“Get On Board!”
Well, it seems a couple of CENTCOM employees found out the hard way that telling the Emperor the truth as they saw it can be hazardous.
Recently, a couple of CENTCOM intel analysists were shuttled aside. They may or may not have been forced out of their positions, but if not they definitely appear to have been marginalized.
Their “crime”? Telling the CENTCOM CG that the US program supporting “moderate” Syrian rebels simply wasn’t working.
One of the analysts alleging reprisals is the top analyst in charge of Syria issues at CENTCOM. He and a colleague doubted rebels’ capabilities and their commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. The analysts have been effectively sidelined from their positions and will no longer be working at CENTCOM, according to two individuals familiar with the dispute, and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Anyone who’s studied military history should find this unsurprising. USMAC-V famously ignored all but but rosiest intel analysis/reports concerning the situation in Vietnam prior to Tet 1968. And check out the scene described (in an account apparently based on the recollections of an eyewitness) on pages 3-5 of this document.
The Daily Beast today has a longer article on the subject. IMO it’s worth reading – and it also says that CENTCOM is currently being investigated by the DoD IG for what appears to be a pattern of having deliberately skewed ISIS-related intel analysis and reports to present a rosier-than-real picture.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Or, if you prefer Yogi Berra’s version: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
Category: Military issues, Terror War
Telling the truth to authority/power has historically never gone well for those individuals who had the strength of principle and character to do so. Authority likes to revel in its omniscience and omnipotence…often unaware of the reality that more likely reveals some level of ignorance and impotence. Those wielding power don’t like underlings with contrary opinions that vary from the conventional wisdom of the day.
Arrogance begets disaster, it’s not only true of the military but quite true in civilian circles as well most notably engineering…there are enough engineering disasters in our history to be a constant reminder that humility is a major component of successful engineering as arrogance often renders one blind to negative realities.
But hey this administration has been quite clear from day one that they’re much smarter than the rest of us, they’ve identified ISIS as an amateurish JV squad relatively incompetent and incapable of sustained operations. Based on the reality of the situation on the ground it’s clear that once again arrogance has led a path directly to disaster…
Nice to know we have willing accomplices across the spectrum of our supposed leaders in the military.
I’ve seen this culture (albeit on the civilian side), but don’t understand it. I can’t understand a boss who would tolerate anything but cold, hard facts. I’ve never understood subordinates who tell the boss only the good news (or made up news) and not the bad. If my boss wants to fire me for telling him what he needs to know, then he’s not much of a boss — and I’m working for the wrong company.
I am so damn glade I’m out !!!!!
it’s bullshit like this that’s out of control.
and to think they can’t fix the VA because of policy but they can wreck someone’s career for telling the truth !!!!!
bhwhahahahahahaha! ! ! ! !
Lyndon Johnson’s Johnson was out of control over the Vietnam war, period. He was going to have his way, no matter who had to bite the bullet for it, but it bit him right back. And at the time, nobody really understood that it was not a regular war, fighting along fronts, but a guerrilla war in a jungle so thick you had to cut your way through it.
He misunderstood the sheer willpower of the North and completely underestimated Giap.
This lack-of-Administration? Makes LBJ look downright brilliant by comparison.
“He misunderstood…”
He had a lot of company, both in and out of uniform. Sadly, there are many who still misunderstand the situations we find ourselves in.
True, timactual. But it was LBJ who publicly portrayed himself as the “Peace Candidate” in 1964 when he’d already made the decision to escalate the Vietnam War immediately after he was re-elected. And it was LBJ – assisted hugely by McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff – who engineered the Vietnam War’s “escalation by stealth” in 1965 without consulting either Congress or the American public. By the end of that year, the Vietnam War was already so large that debate wasn’t really possible any more; we were already decisively committed, whether the US public or Congress approved.
For those deliberate and willful acts, LBJ’s memory deserved our unending scorn. He has much blood on his hands.
