Corporals' Guards, Sergeants' Wars, and Field Marshal's Batons

President Obama has made his decision regarding Afghanistan and shared it with the American People (after briefing President Karzai and our allies). In simplest terms, he will use U.S. and Allied forces, and available Afghan forces, to push back against recent gains made by Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. The hope is that these efforts will buy time during which the Kabul government’s police, army, and other security forces can built up enough to at least begin to take on the responsibility of prevent the rebirth of Al Qaeda’s base of operations in Afghanistan. Confronted by dwindling popular support in the US for this conflict after almost nine years, the President is calling for these government forces to start taking over that mission in some 18 months, allowing for the beginning of a withdrawal of US and Allied (at least combat) forces within three years.

This is an operational model that has been used before and has no guarantee of success. The plan depends upon several critical factors:

1. Enough battlefield success to sustain US popular support over the life of this operation (and to support the necessary fiscal expenditures during a time of economic hardship at home).
   The degree of support and participation by our NATO and other Allies will be a critical factor here since the lack of such support will immediately raise questions about why the US is shouldering the burden alone.
2. The preservation, at least, and preferably the development of greater popular support in Afghanistan for the Karzai government in Kabul. [The history of Afghanistan repeatedly shows that governments popularly perceived as having been imposed by outside powers do not last long against traditional clan and tribal and today Mujahidin leadership.]
3. The successful expansion and improved effectiveness of Kabul’s own forces as the currently 95,000 man Afghan army is increased to 240,000 by 2013, and the 92,000 man police force grows to 160,000.
4. Continued and effective efforts by Pakistani forces to prevent the use of its territory as a secure ‘rear area’ by forces fighting against the US-led coalition/Kabul government forces.

As difficult as it will be to achieve goals one, two, and four, the toughest challenge may well be the effective expansion of the Afghan’s own security forces. The major challenge of this effort is the need to identify, recruit, and train the non-commissioned officers (corporals and sergeants) who make up the backbone of 20th Century armies based upon our own experience throughout that century and into the present conflict.

The US has experienced this kind of expansion of its own forces several times in history. On January 1, 1861, the United States Army consisted of 16,367 men (1,704 of whom were absent from duty). On May 1, 1865, after the surrender of the Confederacy and its armies, the United States Army (counting both Regulars and Volunteers) numbered 1,000,516 men (202,709 of whom were recorded as absent from duty). Under President Lincoln’s leadership, the US Army had increased to more than 60 times its pre-war size. A critical element of that expansion was the necessity of identifying men to fill the non-commissioned ranks of this rapidly growing army – each 1,000 man Civil War Union Army regiment included more than 130 sergeants and corporals in that number – meaning that the Army as a whole needed 130,000 non-commissioned officers.

The Army manuals of the period, from which most of the newly minted Union Army officers learned their trade, encouraged the selection of NCOs for the regiment from among the ranks of what were called “intelligent soldiers,” i.e., men who demonstrated more awareness and understanding of what needed to be done and when as compared to those many soldiers who simply awaited orders. These NCOs also had to be able to read and write to fulfill the full range of their duties and many of them rose into the officer ranks as the war continued.

With changes in war and warfare since then, standards for and what is expected of NCOs has risen considerably. Historian Michael Doubler in his Closing With The Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945, described how American Generals called the urban warfare encountered by US troops in Europe in 1944 and 1945 “a corporal’s war.” This reflected the reality that in warfare in an urban setting, the battle was fought and decided by the decisions of the corporals leading sections of men as they fought street by street, building by building, and room by room – not a style of warfare in which divisions, corps, and armies and their commanding generals could affect the outcome as effectively.

Most of the fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan is in many ways similar as both of these wars are fought by small units operating in patrols or manning outposts, rather than by the grander formations of battalions, brigades, divisions, corps, and armies usually depicted by those big arrows on the maps. The burden of leading these new Afghan army and police units into the hills and onto the streets of Afghanistan will fall to the newly trained NCOs [and junior officers - lieutenants and captains], but most of them will have only a little bit more (if any more) training than the men they are leading. The US attempted something similar with “Vietnamization” during the conflict in Vietnam, with well known results.

So many of the Emperor Napoleon's Marshals and senior General officers had served in the ranks of the non-commissioned officers of the old French Royal Army that it was said that in his Grande Armee the corporals marched with a Field Marshal's baton in their knapsacks. It will be critical in Afghanistan for a sufficient number of its recruits and soldiers carry corporals' and sergeants' stripes in their packs, pockets, or persons.

Veteran's Day - November 11, 2009

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work--

I am the grass; I cover all

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?

I am the grass.

Let me work.

Carl Sandburg

“It Feels a Shame to Be Alive”

It feels a shame to be Alive—
When Men so brave – are dead—
One envies the Distinguished Dust—
Permitted—such a Head—

The Stone—that tells defending Whom
This Spartan put away
What little of Him we—possessed
In Pawn for Liberty—

The price is great—Sublimely paid—
Do we deserve –a Thing—
That lives—like Dollars—must be piled
Before we may obtain?

Are we that wait—sufficient worth—
That such Enormous Pearl
As life—dissolved be—for Us—
In Battle’s—horrid Bowl?

