Waitone
Member
Whoa! Talk about a blast out of the past. Sounds like the 60's to me also. The 1960's. Scary similarity. Even to the part about going to law school.
Military considers recruiting foreigners
- Thread starter longeyes
- Start date
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Thin Black Line
Member
Hooah.
His choices in the future: implanted RFID chip in a cashless nanny society
somewhere between 1984 and BNW or Koran, mandatory mosque, and a long
beard. Either way he gets totalitarianism and constant warfare (jihad).
Soylent green or Tabouli now, but same mass-produced bland taste.
You're bought and locked into the machine either way.
"There's a job for you in the system, boy, with nothing to sign!"
http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/queensryche/operationmindcrime.html
It all fits very well, an army of people with no real connection to any country fighting on behalf of multinational oil companies and ethno-religious lobbies. The US has been enlisting foreigners for a long time. However, watch the numbers increase over the next few years. The great asset that these foreign troops bring to the table will be their willingness to fire upon American civilians, they have no connection to our people.
Thin Black Line
Member
Good point. I'll bet Ceausescu is rolling over in his grave wishing he had a
legion of foreign troops under his direct control in 1989. This lesson was
not lost on successful empires of the past:
praetorian guard:
and janissaries:
These tools of empire all eventually become dangerous to their rulers and
this was not a lesson lost on Stalin who purged his military and intelligence
services every few years.
It will happen again.
However, this is why OUR founders put the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution.
Keep it while you can.....
Medusa
Member
Yeah, sure this is a dangerous sign if the country can't man/woman their army. We have same problem here, approx 30% of eglible men actually get signed up, other get mostly "medical excuses". But I wouldn't doubt the loyalty of true-hearted ones, true there can and will be many of those "opportunists", but for some this is a bonne chance to get the desired citizenship.
Would I be untustworthy as I am now - having active military experience, moving on high-speed to getting sniper qualification, being offered the place of unit's armorer and/or smallarms (certified, up to 20 mm cal) instructor, with possibilities to get my own unit to command, with prospect to go under local SOCOM?
Would I be untustworthy as I am now - having active military experience, moving on high-speed to getting sniper qualification, being offered the place of unit's armorer and/or smallarms (certified, up to 20 mm cal) instructor, with possibilities to get my own unit to command, with prospect to go under local SOCOM?
Wow. I don't pass through L&P much, now I know why. These foreign national soldiers take the same oath as I do whenever they enlist or reenlist. Again, the vast majority are coming here to stay. I will wager that any of my guys working through the process to become citizens know a lot more about the Constitution and how this country ought to be than some of the roman empire tinfoil hat brigade.
I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
They all take that oath. What oath do you take?
P.S. Please show me in there where it says I fight for oil companies. Oh wait, it is the obey all orders part, that's right, all of us dumb enlisted types just blindly follow any order even if it comes from a domestic enemy, goes against the Constitution, or is not "according to regulations and the UCMJ" .
Thin Black Line
Member
When the "we do what's vital to protect our strategic interests" statements
are made do you think they were referencing a steady supply of sand? I
swore an oath to the Consitution as well and that seems to be in ideological
conflict with the generals consumer public's interpretation of "pursuit of happiness"
which has been severely twisted due to their "addiction to oil" (thank you,
Mr President, for this lightning flash of true honesty.) I'll concede that the
President is doing what the public wants despite the majority's comments
against the War in general. An addict might really hate giving away their
sons and daughters for crack/meth, but I've seen them do it anyway. There's
all sorts of hand-wringing on both sides of the political aisle, but when it
comes down to it at the end of the day, they all grip their steering wheels
and drive home to a fossil-fuel heated/air-conditioned 3000 sqft American
mortgaged dream home.
The Constitution is about maintaining many types of freedom and the country
was founded by people who were by and large seeking religious freedom.
It's not about ensuring comfort, ease, and physical luxuries at the expense of
others.
We'll recruit willing foreigners who will see US bases as a step up from their
current living conditions in the 2nd and 3rd world. However, we only delay
the inevitable decline of this country. We can start conserving what we
have now and try for a soft landing or like addicts we can burn high
until the end and crash hard.
I fear for the youngest generation for this reason as well. A generation of
dumbed-down kids with no real skills who may inherit a broken machine and
a tank of fumes.
longeyes
member
You're missing the point. It is not about the inability of people born outside the U.S. to become ardent and loyal American citizens.
What I think we are all concerned about is the loss of American idenity among our own and, more to the point, the loss of the essential political values that have distinguished this nation from all others. All is trivialized, all is coarsened.
America has been about liberty, not about "gimme." When there is no longer a real quorum for liberty, we need to see the signs and decide what we are going to do about it.
Thin Black Line
Member
If I follow the example of our nation's leaders it would be to make a ton of
money (it doesn't matter how), buy a private jet, have a mountain fortress
in South America or a Pacific Island or a European Chateau, and prepare to
bug out like Baby Doc when the corpse of the nation finally popped after
it had exceded bloating capacity. Yeah, sick imagery. And who will be the
vultures picking the bones and who will be the ones trying to shoo them
away?
I really don't see foreigners in the military being part of the problem when this
happens. If anything, they will be the ones who can show how the work
will be done by hand. It will be the people use to having an easy life under
a division of labor in an energy intensive economy who are just as damaging
to a fractured country as anyone else.
Thin Black Line
Member
Now this is what I call Bugging Out With Style:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gulfstream_V_NASA.jpg
A straight shot from CONUS to my Jungle Compound in Paraguay.
The nouveau riche in their cheap jets will have to make a stop or two for fuel....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gulfstream_V_NASA.jpg
A straight shot from CONUS to my Jungle Compound in Paraguay.
The nouveau riche in their cheap jets will have to make a stop or two for fuel....
