LTC Ralph Peters (Ret) unloads on the Generals
For those not familiar with Ralph Peters he’s an old MI guy and unapologetic supporter of the war in Iraq who later came out in opposition to the surge, before conceding it worked. His record, as with most fallible humans, is mixed. He’s been know for inflammatory quotes such as:
“Make no mistake: the anti-war voices long for us to lose any war they cannot prevent”
and
“We’ve mired ourselves by attempting to modernize a society that doesn’t want to be — and cannot be — transformed. We needed to smash our enemies and leave. Had it proved necessary, we could have returned later for another punitive mission. Instead, we fell into the great American fallacy of believing ourselves responsible for helping those who’ve harmed us.”
He’s also had some rather choice assumptions on potential POWs.
In a piece titled “Soldiers Murder Afghans, Generals Murder Soldiers” Ralph Peters goes all out on the argument that the War in Afghanistan is irredeemable and has far exceeded its expiration date. He makes quite clear that our service members with stars on their shoulders carry much of the blame for this state of affairs.
If there’s a “battle cry” in Afghanistan, it’s “Blame the troops!” Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to “respect Afghan culture.”
But generals don’t have a clue about Afghan “culture.” They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing. The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women. When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to “respect Afghan culture,” they must want to puke up their rations.
…
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).
What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.
Personally I’d swap out much of the “Generals” with “politicians”.
He also goes into the Robert Bales incident but that’s really just a foil for a bigger point he’s trying to make, be it right or wrong. Give it a read, it’s worth the 10 minutes of your life. I promise.
Category: Foreign Policy, Military issues
I just talked to one of my best friends for an hour today who just got back from Afghanistan with my old rifle company. He told me that he was getting out and he said “I can’t do it anymore, man. I don’t believe in it. There’s no leadership or guidance or plan and I feel like I pissed away 2 years of my life. I can’t lead my squad anymore with any confidence because I have no confidence in my higher leadership.” He’s absolutley right because I just came to this realization myself the past couple weeks because at the end of the day it’s going to be Joe Grunt that is going to be haunted the rest of his life, going to have to deal with a wrecked body from constant deployments, and visiting dead friend’s graves every year. None of these cocksucker politicians or staff officers or generals will deal with that. You won’t see Paul Bremer, Rumsfeld, McChrystal, Obama etc stand trial for incompetence and face time in leavenworth. Ok rant off.
I like Peters – he’s a bomb-thrower. Thank you for sharing this NSOM.
While Peters’s descriptions of chateaux FOGO and their vulnerabilities are spot-on, Peters forgets two FOGO advisors who in the course of doing their duty must make each star-wearing officer a eunuch.
First, there’s the resident SJA. Lawfare is never committed on the enemy. The Taliban took more marines out of the fight during the investigation into marines pissing on the carcasses of dead talibs than any other tactical action.
The second advisor in the Political Advisor (POLAD). This is a well-educated, well-meaning Department of State career foreign service officer who will, by his/her very nature, opt for a political solution that seeks to bring out the positive in our Afghan allies. “Positive” is defined by western standards that haven’t held sway in that country since the deposition of the king. The POLAD will always opt for a solution of less killing of the enemy, more empowerment of the people (who will never be empowered unless they escape the warlords and move to America).
If Peters wants to detonate the elephant in the tent, he ought to throw some rhetorical bombs at the Geneva Convention and the mistaken concept of the sovreignty of the maplines. The Geneva Convention is a morally bankrupt set of rules that only the US is required to follow, and only the US is held accountable for following them.
The genetic Afghans that are taliban and Taliban don’t believe in maplines. It’s like twin brothers who share a bathroom. It’s not his bathroom, or his brother’s – it’s theirs. So too AfghanoPakistanoTajikiTurkmeno-stan. The bad guys, the bad guys families, the bad guys culture and everything except the money from Saudi Arabia and the technology from the PLA or Europe comes from the Stans. But the US holds hard and fast to the sovreignty of maplines.
I think Peters is spot on… especially this line: “They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing.”
LTC Peters is going on my list of people to read. What’s sad is that you know there were generals reading this who were agreeing with this mentally but don’t have the guts to speak up and agree publicly.
Like others Peters is someone to read.
I think the term general and politician are the same these days aren’t they.
We have far too few fire eaters in the GO ranks.
It is the reason I got out. I mean I was an officer and it was peace time still there was no reason to stay. I loved leading troops but I was getting further and further away from that. I did not want to be an O3 “platoon leader” which is what company commanders were turning into just prior to the war.
Either way the politicians in uniform out number the warriors. I don’t think that will ever change, but you could lessen their impact. I wonder what will happen when these young fire eaters get up in rank? Will they remember the trials as a young leader with bad leadership?
That was a good read, I think LTC Peters painted a picture of the 900# gorilla in the living room, perfectly.
#4 J.M., it’s pretty obvious why the Generals who do agree don’t speak up.
They get fired.
Steadfast&Loyal: I fear that we may end up retaining more of the politicians vice the operators. Large bureaucratic organizations tend to do that.
The reason was IMO probably best put by Col. John Boyd, USAF – the same guy was the originator of both the energy-maneuverability theory of fighter aircraft and the OODA loop.
“One day you will take a fork in the road, and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make your compromises and … turn your back on your friends, but you will be a member of the club, and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way, and you can do something, something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. … You may not get promoted, and you may not get good assignments, and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors, but you won’t have to compromise yourself. … In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you have to make a decision: to be or to do.”
