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Garrison Commanders vs. Combat Commanders |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 09 September 2008 |
cried. I looked at the faces of the young enlistedmen, who volunteered in a time of war and cried. I cried because when given the same chance, the general who commanded them chose ROTC to avoid the draft during Vietnam.
I was stunned when the words came out of the general's mouth. Then, when I made my way back to the grunts, I cried. These young men I had been in combat with were being led by a man who slipped combat, but wound up being a general.
Suddenly, a lot of what I had seen made sense.
In reading Bob Woodward's WaPo series about the surge , the strategic and personality conflicts I see remind me of the great divide among officers I occasionally witnessed first hand in Iraq.
The divide between the officers was age and approach to the military.
America's lost generation of generals were commissioned after after the drawdown of combat operations in Vietnam.
They were peace-time platoon leaders in the 70's, garrison company commanders in the early 80's and, with the exception of the thin sliver of battalion commanders from Desert Storm, had never led troops in combat.
None had been involved in sustained combat operations until Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The garrison mentality is on full display in Woodward's writing, with some officers more concerned with the military as an institution than its purpose--defeat the enemy.
Perhaps as a former enlisted Marine, that purpose is clearer to me--as it was drilled into my head at MCRD San Diego and then the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton.
The purpose of a Marine Corps Rifle Squad is very straight forward:
"Seek out, locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or, repel an enemy assault by fire and close combat."
Close combat meaning fixed bayonette, knife, entrenching tool (shovel) fists and feet.
The officers who came up through the ranks in the garrison culture of the 70's, 80's and 90's forgot or were never taught the purpose of the rifle squad. Or, failed to grasp that the military is nothing but a collection of rifle squads and units whose purpose is to support rifle squads.
On the sprawling military bases in the U.S., it is easy to see how the fundamental purpose could be lost as many of them resemble sprawling office parks and corporate campuses. In that environment, one can forget there is a shooting war being fought or amid the bureacracy of TPS reports, the purpose of the rifle squad remains the same.
The miracle of it all is that some warriors--many of them scholar warriors, made it up through the ranks.
The divide appears, at least in my first-hand experience, smaller in the Marine Corps than in the Army--but that could be attributed to the size of the Army, where there were more opportunities for me see officers on both sides of the divide.
The lost generation of generals has run its course. The new generation grew up with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They saw Desert Storm, Bosnia/Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti.
More importantly, they heard the stories of, but did not come up through the military of the late 70's and early 80's.
To a Marine who only knows the efficiency and professionalism of the Corps in the 90's and now, the stories of the 70's and early 80's are frightening.
But to an officer who came up through that time, it may not seem so bad. That time was good for his career.
The shambled military of the late 70's was the result of the ignoble end to Vietnam. The swell in the 90's was from the success of Desert Storm.
An ignoble end to Iraq could and likely would have brought about the same deliterious effects of Vietnam that wrecked the military.
I argue that in trying to save the military from being wrecked by war, those opposed to the surge, would have wrecked the military by the ignoble end of the war.
Seeing the surge through to the end might not have only saved Iraq, but it might save the U.S. Military as an institution. And twenty-five-years from now, when young men enlisted men are in combat, their generals will hopefully be ones who served as platoon leaders in combat--not garrison, peace-time platoon leaders.
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