Cosmoline
Member
It's also a reflection of what US foreign policy has become. The focus has less and less to do with the US and more and more to do with nation building overseas. If insufficient numbers of US citizens are willing to fight, then maybe it's time to wrap things up and concentrate on the national defense. Our OWN national defense. And I'm not Bush Bashing here. It's a trend that started long, long before him and cuts across both parties. After the heady days of 1945 we decided we could lead the world. The Soviets did too, but they learned otherwise. We have yet to learn our lesson, and time and again we keep trying to make people better. If the current war really was about oil we could have wrapped things up four years ago by putting a fresh brutal tyrant in charge of Iraq and giving him MOAB support to slaughter any centers of dissent as needed. The oil would be flowing now, and Iraq would be stable if not free. But instead we get this notion into our minds that we can be some glorious champion of democracy for the world. Heck, we even put our own soldiers on trial for gunning down the scum who came to watch them die by IED like some holiday entertainment. We should not venture into those parts of the world unless we're prepared to take scalps.
And the irony is, for all the talk of a "soft" America, the American people are a lot more willing to be brutal to these people than the Administration, the press, or even the pentagon. I don't really care if they live or die, and if we have to go kill them to secure oil let's do that and be done with it. The US is already hated across the Muslim world as a brutal overlord, so why not show them what our fire can really do. And if we're not prepared to do that, then let's call the whole thing off.
If the alternative to rethinking our foreign policy is to set up hundreds of new recruiting centers overseas to exploit the existing loophole that allows non-citizens to serve, then we really need to rethink matters. Some token multinationals are the military equivalent of foreign exchange students, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when the foreigners start to outnumber the Americans, then the military force is no longer American.
Thin Black Line
Member
Despite all the AM radio tough talk and sports bar banter, the American
people who remain in support of the War are willing to be brutal as long as
it's someone else doing the pommeling and getting the blood on their hands.
The vast majority of people against the War, or who think nothing about
it, have a severe case of denial about their lifestyle and the foreign policy
that's need to support it.
At least the people who support a certain very popular radio talk show host
giving away Escalades are probably more honest to themselves in wanting
the War. But, it's so many other people over-extended on their mortgages
and already leasing such vehicles who are the first to howl when gasoline
goes up a buck and want someone to blame for it. Both groups play right
into their master's hands.
When I was in Iraq I saw the attitude change over that time. I was mainly
in the Sunni triangle and was surpised that things were rather relaxed when
it came to the average person in the countryside. By the time I left, we had
really over-stayed our "welcome" and they were all pretty much p'ed off.
We really could have changed course earlier and cut some deals with the
various warlords who would have arisen in the vacuum. We should have
allowed Saddam to fall off the back of a truck after he was captured and
let him get mussolini'ed by his own people. However, things are a little
more complicated than that not only because of the neighboring states,
but the other global players involved.
Unlike another radio talk show host, I do NOT agree with bombing mosques
to go after people nor do I believe that this is the Gog/Magog End Times
scenario (which he pushes despite NOT being a believer himself). Such
heavy handed tactics no matter the motivation behind them can have
results counter to what one desires. Even in the NWO there is a domination
phase before a genocide phase. If the herd smells danger too early, they
might actually stampede in the wrong direction....no...no...no...need to
have them blissfully wander off the cliff as the stragglers of the herd are
picked off by the predators. At some point the population will have to be
tagged first with genocidal markers.
If you look at legitimate militaries from a global perspective, we Americans
are already outnumbered and our military is being used in ways counter
to what the Founders had in mind and in violation of the Constitution. It
makes perfect sense to recruit for the US military overseas if our country
has already been assimilated into the larger global body, doesn't it?
Hence, the need to pursue pointless campaigns that drive out your
experienced NCOs and mid-level officers, and also to disarm American
civilians. There are plenty of people here on THR, including some
mods, who state small arms make little difference against a modern army.
Yes and no, in either case it's a helluva lot easier to subjugate a people
when they have little or no means to resist.
longeyes
member
Not on "the national defense," rather, on the defense of the true American nation that consists of those Americans who still believe in the essential principles of the Republic as laid down at the beginning. The Americans who are not "willing to fight" are not willing to fight for anything, but from what I see around me will be all too willing to be collaborators in destroying what's left of America.
This is part of the lotus-eating delusion of impregnability that is at the core of the problem. Are they, en masse, willing to make the sacrifices? Are they willing, themselves, to take mortal loss? I really wonder. Most of the people I know are in denial and don't really think anything is going to happen to them or that there are any real dangers out there.
Cosmoline
Member
Why should they be? War is about making the other poor son of a bitch die for his country. It's not about taking losses when you don't have to. So we have to decide, if we're at war with these clowns why aren't we slaughtering them? And if we're not at war with them, why are we there? We seem to be locked in some bizarre limbo land where we send soldiers out to drive around and around until somebody blows them up or shoots them. It's what happens when you believe your own rhetoric about bringing peace and democracy to the gibbering hordes.
We need to fish or cut bait. Kill them, or leave them alone. Because at base the military is a tool for killing people. If you're not willing to kill people, including infants and mothers, don't use it. If you use the military as intended, the military's recruiting problems will fix themselves.
Otherwise, our military is following the same road the UN has gone down. The UN recruits the vast majority of its peacekeepers from countries like Pakistan who's soldiers are attracted by better pay and connections. It fills the ranks, but creates a military force that's far from effective. If we start recruiting en masse from overseas we will end up with the same kind of soldiers. Indeed we may end up with a lot of those same soldiers. It's not a good situation.
Well all gog/magog aside, what if there are snipers in that mosque shooting at our troops? I say blow it to powder with the biggest bombs we can bring to bear. I don't care about their religious sensibilities. Heck, our mere EXISTENCE is a violation of their religion.
xd9fan
Member
What?! Gen X-ers....self-centered slackers...huh.