It may be—a Renown to live—
I think the Men who die—
Those unsustained—Saviours—
Present Divinity—

Emily Dickinson

Mesopotamia

1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave;
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied them from day to day;
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide—
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employment as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors , and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo—
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

Rudyard Kipling

To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Say of them

They knew no Spanish

At first, and nothing of the arts of war

At first,

How to shout, how to attack, how to retreat

How to kill, how to meet killing

At first,

Say they kept the air blue

Grousing and griping,

Arid words and harsh faces. Say

They were young;

The haggard in a trench, the dead on the olive slope

All young. And the thin, the ill and the shattered,

Sightless, in hospitals, all young.

Say of them they were young, there was much they did not

Know,

They were human. Say it all; it is true. Now say

When the eminent, the great, the easy, the old,

And the men on the make

Were busy bickering and selling,

Betraying, conniving, transacting, splitting hairs,

Writing bad articles, signing bad papers,

Passing bad bills,

Bribing, blackmailing,

Whimpering, meaching, garroting,--they

Knew and acted

understood and died.

Or if they did not die came home to peace

That is not peace.

Say of them

They are no longer young, they never learned

The arts, the stealth of peace, this peace, the tricks of fear;

And what they knew, they know.

And what they dared, they dare.

Genevieve Taggard

Fight the Battle, Not the Game

In his discussion of the desirable attributes for a battlefield commander, Clausewitz wrote of the importance of “coup d’oiel” – perhaps best described as the ability to quickly recognize a truth that would ordinarily be missed or perhaps only perceived after long study and reflection. Whatever his other virtues, President Obama’s approach to his decision about what to do in Afghanistan clearly demonstrates that he is not choosing to rely on any personal sense of coup d’oiel in this instance. Given that we are already in October and what Clausewitz would have called the campaigning season is nearly over in Afghanistan, this deliberative process need not be considered a fatal flaw.

This morning (October 26), the Washington Post and other news sources are reporting that Obama’s deliberative process has included at least two war games exploring different US troop commitment levels. Given that the history of war gaming as a tool of military study and analysis (as well as an entertainment) is strewn with tales of political and military decision-makers mislead by war games, one can only hope that the decision makers have actually heard the cautionary voices of any professionals associated with these games.

In the most infamous war game incident, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) tried out its plan for the attack on the island of Midway in a war game in which the “American” side sank four JN aircraft carriers. The game directors restored the four carriers to the IJN side and the game proceeded to the anticipated Japanese victory. However, as naval historians and others will recall, at the actual Battle of Midway, the US Navy – aided by its ability to read Japanese communications – did go on to sink four IJN carriers and turn back the invasion force. (Many tellers of this story fail to point out that the game directors were not wrong in restoring the carriers because every war game has a whole list of questions to examine and in this case the game had to go on to examine them. The error would have been in the IJN failing to take note of the fact that the USN was still a potentially dangerous foe.)

However, this story also reflects a harsh reality about war games as an analytical tool – no matter how much data is piled up and analyzed for inclusion in the game, the war game is not predictive or prescriptive. A well planned and well conducted war game can clarify issues associated with a proposed course of action, but it cannot guarantee a specific real world outcome. In fact, the Prussian Kriegsspiel, a common ancestor of modern war games was no more than a tool that allowed Prussian officers to practice decision-making. It was not considered a valid or useful tool of analysis or for predicting the outcome of a military operation or campaign. (History also tells us, however, that even the Prussians would eventually attach almost mystical faith in their war gaming of various military plans and options.)

There are several reasons for limits upon what war games can tell us. One can be described in a paraphrase of the words of Chief of the General Staff Count Helmut von Moltke – “No war game scenario survives contact with the war gamer.” Or in the words of many a modern field grade American officer, “The enemy gets a vote.” No matter how well educated, informed, and talented they are, the war gamer will not exactly replicate the battlefield decisions that will be made by the real opponent. I know that many hobby and professional war gamers have designed a war game or a war game scenario only to find their expectations for that design shredded by the completely unforeseen and unexpected decisions of a war gamer seeing it for the first time.

Designers of (both hobby and professional) war games are familiar with the limits upon any attempt to model battlefield reality. Every one of them can tell of having presented the latest and most complex simulation to date, only to have someone point out how the design overlooks the extremely important factor of “X.” The reality is that there are just too many factors affecting and influencing a battle and its related decision making process to be captured in any war game.

I do wonder whether these war games factored in what is likely to be the real “schwerpunkt” or decision point of any renewed or expanded American military effort in Afghanistan: American public opinion. The Administration will have to do a very good job of selling its Afghan war strategy to the American people if it is to be given time for that strategy to bear fruit. Clearly, ongoing events in Iraq will color popular reaction to plans for Afghanistan. The US has the option to try and push the reset button in Afghanistan but they will not be able to reset public opinion on the conflict in Afghanistan without the investment of major political assets.

Note: Similar stories can be found about the use of war games during World War II by the German High Command as it pondered decisions on the Eastern Front. In a related note, it is ironic that as the Allies began the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy, many senior German commanders were out of position because of a scheduled German Army kriegsspiel on the subject of a possible Allied invasion.