Operators concern themselves with do; politicians, generally with be. In my experience, it’s quite rare to find someone with the qualities and abilities for both.
Eisenhowers and MacArthurs are just pretty damned scarce.
JM: The problem of military generals not being willing to express their frank opinion, or act on it, out of fear for their careers dates to at lest the Vietnam War. GEN Harold Johnson, US Army Chief of Staff from July 1964 to July 1968, disagreed strongly with US strategy in Vietnam. He considered resigning in protest, but opted not to do so. Later in life, he indicated that one of his greatest regrets was not having done so.
Damn. That should be “least” vice “lest” in the first sentence of comment 9 above.
Spell-check doesn’t catch misspelling that are valid words.
@#2 DaveO–excellent points and analysis.
I’ve been reading Peter’s material for several years, and still consider his collection of monographs (Beyond Terror) to be one of the best things he’s ever done.
“When Devils Walk the Earth” is one he wrote right after 9/11, and in my opinion, should be required reading for anyone in the military or government.
“His record, as with most fallible humans, is mixed.” Thats him to a tee. His explanation about how the Surge worked if I recall, was simply that Petreaus took the gloves off, that is less true then more. In raw numbers Petreaus actually addded more restrictions. I don’t think Peters ever grasped the tactical and operational sphere during said or the political objectives for that matter. Unlike many others though, he does generally factor the culture of the Islamic world in a strategic equation. I am not attuned to all things Peters however. There was a book he wrote in the 90s(can’t remember title), that brought him to public attention. “Personally I’d swap out much of the “Generals” with “politicians”.” I tend to agree. There have been some bad decisions made by Flag officers in Afghanistan(I can think of a good one off the top of my head) but alot if that has been implementing the directives of political leaders. The war was under resourced from at least 05′ to 08′ by the Bush administartion. Then Obama fired one General(McKiernan) for no justifiable reason other then “He didn’t get it”, what he exactly didn’t get we don’t know. He was replaced by McCrystal, who has zero time with line units in a COIN environment and tended to emphasis special operations raiding. McCrystal got just over half of the 40,000 surge troops he requested with a political hampering deadline that would make nation wide COIN impossible. McCrystal was fired for something he didn’t say, after barely commanding a year. He was replaced by Petreaus who could do little more then edge the ship that McCrystal launched. Petreaus also commanded barely a year before stepping down in July of last year. General Allen is the Marine General who has succeeded to command in Afghanistan. He too cannot alter the timeline the President set two years ago. Allen has formally abandoned any hope of a transferring troops from the South to Eastern portion(Kunar & Nuristan) of RC East because of the impending drawdowns. There is an idea of moving a small numbers of… Read more »
#8″Eisenhowers and MacArthurs are just pretty damned scarce”
I don’t think either of these are good examples. Eisenhower was able to command in Europe becasue he was a politician in uniform.
MacArthur like Goring tended to see what he wanted to see and dismissed outright what contradicted his visions. Sometimes it lead to magnificent successes and sometimes to spectacular defeats.
#9 I agree about Johnson the chief of staff during the first half of Vietnam. The Marines always imply that they were the only ones who saw a problem with the strategy, simply not true. One big problem though was that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Wheeler, supported Westmoreland. If anyone but Westmoreland had been in command during the early years of the war it may have ended differently.
#13
The Marines did see problems with the way the war in Vietnam was being fought but I have never heard us say we were the only ones to do so.
Wheeler and Westmorelanf were army generals, like it or not. THEY did not see the problem with the war as it was being fought while the Marines, as a service rather than select individuals, did.
You seem to have a real issue with Marines and that is okay. But from things as diverse as MARPAT and this how about simply sticking to the root failure and not throwing crap sideways.
The Marine CAP program in Vietnam has been praised by soldiers and Marines as the way to use conventional forces in Vietnam. Were the Marines the only ones running CAP like programs? No but they were the only SERVICE to do so.
Lay the failure to do more with CAP with Westmoreland and Wheeler where it belongs.
Cedo, you are correct in that Eisenhower was as much a politician as a competent general. Ditto for MacArthur prior to the outbreak of World War II – both within the War Department and while in the Philippines. In a multinational environment, that’s what’s needed. And that combination is quite the rare beast.
Regarding Wheeler and Westmoreland: I’d differ. The relationship was more complex than simply support for the deployed forces by Wheeler. IMO, Wheeler as much used Westmoreland and the Vietnam War as he supported him. This was in particular true immediately after Tet, when Wheeler obliquely encouraged Westmoreland to ask for another large increment of troops that Westmoreland didn’t really think he needed. Wheeler encouraged Westmoreland to do this so that Wheeler could use that request as justification to force the President to order a partial mobilization of even more Reserve assets in order to cover US force needs worldwide. HH McMaster documents this quite thoroughly in Dereliction of Duty.
I have found that LTC Peters is usually the person dispensing the best analysis and insight into any given topic. I wish I had started reading his stuff years ago.
He has a book from 2011 (Lines of Fire, IIRC) that has many of his best essays.
Highly recommended.
BTW, great site.
Just as war is too important to be left to the Generals, it is also too important to be left to the politicians. We can criticize and throw blame around for everyone, but the real problem is that most folks simply cannot admit their wrong when proven so, or worse, even admit they could be wrong in the first place. Hence, Vietnam, Iraq and soon Afghanistan.