LBJ did not act alone, Ex-PH2. He was aided and abetted by his leadership team in Washington, (remember McNamara’s later published mea culpa?) and too eagerly supported by too many of his military leaders in the field.
I’ve related this incident before here at TAH but it bears retelling. After a major battle in 1966 where I served as the tactical net radio operator for the brigade commander, who later became a very famous hero of that war, he instructed me to message the line companies to report enemy casualties in this manner:
Any American trooper who aimed his weapon at an NVA soldier and fired was to count that NVA as KIA/BCC, Killed in Action/Body Count Confirmed. Thus, in a battle where we likely killed fewer than two hundred NVA, the official count was 448 as reported in a subsequent issue of Stars and Stripes and in civilian newspapers to the American public.
When the colonel gave me the order, I looked at him in disbelief and said, “But sir?” and he stared me in the eye and said very grimly, “Just do it sergeant, just do it.” I knew then the fix was in from higher echelons.
Yes, PT, LBJ had assistants. But LBJ was the driving force behind us getting into Vietnam “on the sly” and before Congress had actually debated the matter, and before the American public’s support had been secured. He did that because he remembered the outcry about “losing China”, and didn’t want his legacy to be tarnished that way.
So he pulled an “end-run” around Congress and the American people, and got us involved in a major ground war – simply to protect his “legacy”. The result was an even more stained legacy, and tens-of-thousands of lives lost. And the result? Probably worse than had we simply packed up and left in early 1965.
I guess I failed to make my point, Hondo, which is that just like today with the CENTCOM issue, in Vietnam the chain of command was corrupted into supporting the Democrat administration’s political position that the enemy is not a serious military threat.
We certainly found out otherwise in the first instance, didn’t we?
No argument there.
Stupid to do that 50 years ago; equally stupid today.
I worked with a couple of Viet Nam vets when I first joined. They told me, “if we actually killed all the people we claimed to kill according to the KIA numbers, Viet Nam wouldn’t have any people left.”
I know, Poetrooper. The report was that even if it was a dead pig or a dead chicken, it was included in the body counts.
Well, not the chickens ’cause it was considered bad form to eat the body count.
I had a PFC in my fire team, a big dumb Irishman from New York, about the same size and demeanor as Clint Walker, whose only redeeming virtues were that he could hump more extra ammo than anyone else in the platoon AND he could shoot the heads off chickens at unbelievable distances so no meat was wasted.
I let that big doofus get away with a lot of crap just because he was a good mule and a great shot.
Lyndon Johnson’s Johnson was out of control…
I’ve heard some rumors to that effect but what has that to do with Vietnam…?
Well he was Kennedy’s VP after all.
He was also reputedly more of a “ladies’ man” than JFK. And he loved flaunting . . . well, just read the link. (smile)
http://www.cracked.com/article_18945_6-presidential-secrets-your-history-teacher-didnt-mention.html
LBJ was also extremely vain.
He had a shooting crew trailing along with him everywhere he went. Most of the shooting crew were Navy PHs who came from the CHINFO Liason Office for the White House at the Navy Photo Center. Some of those memorable shots of LBJ were done by Navy PHs, mostly PH1s, and were either stills or film. By everywhere, I mean everywhere, even if it was as insignificant as puppies on the steps of the Capitol building. A friend of mine on the shooting crew gave me some prints of those shots. Two of the guys who trailed along with LBJ were designated as strictly MOPIC cameramen. There was an entire office devoted to editing LBJ’s films at NPC. Some day, I’ll tell you guys my one and only flag office story, which had to do with Mrs. LBJ (Lady Bird) coming over to NPC to the screening room to watch one of those films.
The point is that he was quite vain and wanted his ‘legacy’ completely recorded, unlike Nixon, who cut the shooting crews down to the minimum.
To put it bluntly, if you wanted to do something in WDC, you only did it if LBJ had your nuts in his pocket, Alberich.