For all the hippie love from the "me generation" boomers....For all the its about "liberty and freedom man"
The baby boom generation sure has fully embraced the coersive power of the federal Govt to force others into their eutopia. All for "fairness" "for the children" and "for your security". (reguardless of party)
The breakdown of the family did not start with the greatest generation.
The breakdown of america traditions did not start with the greatest generation.
The huge, huge surge of using the federal Govt as a social "equality" engineering tool did not start with the greatest generation.
Boomers are spending borrowed federal money faster than any generation ever.
Give me the FREEDOM, the DIGINTY to break away from the social security system and invest MY money the way I want. But Boomers will not hear of it.
I will say one thing Boomers are no slackers when it comes to the growth of Govt
Wait now your sounding like an X-er!!! Most X-ers (myself included) by nature dont trust Govt.
I would serve like you mentioned: (swiss-style....real homeland security) But not this every 10-15 years cycle of some president and their "conflict" half way around the world. Claiming "they are protecting your freedom' (when that is MY job and if they are SOOO concrened about protecting us....then fix the damn southern border!!.)
The relationship has the be a two-way street of respect. As a citizen, The Govt needs to show me they value the liberty and life and trust of the citizen by not abusing the citizen's patroitism and sense of self-protection by tell the citizen that this new conflict half way around the world has everything to do with our very protection when it does not.
If the united states federal govt was true to a policy of armed neutrality (like the swiss) Then I say....sign me up.
The misuse and aduse of the military in the last 50 years has shown me that this Federal Govt cant be trusted with my life. They simply dont respect the relationship.
RustyShackelford
member
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2006
- Messages
- 4,018
9-11-2001/foreign legion-US
Long before the tragic events of 9-11-2001, I said a plan like this would be a huge benefit to the US Armed Forces/DoD. After the big problems surfaced with immigration/terrorist watch lists/intel I would now say a plan like this would be a huge mistake.
Major terrorist networks would take advantage of this program and cause massive amounts of damage to our military and to the US Homeland Security operations.
A Egyptian came to the US, became a US citizen, joined the US Army, became an E-7(a rank that takes YEARS to make,
) in SF(special forces) then ran terrorist missions and plans for OBL. When the FBI caught him it was a huge mess.
The DSS(Defense Security Service) has a huge backlog and there would be no way 1,000s of new "recruits" could be screened to serve in the US armed forces.
The risks far outway the benefits to doing this now.
Rusty S
Long before the tragic events of 9-11-2001, I said a plan like this would be a huge benefit to the US Armed Forces/DoD. After the big problems surfaced with immigration/terrorist watch lists/intel I would now say a plan like this would be a huge mistake.
Major terrorist networks would take advantage of this program and cause massive amounts of damage to our military and to the US Homeland Security operations.
A Egyptian came to the US, became a US citizen, joined the US Army, became an E-7(a rank that takes YEARS to make,
) in SF(special forces) then ran terrorist missions and plans for OBL. When the FBI caught him it was a huge mess. The DSS(Defense Security Service) has a huge backlog and there would be no way 1,000s of new "recruits" could be screened to serve in the US armed forces.
The risks far outway the benefits to doing this now.
Rusty S
Thin Black Line
Member
I am well past that. You have to ask yourself what is the military value of
that target/objective and furthermore, is it in the national interest to be there
with ground troops in the first place.
By the end of my first tour I was at Zero and No.
I don't even want to get into the dumbassery as far as some of the missions.
Missions that the Iraqi version of DoT should have been doing --not US Soldiers.
You'll have plenty of people in the US military who will execute a mission no
matter what and not question it. I understand there are circumstances when
you can't have people standing around questioning, second-guessing, and
debating. But when we get to the point that completing the mission is more
about "saving face" for someone who isn't even there and has no relatives
risking their lives then we have gotten to the point where I might as well wait
to see the flames and listen for the fiddle as the whole thing burns down.
Until then we have our multi-culti Empire with its assortment of gods and men
who would liken themselves to gods. I certainly find no fault with someone
from another country who wants to risk their life by joining the military for
the simple privilege of citizenship. Their intentions are certainly pure. It
doesn't matter to me if the soldier is native-born or immigrant since I don't
want anyone's life wasted.
Harry Paget Flashman
Member
I served in the Navy with Mexican, Portuguese, Belizean, German (E&W), Polish, Filipino, Samoan. Guamanian, Spanish, Canadian, Dominican, English and Lebanese. They were all good sailors. As long as they are willing to give service to this country and risk their lives doing so let them, especially if enough of our own sons and daughters do not wish to do so.
longeyes
member
from Der Spiegel - your new military
CIVILIZED WARRIORS
The US Army Learns from its Mistakes in Iraq
By Ullrich Fichtner
Weapons alone aren't enough to win a war -- you also need to dig wells and build schools. Lessons from the war in Iraq have caused nothing short of a cultural revolution in the United States Army. In Fort Leavenworth, leading officers are training troops for the wars of the future.
Fort Leavenworth, where America's armies of the future are being shaped, is a perfect optical illusion. The camp looks like an idyllic, small American city, where walnut trees provide shade for the verandas of old houses, the Stars and Stripes flutter in the wind from every gable and the gray fast-moving waters of the Missouri River are visible from the hills to the north.
Bulky American-made cars are parked along quiet streets in a community complete with its very own Burger King restaurant, health club, shopping mall, golf course, baseball field, movie theater and church. But the aura of serenity is deceptive. Everything in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas revolves around war.
The headquarters of the US Army's officer training program was long seen as a last stop for deserving soldiers en route to retirement. In the 20th century, anyone who was transferred to Leavenworth was no longer considered part of an active-duty unit. "Nowadays," says Army spokesman Stephen Boylan, a colonel with a moustache who served for several years in Germany, "everyone knows that the road to Baghdad leads directly through Leavenworth."
