Out of Touch...?

As long as there has been war, there has been disgruntlment among the troops, sometimes aimed at the leaders. Here's a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel's take on OEF and ISAF. Is this that observation of someone who's out of touch with digital warfare, or is there some ground truth?

When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European “chateaux generals” of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we’d have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do. Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected “good” tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a “fingertips feel” for on-the-ground reality.

Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.

Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind).

Read the full commentary here.

Pew Research Center: Gap Grows Between Military, Civilians

Citing the convergence of two records - the length of OEF and the relatively small percentage of the population serving in the military - Paul Taylor, editor of the Pew Research Center's study, "War and Sacrifice in the Post-9/11 Era," said he wanted to investigate this unique period in US history. "We've never had sustained combat for a full decade, and we've never fought a war in which such a small share of the population has carried the fight."

Citing results of the study, Taylor observed, "there is a gap. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is in effect, frankly, above my pay grade. It's an interesting question."

Read the article here.

Review the Pew study here.

‘Three Cups of Tea’ Author Defends Book

The CBS news program "60 Minutes" investigated and questioned events portrayed in Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea:

While the publishing industry waited to see whether it faced the embarrassment of yet another partly fabricated memoir, Greg Mortenson, the co-author of the best-selling “Three Cups of Tea,” a book popular with the Pentagon for its inspirational lessons on Afghanistan and Pakistan, forcefully countered a CBS News report on Sunday that questioned the facts of his book and the management of his charitable organization.

An unofficial reponse:

“We continue to believe in the logic of what Greg is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know the powerful effects that education can have on eroding the root causes of extremism,” said a military official, who asked not to be named under ground rules imposed by the Pentagon.

As Mara Naselli observes:

The debate between truth and fact in personal essay and memoir is an old one, and the test of authenticity has rarely been, “Did it really happen that way?” Many argue that memory is just too slippery to be held to that kind of standard, and that the discernment of fact itself isn’t obvious.

The question, then, is whether the US military should use such slippery accounts as a staple in COIN training.

Read the NYT article here.