John Navas Says on May 27th, 2007 at 2:17 am:

Worse, our elected leaders have just let us down yet again, by rolling over on the war funding bill (not to mention their other campaign promises). It’s time to throw the entire bunch of rascals out and start over with some truly new faces. On that basis alone, Obama will probably get my votes.

But then again, probably not, because his “new” proposal to control health care costs is just recycling of market intervention (National Health Insurance Exchange to “monitor” insurance companies), funded by the rich, that just doesn’t work. Oh well. [sigh]

The guests rightly pointed out that it was unrealistic to expect that (short of ending a career, which might well have been a meaningless gesture), that the real failures were in the Administration and in Congress, our elected leaders. While our military undoubtedly has much to learn from the Iraq experience, we citizens are the only ones that can learn how to keep this from happening again, by holding our elected leaders accountable for letting the nation down. And to be clear, I’m not just blaming the Administration, or even the Republican Party, because the Democrats in Congress were just as responsible for letting this happen.

Worse, our elected leaders have just let us down yet again, by rolling over on the war funding bill (not to mention their other campaign promises). It’s time to throw the entire bunch of rascals out and start over with some truly new faces. On that basis alone, Obama will probably get my votes.

Consider a business analogy. Were the vice presidents of Apple accountable for the decline during the Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio tenures? Should they have been openly grumbling to shareholders and press? Of course not! The failures were entirely the responsibility of the Presidents, Congress (Board of Directors), and citizens (shareholders). What it took to get Apple back on track wasn’t rebellion in the ranks, it was a bit of luck and big changes at the top: a belated wake up by the Board, and a return to the leadership of Steve Jobs. There’s an important lesson there.

* The Six Phases of Any Project:

1. Optimism and enthusiasm.

2. Disillusionment.

3. Panic.

4. Search for the guilty.

5. Punishment of the innocent.

6. Reward and honor for the undeserving.

Regardless of the potential outcomes, we should all be watching the career of Paul Yingling very closely. The stakes are much higher than we can imagine.

Go to http://www.roguelystated.com for more…

Lost in the Fog with Commander Guy

Why, given the problems he saw going forward with the war, did he

a) Not say anything to the Secretary when he had the chance? Yes, code of conduct, chain of command but … there was a chance to speak up and say something.

a1) Do you regret NOT saying anything?

b) Did you go forward with the war and not resign your commission in protest? Was it that you didn’t see the issues until after and THEN chose to resign?

I don’t ask to be confrontational – I really want to know.

The army at higher levels are too slow to learn… instead you have the lower ranking soldiers, the one’s actually out on patrol risking their lives doing the best they can to stay alive, and to try to accomplish something. That was the case with my unit. There was no real “mission”. Stability operations are not easy, and require cunning leadership at the small group level. It is guerrilla warfare, and the people in that region invented it. Generals trained on WWII major force structure tactics are not equipped to fight a nasty “Street fight”. Flip through “Tactics of the crescent moon” sometime.

Like I said, there’s a few officers out there reading Sun Tzu, who realize you can’t oust and insurgency without the help of the people. Those are typically the ones who are not trying to protect their ego or are on some sort of personal agenda to come home decorated for feel empowered by their duty position. It’s a shame, the Army that I remember developed leaders who served their soldiers.

Another point worth mentioning, is the powers that be, tend to miss the situation. Probably one of the most essential factors when mission planning. In the anbar province things are getting better, but it’s not due to the performance of the US Forces there, as much as it is the Sunni’s getting sick of the insurgency and anti-coalition forces causing trouble for them. They’re forming a marriage of convenience with the US military out of survival. They finally realize that not being involved politically, and allowing attacks to occur in their neighborhoods resulted in their city’s being demolished (Fallujah and Ramadi), and their families being targets.

Everything in Iraq I saw was a mess. We should start looking at ways to correct matters constructively than bicker and try to assign blame. In the meantime a lot of soldiers and Iraqi’s are being killed, injured, kidnapped, tortured in truly violent ways Americans will never see probably or understand.

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(That’s Greek for, “And yes!“