The best way to fully understand Boylan's comment is to take a grueling tour of the 16 schools, institutes and colleges at the fort where about 2,000 young officers enroll each year for special training. The tour passes through windowless conference rooms, classrooms and lecture halls, and it requires enduring hours of slide presentations and talks by generals, historians, diplomats, Vietnam veterans and soldiers serving in Iraq. It also means wading through documents filled with unfamiliar acronyms, but in the end the visitor is left with the feeling that a revolution is being launched here in Fort Leavenworth, one that will radically change the face of the United States military and the wars it will fight in the future.
The military's conscience
Scott Lacky, a civilian with a doctorate who speaks fluent German and wears a dark suit, is in charge of one of the schools, the Center for Army Lessons Learned -- that is, lessons learned from past and current operations. Lacky studied in Munich and Vienna and was even a visiting scholar at the German parliament, the Bundestag, when it was still in the former capital, Bonn. When his workday has ended, Lacky, a heavyset man, can be seen strolling through the fort wearing a Tyrolean hat. Lacky is the US military's conscience.
His job here has changed by quantum leaps in recent years. It all started with the computer and Internet revolution of the early 1990s, and it continued after Sept. 11, 2001, a day Lacky sees as marking a radical turning point. Before this seminal date, Lacky says, it would take two to three months until the information gleaned from an experience with value for the entire army had been processed, printed and distributed.
But these days, when a brigade reports from Iraq that the insurgents are hiding their roadside bombs in dead cats, all it takes is a few inquiries, a few e-mails and a few mouse clicks and, within the space of a few hours, the news has been distributed to everyone. Lacky and his staff used this approach to develop concepts for building checkpoints after US military personnel had repeatedly fired unnecessarily at civilians in Baghdad. The regulations for convoys were rewritten, as were those for how to behave during mass gatherings and while on foot patrols.
Lacky's department now has precise location descriptions for every sector of every Iraqi city, descriptions that are a far cry from the information the military would gather and disseminate in the past. While the old documents described the world topographically merely as a battlefield, officers nowadays can consult information that tells them where kindergartens, mosques, Koran schools and meeting points are located. They can also learn a great deal about the social makeup of a neighborhood, including ethnic affiliations, local customs and unwritten laws.
Military leaders used to view these "soft factors" as secondary details, at least until they began learning from experiences in Afghanistan and Iran. The Army's worldview was still colored by the logic of the Cold War, which divided the world into clear-cut blocs. Military leaders were primarily focused on a big picture that envisioned a decisive battle against the Soviet military, where tank divisions would clash with tank divisions and where the chains of command practiced over and over again for the eventuality that a nuclear war could take place.
Struggling to gain the upper hand
Not much changed in this basic approach until the fall of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the ensuing debacle in Iraq. The military's top brass and the Pentagon continued to view everything in black and white. For them, there was a clear distinction between combat missions and the tools and mechanics of war, on the one hand, and the peacekeeping missions, on the other. The latter were multinational and had a decidedly civilian flavor, and consisted of things like providing policing for nation-building in Kosovo -- not exactly something that was particularly appealing to the US military.
The notion that the world's most modern and powerful military machine could end up struggling to gain the upper hand over scattered insurgents was inconceivable and hit the US military like an earthquake. Until a few years ago, no one in the US military would have believed that instead of dropping bombs and engaging in fierce combat, it would one day be drilling wells, directing traffic, building schools and organizing local elections -- and that it would be doing all of these things not after but in the middle of a war. Finally, no one would have imagined that these civilian tools would end up being described as the most-effective weapons on the road to victory.
"In Bosnia, we had a feeling for the first time that perhaps we are poorly prepared after all," says Dennis Tighe, a slim, jovial man who wears wide suspenders over his shirt. Tighe, a young-looking 60, is in charge of maneuvers and troop exercises for officers at Fort Leavenworth -- Combined Arms Center Training, or CAC-T in short.
In the former Yugoslavia, says Tighe, the US military was unprepared for the confusion of scattered small battles. It had trouble dealing with a conflict that was so culturally charged, a war without fronts and battle lines in tiny countries whose problems the Americans found deeply puzzling. The military also failed to realize that rebuilding stadiums could sometimes be more important than winning minor military skirmishes. It also had trouble understanding something that organizations like the United Nations had long known, and that is that providing seeds for crops can ultimately be more critical to achieving success than ammunition. It took time, especially for a military that had been exposed to doctrines set in stone for so many decades, until new ideas were allowed to penetrate into its ranks.
The courage to question
It took commanders who could implement changes and who had the courage to question the Pentagon's old-school way of thinking and its approach to the war in Iraq. The process began in Leavenworth, in 2004, with William Wallace, the general who had commanded the US Army's "Thunder Run" to Baghdad in the initial stage of the war. But once it became increasingly evident that Iraq was in turmoil, Wallace began to doubt his own hard-hitting strategy and reinterpret the operation's successes and failures. As it turned out, Wallace was the first to question all the military doctrines that had been in place until then. His direct successor is currently in the process of eliminating them alto
David Petraeus, a three-star general who completed his own officer-training program at Fort Leavenworth and graduated at the top of his class of 1,000, has been in charge at the facility since the autumn of 2005. When he was in command of the 101st Airborne Division as they advanced northward through Iraq up to Mosul, Petraeus already held a doctorate in political science. Today, at Leavenworth, he serves as a professor in combat gear.
His office is in a dark-paneled room, its walls covered with diplomas, awards, medals and old maps. A year before arriving in Leavenworth, Petraeus was removed from his position in Iraq, where he oversaw the task of building the Iraqi army. The decision to remove Petraeus, who was clearly the best man for the job, triggered an outcry in the press and the political arena. He was portrayed as the shining hope for a new Iraq and for the American military -- even as a new Lawrence of Arabia. Nowadays, he is considered a candidate for a fourth star, and those who worked with him hope that he may one day lead the entire US Army.
