A Master of Understatement

Three weeks ago, Little Mikey O’Hanlon and his traveling companion Little Kenny Pollack published a feel-good, happy-talk piece of puffery on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

O’Hanlon and Pollack are useful idiots to the war machine and the brass. Period. They can be reliably counted on to ask no probing questions and to see what they are shown and nothing more. Anyone who actually puts any stock in anything those two slavering shills have to say is a danger to themselves and others. They came back and did what they were supposed to do in advance of the so-called September report – they parroted the party line after being taken on a perfunctory eight-day fact-finding fact free trip that was more tightly controlled and scripted than a senior-citizens super-saver package tour of Rome.

On Sunday, a group of NCO’s from the 82^nd Airborne pushed back with an op-ed of their own. Needless to say, those charged with fighting it see it different than the boys from Brookings. That would be the same Brookings Institute that put the lie to the little weasels yesterday with the publication of their Iraq Index (.pdf alert) – (Summary coming – you all know my predilection for white papers by now.)

O’Hanlon was still spinning like the proverbial top this morning on The Diane Rehm Show, where he was inexplicably booked to discuss the situation in Iraq. When he was asked about the soldiers op-ed, he said “They may have even been taking a slight poke at us as we used a similar term in an op-ed three weeks earlier.”

A “slight poke”? Mwahahahahahaha, Mikey! They bloodied your nose, kicked you in the balls and took your lunch money. They left you whimpering on the sidewalk in a fetal position crying for your mommy.

Meanwhile, the rest of us know that NCO's are exactly who we should be listening to right now, not agenda whores from belief tanks. And we also know that we are dealing with a delusional halfwit when he tries to spin his own ass kicking.

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Losses in leadership that will haunt the military for at least 25 years

"To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted, and neglected - that is no criticism of the military. That is a criticism of a president and a vice president, and the record they have built together." - Vice Presidential Candidate Dick Cheney, 8/30/00

"Not only did Clinton spend a large amount of money on the military; most of it was spent wisely... The Clinton administration also kept the quality of our military personnel high by closing the gap between military and private sector compensation, a gap that the first Bush administration had allowed to grow, and improving retirement and health benefits for military retirees." Lawrence Korb, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense, 5/13/04

The Law of Unintended Consequences™ is rearing its ugly head in the form of a depleted leadership corps in the all-volunteer military. I have been screaming about a dearth of Officers for quite some time, and the compromised state of the NCO corps for almost as long.

NCO’s are the backbone of the military command structure. Without top-notch NCO’s the force suffers. They fill a unique role, because they manage both up and down the chain of command. They transmit orders to the troops they supervise, and they have great influence over the decisions made by the officers they serve.

NCO’s simultaneously prepare their units to complete their mission and know the personal pertinents of their personnel. They know whose kids are struggling to adjust, whose marriage is rocky, who is expecting a baby, whose mother is ill, who has an in-law “vacationing” on their couch and clueless about why they can’t come play. They have the standing to pull a green Lieutenant aside and tell him or her the real score.

These middle managers are especially important in wartime. Not the least of all among reasons: seasoned NCO’s keep Leiutenants alive long enough to become seasoned officers. There are more Sergeants leading Soldiers and Marines down dangerous alleys and on patrol than there are Lieutenants and Captains.

These are the enlisted personnel that an Army facing a three-decade rebuilding process after the folly of destabilizing and occupying Iraq needs to retain most, but they are not staying. Instead they are leaving in droves.

"When they aren't reenlisting, you are going to have holes in the force, and that becomes a readiness issue," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Randall L. Rigby, a former deputy commandant in charge of training. "They are facing 10 to 15 more years of repetitive overseas tours, and that's just hard on people. I'm concerned they won't be able to sustain the Army that way."

A Sergeant who leaves after 8, 12, 15 years in service is not a G.I. who can be replaced at the local recruiting station.

After experiencing repeated deployments and seeing no end in sight, they are simply walking away. Even reenlistment bonuses that run into the tens of thousands of dollars and promises to be stationed in Hawaii and Southern California and other desirable billets are not enough to retain adequate numbers of seasoned NCO’s. They are human beings, not machines. They want to have families and not watch their kids grow up on video. They want to be there for birthday parties and first days of school and to help with homework and attend soccer games.

This dearth of military leadership will be dealt with by our military for decades to come, and it is just one more sad legacy of the abject failure that is the Bush maladministration.

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A Coming Crisis

I have long been beating the drum about the dearth of officers in our Army. But I overlooked the enlisted ranks. The Christian Science Monitor (one of the best examples of on-the-ground-reporting anywhere) reports that key enlisted personnel are exiting in alarming numbers, and if the trend continues, the Army faces a coming crisis. (I had an 'Oh, Fuck' moment when I read the article)

In 2005, the Army retained 96% of the mid-grade NCO’s whose enlistments were up. The first-quarter numbers for 2007 are in, and that retention number is down to 84%.

The reason for this decline is simple. I can give that answer in one word: Iraq.

Extended tours, repeated deployments, inadequate dwell time with family and friends between those deployments. It is wearing on the Army – which has born the brunt of fighting Bush’s vanity war.

Let’s just cut the crap – if you don’t have an adequate corps of seasoned Sergeants transmitting Officer’s orders and providing leadership – You don’t have a functioning Army. Lest anyone think otherwise, Sergeants run the Army.

So let’s put the state of the military in perspective:

First of all, readiness is suffering. Remember that during Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana National Guard was unable to mount and adequate response, in part because most of their deep-water vehicles were in Iraq. Desert warfare has taken over – Mountain and amphibious training is not being done. Should the United States have to respond to an imminent threat, the engagement would take more time, cost more lives and money and have a lower chance of success because response / readiness has been undermined by the drain of Iraq.

Secondly, we are suffering a dearth of leadership. The Army is losing command level officers and mid-level Sergeants at a rate that is being felt now and represents a potentially catastrophic crisis of leadership in the future.

In the wake of Vietnam, the military had to be rebuilt, and the Honor Code had to be stitched back together bit by tattered bit. The challenge met by my husband and all of the rest who went in between 1976 and 1985 (the decade after the fall of Saigon) was a cakewalk in comparison to the rebuilding that will by necessity have to take place in the wake of Bush and his Iraq adventure.

In order to make recruitment goals, more and more concessions are being made. People who would not have made it in the door of a recruiting station five years ago are being pursued passionately. They keep loosening the rules so more people can meet the minimum standards for acceptance into service. If you still can’t get in, and you really want to serve, well by golly – we probably have a waiver right here with your name on it! Moral, criminal, physical, we got waivers! (Waivers here! Get your waivers!)

Gotta tell ya – I’m not getting a case of the warm fuzzies over here when I stop to consider all those hinky troops – being led by weak officers and NCO’s…The very thought unleashes horrors in my mind.

They are in the kitchen whipping up a recipe for disaster.

Someone turn off the gas.

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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