing it all in stoic silence.

I urge you to hear their personal stories, get to know them personally, hear why they feel compelled to do weekly Tuesday Vigils and hear their personal messages. They do not typify what is casually referred to in Seattle media as anti-war - they have authentic experiences to share and have earned the right to be heard above the din of the noise made by the anti-war crowd.
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