Notwithstanding the many accolades, Petraeus, 55, is a reserved, idiosyncratic man. He was shot in the lung in an accident during a military exercise years ago, and he later broke his pelvis while parachuting. The injury is still painful and forces him to walk with a slight stoop. But Petraeus is fanatic about not allowing his injuries to get in his way. He walks at a fast pace for four to seven miles each morning, spends hours stretching and runs ten miles at the pace of a man 20 years his junior.
Standing between the best and worst
On the day of our meeting, Petraeus says he stands between the best and the worst that the Army has to offer. It is a cold Friday in Fort Leavenworth. Winter is coming to Kansas, to America's heartland, and the hearings on the Baker Commission's report on an exit strategy for the Iraq disaster are on TV. On CNN and CBS, experts spend all day debating the pros and cons of a troop withdrawal, occasionally interrupted by brief reports on the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in Italy.
Petraeus has two important events on this day. In the afternoon, he will promote Joe Ramirez to the position of general, an important ceremony in the US military. Ramirez, a son of Mexican immigrants whose father fought in the Korean War, is a walking example of the American dream. But Petraeus's first event is a morning funeral.
An officer at the School of Advanced Military Studies was killed in a bombing attack in Iraq. His body will be laid to rest in the fort's large, old cemetery -- a fresh grave among 22,000 others that tell the history of every war America has fought. Petraeus, who will offer his condolences to the dead soldier's family, is wearing black. For a moment he seems almost too soft for a general. That can only be an illusion, but still, he says, "It's terrible every time."
Petraeus is the man at the helm of the Army's top-down revolution. Together with a general from the US Marines, James Mattis, he has written a new doctrine on counterinsurgency, a doctrine that turns almost every previous rule of warfare on its head.
The 241-page document contains an outline of the history of all rebellions and a guide to the wars of the future. For the first time, it draws no distinction between civilian and classic military operations. In fact, it almost equates the importance of the two. Petraeus believes that the military can no longer win wars with military might alone. On the contrary, according to the new theory, it must do its utmost to avoid large-scale destruction and, by as early as the initial attack, not only protect the civilian population but also support it with all available means in order to secure its cooperation for regime change. As uncomplicated as it may seem, Petraeus's new doctrine represents a sea change when it comes to the US military's training and combat procedures. Some might also interpret it as a way of settling scores with the failed strategy in Iraq.
A new way of teaching
In the early morning, the fort is filled with soldiers walking around in combat dress, books tucked under their arms and earphones in their ears. They arrive in pickup trucks and on bicycles, walking through the doors of campus buildings with names like Bell and Eisenhower Hall to their classes. They are young officers, most around the age of 30, their heads shaved, hurrying past without so much as glancing at the cemetery and buildings where Generals Macarthur and Colin Powell once lived, walking along paths where William Cody once walked before he became Buffalo Bill.
Almost all the students here have already been in combat in Iraq. They are familiar with the practical side of war, but not with the new theory. In one class the students discuss counterinsurgency, known here by the acronym COIN, learning about Petraeus's doctrine, one that preaches smarter ways to combat insurgents, conduct operations against rebels and wage the war on terror with other, civilian tools.
In one classroom, 15 uniformed soldiers, including guest students from Colombia, Argentina and Ukraine, sit in a U-shaped formation in front of computer screens. The instructor is a retired lieutenant colonel with active duty experience in Malaysia and Thailand. During his lecture he jumps from one place to another around the globe. He talks about Chechen and Mexican Zapatista rebels, Columbia's FARC revolutionaries and the Taliban, about Syria, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. He asks his students: "In your opinion, how has the US's view of the world changed since Sept. 11?" A female student says, in a piercing voice: "We now know that we have to take them out before they take us out." It isn't the answer the instructor was looking for. He says: "Well, let's take a closer look."
"Our work isn't easy," says John Kerry, another instructor at the military academy. He is the spitting image of the stereotypical literature professor in a Hollywood film. He came to Kansas after serving as a military attaché in Morocco. He talks as if he were a little embarrassed by the superficial approach the instructors are forced to take here. "We're dealing with people who sometimes can't even point to the Middle East on a map."
Global sensitivity training and a new doctrine
The group of instructors sitting around the conference table is responsible for the new army's core issue: cultural awareness, or the art of handling multiculturalism and practicing tolerance and respect for foreigners. The people sitting around the table have served as diplomats and intelligence agents in Israel and Jordan and as military attachés in Syria. Their job is to give these young soldiers a crash course in how to deal with other cultures in general and Islam in particular.
"Arabs are not always Muslims, and Muslims do not always think the way Arabs do," says Kerry, citing an example of the kind of message he and his colleagues are here to instill in the officers. The uniformed students must work their way through long lists of lectures and read 300-400 pages a day -- new textbooks about the modern world, as well as classics like Clausewitz and the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. In an effort to teach skepticism and critical thinking, the instructors are constantly asking their students trick questions and presenting them with paradoxes, rewiring their brains to help them understand the new military doctrine.
Students are asked to discuss fundamental ethical problems, explain their answers, explain their explanations and then dissect their reasoning once again. They are asked to conduct non-military, cultural analyses of actual conflicts. This is a challenge for someone from Texas in his late 20s, someone whose idea of the world has never extended far beyond his own hometown. Some soldiers resist all this talk about culture and respect and tolerance -- they would much rather spend their days firing off ammunition at the shooting range.
Mark A. Olson is a pale, dour, combat-tested colonel in the Marines who has seen his share of the world. His subject at Leavenworth is counter-terrorism, and he knows his people well. "There will always be those who aren't interested in hand-shaking and baby-kissing," says Olson. "Those are the tank commanders who think it's their job to drive down the street and shoot at everything that moves." Olson makes a contemptuous face. "But then we wash that stuff out of their heads. We make it clear to them that idiots like them are not only not ending the insurgency but are in fact strengthening it. And, believe me, that's something they never forget."
