America's Soldiers Deserve Better Leadership

Senior combat leaders worth their salt do not easily forget painfully-learned military lessons. Commanders who find themselves on the ground in the impact zone, where the killing and dying is done, had better pack their ammo pouches full of courage and maneuver savvy or they, and their soldiers, are going to die. For those who may be confused, a six-month rotation in Bosnia, a roving patrol through Sarajevo, or four months sitting in the springtime Albanian mud in a tent, passing occasional spot reports, does not constitute combat experience. You may be a little closer to combat while wearing a Boston Red Sox hat on a Bronx subway ride to Yankee Stadium. Today's Army is woefully short on capable combat commanders who have highly developed leadership skills vital in preparing, maneuvering and fighting a force of soldiers on the ground. Last week, the 10th Mountain Division's Commander, Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, who touts among his accomplishments a Masters of Science Degree in Exercise Physiology, joined the growing list of unprepared and unimpressive senior U.S. military leaders. One might think with Hagenbeck's college degree that the 10th Mountain Division soldiers might be better conditioned. Wrong guess: They were not adequately trained, conditioned, or equipped for the rigors of their mission in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. Hagenbeck was not the right man to be chosen to lead our soldiers in Afghanistan. But he may have still been better than many other general officers in today's U.S. Army. This translates into a very foreboding reality in my view. The general's biographic sketch is evidence of a rapid rise in the ranks. He has held resplendent assignments, such as Pentagon duty where he was the deputy director for politico-military affairs for global and multi-lateral issues and Western Hemisphere, in the Joint Staff's strategic plans and policy directorate. Also notable in his biographic profile is a total absence of combat experience. Senior military leaders are repeatedly falling short when the chips are down as evidenced by Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison's inept mistakes that shredded the Rangers in Somalia's slums. When I count up the score on that mistake, it still makes me sick. Now we have infantrymen from Gen. Hagenbeck's unit - the elite 10th Mountain Division, part of the first-responding XVIII Airborne Corps, no less - who reportedly suffered from muscle failure, altitude sickness and exposure and who failed to rise to mission demands on the ridges and escarpments of eastern Afghanistan. I am absolutely certain that the soldiers on the ground gave it their all and they deserve credit for their effort. I, however, indict the commander and my cross hairs rest right on Hagenbeck's shiny stars. Is this an isolated instance of failed leadership? Alas, no. More evidence of bizarre and inept leadership can readily be found. In Germany, V Corps Commander Lt. Gen. William Wallace has outlawed penny-poker games amongst the soldiers with threats of court-martial action if a soldier errs. He justifies this prohibition in his General Order by stating, "The Federal Republic of Germany is a sovereign state whose local laws and customs must be respected by the visiting US Armed Forces." I fail to make the logic connection on this one. Do you need more? Last year, Brig. Gen. Nicholas P. Grant, the senior military intelligence Officer in South Korea - a strategically vital place if there ever was one - was nominated for his second star and seemed destined to become the next commander of the Army's Intelligence Security Command. Alas, Grant's hopes for a shiny future were dashed upon disclosure of his affair with a civilian secretary. His career spiraled to an abrupt end, after his Major General nomination was withdrawn by Congress. It seems that the senior generals of the U.S. Army are unaware of the fact that the nation - and its soldiers - are at war. Why else are they tolerating such lapses of leadership in command? Somebody has to put the brakes on these self-enamored princes before the toll goes higher. I wouldn't want my son to march off to the fray with this kind of lackadaisical leadership in the "winner-take-all" arena of modern war - would you? Today, in Afghanistan and throughout the Army, we are having our faces rubbed with the painful reality of a softened military force. How much has been written, declared, and discussed in a critical light about the fashionable and trendy social-engineering projects that the Army has concentrated on to the detriment of combat readiness and battlefield performance? From my corner of the foxhole, I say it is past time for the Army to undertake an historic wartime task: To identify the incompetents who are hiding within the Army leadership and to send them packing. It is high time that the Army gets back to soldiering and honing the skills of warriors. The Clinton-era military environment, where sensitivity training helped soldiers to get in touch with their own uniqueness, to achieve closure from bad experiences, and to feel the pain and challenges of others who may have been misunderstood, came to a crashing end last Sept. 11 with the terrorist strikes on American soil, although some military leaders still seem to be acting the old way. It is time to re-cock our thinking and clean house. If the Army and other services fail to identify and appoint the true wartime commanders we need to wage the war on terrorism, I fear that the critical lessons learned from our prior American adventure in Vietnam - lessons that we have apparently forgotten - will have to be learned again, with pain and blood and death. America's involvement in the Vietnam War (against the caution of the French, who themselves had learned a bitter lesson) served as wake-up call for the United States when embarking on protracted battle with an unconventional force. I am willing to wager that most junior military officers can provide a comprehensive briefing on the historic Battle of Gettysburg of 1863. However, I challenge you to find a young scholar who can recount the issues and "lessons learned" from Lam Son 719, Operation Junction City, Hastings, Linebacker, or what happened at An Loc and when. At the time, there were very few people in positions of political responsibility, or in America's military, who comprehended what was at stake with America's involvement in Vietnam. There were even fewer who understood what was necessary to achieve our strategic goals in Vietnam - goals that begged for clearer definition. Most notable of those was President Lyndon B. Johnson, who vowed to not send American boys halfway around the globe to do a job that Vietnam's boys should be doing - then did just that. Current military leaders will be well served, at all ranks, by rapidly and voluminously educating themselves on the lessons learned, and not learned, and combat leadership examples, bad and good, that constitute our legacy in Vietnam. The United States not only got it wrong in Vietnam, but took much too long a time to realize the obvious, long enough to waste the lives of over 58,000 young American men who died, and over 153,000 who were wounded. The cost of Vietnam to our country was enormous and the wounds of our folly and failure are not fully healed even today. What's worse, events emerging in Afghanistan indicate that many of the hard lessons from Vietnam have been forgotten by our current Army leadership. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has declared that the United States will not occupy and has no interest in occupying vital terrain in Afghanistan, a frightening echo of our failed strategy in Vietnam. Clearly, the tactical battle plan for our soldiers in Afghanistan cannot simply consist of a "hide-and-seek" approach. Terrain must be seized and held until all Taliban or al-Qaeda resistance and combat capability is destroyed. To do otherwise will likely result in American soldiers fighting for, and paying the grim reaper, more than once for the same terrain. If Vietnam was a classic case of America serving as a heavily armed referee consumed by mission creep, is not the emerging situation in Afghanistan the same? Any observer, who cannot detect the similarities between the indigenous rival factions in Afghanistan, and those of Vietnam, is turning a blind eye to the scope. America and its allies must remain committed and clearly focused on the eradication of its enemies. When the call for nation-building comes - and it will - we must remember that the mission of the Army is to fight and win wars and ultimately to preserve freedom in America. We will be in a better place to avoid a failed strategy or the wasting of American lives in battle if the Army can take the necessary steps to promote generals capable of carrying out the right mission. J. David Galland &to=http://www.JdavidGalland@military.com' target=_blank>JdavidGalland@military

Become a member of Pravda.ru online community