It did not hurt that Lady Bird made a shit ton off of Bell Helo’s.
In Afghanistan, I had people at Bagram throwing back at me and telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about.
So, here I am in my sector working in these districts everyday, but people 120 miles away (Sitting at a desk) are telling me how things actually are in them.
Why? Because I was saying, “Hey this is not doing so well.” For the reports I was submitting saying, “Yep, its fine here, they are ready for transition to Afghan control” I didn’t hear a peep.
Transition to Afghan control was the only consideration. It is happening, shut up if you don’t agree. Shut up if you don’t think they are ready, nor if you have evidence to show they aren’t ready.
We also were reminded more than once “remember, it only has to be Afghan good ’nuff!” Though that was changed to “Afghan Sufficient”, probably because good ’nuff wasn’t a proper term to put on many evaluations or awards at higher levels.
From no one’s rational perspective can it be said that things are going well. Hell, I’d guess that most Americans w/o military loved ones are unaware that we have a presence at all in the ME or North Africa. And among those whop are aware, I wonder how many know what we seriously hope to accomplish in those areas. I don’t. I recall the pics of blue index fingers. It still gives me a chuckle.
Whatever happened to doing “current event” reports in school?
Do they do that anymore? When I was a kid, we did them all the time in grade school. Then, in jr high and high school we did them for 1 or 2 classes every year.
These days if you asked those same people what the Kardashians did over the weekend, they’d be able to spout it off in minutes.
MSG Eric. Your question assumes that the teachers are part of the small percentage of Americans who are aware of our military presence in the ME and No. Africa. I doubt it. I grew up with news print on my fingers. I would read everything except the comics and the financial pages. Nowadays, one has to seek out info. That is, there are no newspapers lying around the house for the family member to pick up from the kitchen table. Hell, I would guess that bathroom reading material is on an ipad/pod/pud/whatever too.
2/17,
I don’t have newsprint around my house because I don’t trust it to be “news”. It’s more like LefTard Propaganda, and I don’t have that much money to waste from my budget to continue propping up and supporting that ancient decrepit decaying media.
Yeah, I get that, but the newspapers usually don’t deal in sound bites and one can pause and ponder w/o the wham-bam of TV’radio news or the sensory assault of many online news outlets.
Asymmetric conflict is just as complex as classic ‘state on state’ warfare, but it doesn’t lend itself to the kind of assents that allow you to easily measure how well you are doing.
In a symmetric, decisive action, BDA and body counts and operational statistics are easy to gather and analyze, and they actually mean something significant.
In Vietnam and in the War on Terror, they aren’t easy to collect and they mean very little.
That doesn’t stop us from doing it. The military is guilty of measuring what it can, not what it should. We like metrics, with hard, verifiable numbers like raids conducted, detainees processed, and weapons seized.
Those stats are only part of the equation,mouth senior leaders don’t like to hear assessments on qualitative issues like will to fight or indigenous support.
Red, I think a better measure of the success of our actions is our own body count, how many of us they have killed, especially including civilians in the Homeland. The lower that figure, the more effective we can deem our operations to have been.
That casualty count is readily determined and its impact on our nation can be measured in the support the people demonstrate for our military forces and further operations.
Measuring our operational success by their body counts and captured arms is as hopeless as trying to contain an ounce of mercury poured on a flat map table. Such pinprick operations only create martyrs and serve as recruiting tools.
I would leave them alone to gather, build and fester but keep them under constant observation. As soon as their organizations assume critical mass, capable of serious offensive operations then we strike with overwhelming and totally destructive force, wiping them out to the man.
Such a tactic might never change any hearts and minds but it would assuredly limit their ability to strike back at us with any efficiency.
And it would definitely increase our enemy body counts.
TRUTH? YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!
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Probably DIA. They tend to be a bit more apolitical, and therefore, rather unpopular in the eyes of policy wonks.