Olson is one of Petraeus's better students. He says that officers of the future must have broader qualifications, civilian skills and a quick head that tells them when to shoot and, more important, when not to shoot. A military that acts too brutally in the wrong place merely creates new enemies. "We have to build contacts to the civilian population. They have to understand that they don't need to respect us, but that they should accept their new government."
A killer who can write poetry
The great litany of Fort Leavenworth is that everything must change. Generals and colonels talk about civility and networking. They encourage open-minded thinkers, critical minds in uniform, and they describe the officer of the future as a multitalented individual, as someone who can be a killer and write poetry. They constantly talk about respect for other cultures and about "culture teams" that could support the armed forces in the future, and they dabble in psychology and sociology.
In the end, after days packed with lectures and discussions, one is left with the conclusion that perhaps the US military is no longer interested in this Iraq war, at least not the kind of war it has been conducting and is now losing day after day.
In Fort Leavenworth, it is as if a hectic race is underway that began too late and that may help change future wars, but not the war at the top of everyone's mind, the war in Iraq. David Petraeus, the man who launched this race, chooses his words carefully, because he knows that he is skating on very thin ice. He must dispel the suspicion that his intellectual concepts could damage the military's sheer fighting power and morale.
Critics are already accusing him of simply confusing people, so much so that once in the field, standing eye to eye with the enemy, they might end up confusing their heads with their weapons. Perhaps this explains why Petraeus always makes a point of emphasizing that soldiers are warriors first and that their main job should continue to consist of shooting, bombing, killing and winning. But these are always the weakest points in his speeches.
Who knows, perhaps the uniformed professor, is torn between his two roles of a civilian teacher and a military commander. Perhaps he has even higher ambitions, as everyone already believes, not in the army but in politics, which still pulls rank over the military. That would put Petraeus at the very top, and perhaps in a place where he would have even more power to create a new military.
Winter is coming to Kansas, and it's cold in Fort Leavenworth. By early evening, quiet returns to this small city behind barbed wire. But the serenity is deceptive. A revolution is underway that will change the face of the US military -- and with it the wars the world has yet to face.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
CIVILIZED WARRIORS
The US Army Learns from its Mistakes in Iraq
By Ullrich Fichtner
Weapons alone aren't enough to win a war -- you also need to dig wells and build schools. Lessons from the war in Iraq have caused nothing short of a cultural revolution in the United States Army. In Fort Leavenworth, leading officers are training troops for the wars of the future.
Fort Leavenworth, where America's armies of the future are being shaped, is a perfect optical illusion. The camp looks like an idyllic, small American city, where walnut trees provide shade for the verandas of old houses, the Stars and Stripes flutter in the wind from every gable and the gray fast-moving waters of the Missouri River are visible from the hills to the north.
Bulky American-made cars are parked along quiet streets in a community complete with its very own Burger King restaurant, health club, shopping mall, golf course, baseball field, movie theater and church. But the aura of serenity is deceptive. Everything in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas revolves around war.
The headquarters of the US Army's officer training program was long seen as a last stop for deserving soldiers en route to retirement. In the 20th century, anyone who was transferred to Leavenworth was no longer considered part of an active-duty unit. "Nowadays," says Army spokesman Stephen Boylan, a colonel with a moustache who served for several years in Germany, "everyone knows that the road to Baghdad leads directly through Leavenworth."
The best way to fully understand Boylan's comment is to take a grueling tour of the 16 schools, institutes and colleges at the fort where about 2,000 young officers enroll each year for special training. The tour passes through windowless conference rooms, classrooms and lecture halls, and it requires enduring hours of slide presentations and talks by generals, historians, diplomats, Vietnam veterans and soldiers serving in Iraq. It also means wading through documents filled with unfamiliar acronyms, but in the end the visitor is left with the feeling that a revolution is being launched here in Fort Leavenworth, one that will radically change the face of the United States military and the wars it will fight in the future.
The military's conscience
Scott Lacky, a civilian with a doctorate who speaks fluent German and wears a dark suit, is in charge of one of the schools, the Center for Army Lessons Learned -- that is, lessons learned from past and current operations. Lacky studied in Munich and Vienna and was even a visiting scholar at the German parliament, the Bundestag, when it was still in the former capital, Bonn. When his workday has ended, Lacky, a heavyset man, can be seen strolling through the fort wearing a Tyrolean hat. Lacky is the US military's conscience.
His job here has changed by quantum leaps in recent years. It all started with the computer and Internet revolution of the early 1990s, and it continued after Sept. 11, 2001, a day Lacky sees as marking a radical turning point. Before this seminal date, Lacky says, it would take two to three months until the information gleaned from an experience with value for the entire army had been processed, printed and distributed.
But these days, when a brigade reports from Iraq that the insurgents are hiding their roadside bombs in dead cats, all it takes is a few inquiries, a few e-mails and a few mouse clicks and, within the space of a few hours, the news has been distributed to everyone. Lacky and his staff used this approach to develop concepts for building checkpoints after US military personnel had repeatedly fired unnecessarily at civilians in Baghdad. The regulations for convoys were rewritten, as were those for how to behave during mass gatherings and while on foot patrols.
Lacky's department now has precise location descriptions for every sector of every Iraqi city, descriptions that are a far cry from the information the military would gather and disseminate in the past. While the old documents described the world topographically merely as a battlefield, officers nowadays can consult information that tells them where kindergartens, mosques, Koran schools and meeting points are located. They can also learn a great deal about the social makeup of a neighborhood, including ethnic affiliations, local customs and unwritten laws.
Military leaders used to view these "soft factors" as secondary details, at least until they began learning from experiences in Afghanistan and Iran. The Army's worldview was still colored by the logic of the Cold War, which divided the world into clear-cut blocs. Military leaders were primarily focused on a big picture that envisioned a decisive battle against the Soviet military, where tank divisions would clash with tank divisions and where the chains of command practiced over and over again for the eventuality that a nuclear war could take place.
Struggling to gain the upper hand
Not much changed in this basic approach until the fall of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the ensuing debacle in Iraq. The military's top brass and the Pentagon continued to view everything in black and white. For them, there was a clear distinction between combat missions and the tools and mechanics of war, on the one hand, and the peacekeeping missions, on the other. The latter were multinational and had a decidedly civilian flavor, and consisted of things like providing policing for nation-building in Kosovo -- not exactly something that was particularly appealing to the US military.
The notion that the world's most modern and powerful military machine could end up struggling to gain the upper hand over scattered insurgents was inconceivable and hit the US military like an earthquake. Until a few years ago, no one in the US military would have believed that instead of dropping bombs and engaging in fierce combat, it would one day be drilling wells, directing traffic, building schools and organizing local elections -- and that it would be doing all of these things not after but in the middle of a war. Finally, no one would have imagined that these civilian tools would end up being described as the most-effective weapons on the road to victory.
"In Bosnia, we had a feeling for the first time that perhaps we are poorly prepared after all," says Dennis Tighe, a slim, jovial man who wears wide suspenders over his shirt. Tighe, a young-looking 60, is in charge of maneuvers and troop exercises for officers at Fort Leavenworth -- Combined Arms Center Training, or CAC-T in short.
In the former Yugoslavia, says Tighe, the US military was unprepared for the confusion of scattered small battles. It had trouble dealing with a conflict that was so culturally charged, a war without fronts and battle lines in tiny countries whose problems the Americans found deeply puzzling. The military also failed to realize that rebuilding stadiums could sometimes be more important than winning minor military skirmishes. It also had trouble understanding something that organizations like the United Nations had long known, and that is that providing seeds for crops can ultimately be more critical to achieving success than ammunition. It took time, especially for a military that had been exposed to doctrines set in stone for so many decades, until new ideas were allowed to penetrate into its ranks.
The courage to question
It took commanders who could implement changes and who had the courage to question the Pentagon's old-school way of thinking and its approach to the war in Iraq. The process began in Leavenworth, in 2004, with William Wallace, the general who had commanded the US Army's "Thunder Run" to Baghdad in the initial stage of the war. But once it became increasingly evident that Iraq was in turmoil, Wallace began to doubt his own hard-hitting strategy and reinterpret the operation's successes and failures. As it turned out, Wallace was the first to question all the military doctrines that had been in place until then. His direct successor is currently in the process of eliminating them alto
David Petraeus, a three-star general who completed his own officer-training program at Fort Leavenworth and graduated at the top of his class of 1,000, has been in charge at the facility since the autumn of 2005. When he was in command of the 101st Airborne Division as they advanced northward through Iraq up to Mosul, Petraeus already held a doctorate in political science. Today, at Leavenworth, he serves as a professor in combat gear.
His office is in a dark-paneled room, its walls covered with diplomas, awards, medals and old maps. A year before arriving in Leavenworth, Petraeus was removed from his position in Iraq, where he oversaw the task of building the Iraqi army. The decision to remove Petraeus, who was clearly the best man for the job, triggered an outcry in the press and the political arena. He was portrayed as the shining hope for a new Iraq and for the American military -- even as a new Lawrence of Arabia. Nowadays, he is considered a candidate for a fourth star, and those who worked with him hope that he may one day lead the entire US Army.
Notwithstanding the many accolades, Petraeus, 55, is a reserved, idiosyncratic man. He was shot in the lung in an accident during a military exercise years ago, and he later broke his pelvis while parachuting. The injury is still painful and forces him to walk with a slight stoop. But Petraeus is fanatic about not allowing his injuries to get in his way. He walks at a fast pace for four to seven miles each morning, spends hours stretching and runs ten miles at the pace of a man 20 years his junior.
Standing between the best and worst
On the day of our meeting, Petraeus says he stands between the best and the worst that the Army has to offer. It is a cold Friday in Fort Leavenworth. Winter is coming to Kansas, to America's heartland, and the hearings on the Baker Commission's report on an exit strategy for the Iraq disaster are on TV. On CNN and CBS, experts spend all day debating the pros and cons of a troop withdrawal, occasionally interrupted by brief reports on the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in Italy.
Petraeus has two important events on this day. In the afternoon, he will promote Joe Ramirez to the position of general, an important ceremony in the US military. Ramirez, a son of Mexican immigrants whose father fought in the Korean War, is a walking example of the American dream. But Petraeus's first event is a morning funeral.
An officer at the School of Advanced Military Studies was killed in a bombing attack in Iraq. His body will be laid to rest in the fort's large, old cemetery -- a fresh grave among 22,000 others that tell the history of every war America has fought. Petraeus, who will offer his condolences to the dead soldier's family, is wearing black. For a moment he seems almost too soft for a general. That can only be an illusion, but still, he says, "It's terrible every time."
Petraeus is the man at the helm of the Army's top-down revolution. Together with a general from the US Marines, James Mattis, he has written a new doctrine on counterinsurgency, a doctrine that turns almost every previous rule of warfare on its head.
The 241-page document contains an outline of the history of all rebellions and a guide to the wars of the future. For the first time, it draws no distinction between civilian and classic military operations. In fact, it almost equates the importance of the two. Petraeus believes that the military can no longer win wars with military might alone. On the contrary, according to the new theory, it must do its utmost to avoid large-scale destruction and, by as early as the initial attack, not only protect the civilian population but also support it with all available means in order to secure its cooperation for regime change. As uncomplicated as it may seem, Petraeus's new doctrine represents a sea change when it comes to the US military's training and combat procedures. Some might also interpret it as a way of settling scores with the failed strategy in Iraq.
A new way of teaching
In the early morning, the fort is filled with soldiers walking around in combat dress, books tucked under their arms and earphones in their ears. They arrive in pickup trucks and on bicycles, walking through the doors of campus buildings with names like Bell and Eisenhower Hall to their classes. They are young officers, most around the age of 30, their heads shaved, hurrying past without so much as glancing at the cemetery and buildings where Generals Macarthur and Colin Powell once lived, walking along paths where William Cody once walked before he became Buffalo Bill.
Almost all the students here have already been in combat in Iraq. They are familiar with the practical side of war, but not with the new theory. In one class the students discuss counterinsurgency, known here by the acronym COIN, learning about Petraeus's doctrine, one that preaches smarter ways to combat insurgents, conduct operations against rebels and wage the war on terror with other, civilian tools.
In one classroom, 15 uniformed soldiers, including guest students from Colombia, Argentina and Ukraine, sit in a U-shaped formation in front of computer screens. The instructor is a retired lieutenant colonel with active duty experience in Malaysia and Thailand. During his lecture he jumps from one place to another around the globe. He talks about Chechen and Mexican Zapatista rebels, Columbia's FARC revolutionaries and the Taliban, about Syria, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. He asks his students: "In your opinion, how has the US's view of the world changed since Sept. 11?" A female student says, in a piercing voice: "We now know that we have to take them out before they take us out." It isn't the answer the instructor was looking for. He says: "Well, let's take a closer look."
"Our work isn't easy," says John Kerry, another instructor at the military academy. He is the spitting image of the stereotypical literature professor in a Hollywood film. He came to Kansas after serving as a military attaché in Morocco. He talks as if he were a little embarrassed by the superficial approach the instructors are forced to take here. "We're dealing with people who sometimes can't even point to the Middle East on a map."
Global sensitivity training and a new doctrine
The group of instructors sitting around the conference table is responsible for the new army's core issue: cultural awareness, or the art of handling multiculturalism and practicing tolerance and respect for foreigners. The people sitting around the table have served as diplomats and intelligence agents in Israel and Jordan and as military attachés in Syria. Their job is to give these young soldiers a crash course in how to deal with other cultures in general and Islam in particular.
"Arabs are not always Muslims, and Muslims do not always think the way Arabs do," says Kerry, citing an example of the kind of message he and his colleagues are here to instill in the officers. The uniformed students must work their way through long lists of lectures and read 300-400 pages a day -- new textbooks about the modern world, as well as classics like Clausewitz and the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. In an effort to teach skepticism and critical thinking, the instructors are constantly asking their students trick questions and presenting them with paradoxes, rewiring their brains to help them understand the new military doctrine.
Students are asked to discuss fundamental ethical problems, explain their answers, explain their explanations and then dissect their reasoning once again. They are asked to conduct non-military, cultural analyses of actual conflicts. This is a challenge for someone from Texas in his late 20s, someone whose idea of the world has never extended far beyond his own hometown. Some soldiers resist all this talk about culture and respect and tolerance -- they would much rather spend their days firing off ammunition at the shooting range.
Mark A. Olson is a pale, dour, combat-tested colonel in the Marines who has seen his share of the world. His subject at Leavenworth is counter-terrorism, and he knows his people well. "There will always be those who aren't interested in hand-shaking and baby-kissing," says Olson. "Those are the tank commanders who think it's their job to drive down the street and shoot at everything that moves." Olson makes a contemptuous face. "But then we wash that stuff out of their heads. We make it clear to them that idiots like them are not only not ending the insurgency but are in fact strengthening it. And, believe me, that's something they never forget."
Olson is one of Petraeus's better students. He says that officers of the future must have broader qualifications, civilian skills and a quick head that tells them when to shoot and, more important, when not to shoot. A military that acts too brutally in the wrong place merely creates new enemies. "We have to build contacts to the civilian population. They have to understand that they don't need to respect us, but that they should accept their new government."
A killer who can write poetry
The great litany of Fort Leavenworth is that everything must change. Generals and colonels talk about civility and networking. They encourage open-minded thinkers, critical minds in uniform, and they describe the officer of the future as a multitalented individual, as someone who can be a killer and write poetry. They constantly talk about respect for other cultures and about "culture teams" that could support the armed forces in the future, and they dabble in psychology and sociology.
In the end, after days packed with lectures and discussions, one is left with the conclusion that perhaps the US military is no longer interested in this Iraq war, at least not the kind of war it has been conducting and is now losing day after day.
In Fort Leavenworth, it is as if a hectic race is underway that began too late and that may help change future wars, but not the war at the top of everyone's mind, the war in Iraq. David Petraeus, the man who launched this race, chooses his words carefully, because he knows that he is skating on very thin ice. He must dispel the suspicion that his intellectual concepts could damage the military's sheer fighting power and morale.
Critics are already accusing him of simply confusing people, so much so that once in the field, standing eye to eye with the enemy, they might end up confusing their heads with their weapons. Perhaps this explains why Petraeus always makes a point of emphasizing that soldiers are warriors first and that their main job should continue to consist of shooting, bombing, killing and winning. But these are always the weakest points in his speeches.
Who knows, perhaps the uniformed professor, is torn between his two roles of a civilian teacher and a military commander. Perhaps he has even higher ambitions, as everyone already believes, not in the army but in politics, which still pulls rank over the military. That would put Petraeus at the very top, and perhaps in a place where he would have even more power to create a new military.
Winter is coming to Kansas, and it's cold in Fort Leavenworth. By early evening, quiet returns to this small city behind barbed wire. But the serenity is deceptive. A revolution is underway that will change the face of the US military -- and with it the wars the world has yet to face.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Art Eatman
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