How Iraq, Afghanistan have changed War 101

Cthippo · 29 Jun 2006

The Christian Science Monitor said:

FORT LEAVENWORTH, KAN. - A few years ago, Maj. Hilton "Bo" Gardner might have sat in this cramped classroom trying to unravel the riddles of the "green sheet."

Back then, this college for mid-career Army officers had clear tactics and maneuvers in war, and the green sheet was the last word. These days, however, Major Gardner is probably the closest thing this class has to an absolute authority. As a veteran of the war in
Afghanistan, he is more precious than any handout, answering fellow students' questions about the insurgency and its lessons for the Army – with the quiet consent of the teacher.

The war on terror has changed the Army in many ways, from boot-camp training to
Pentagon doctrine. Here at the Army's intellectual hub, it is reshaping the education and expectations of the service's next generation of officers.

Some of the changes are as obvious as the addition of counterinsurgency and language electives to the curriculum. Yet at the most fundamental level, Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College has had to reorient itself to stay relevant for veterans like Gardner, who come seeking to make sense of wars when tactics seem to change every hour.

Where once the college sought to instill its officers with the tactical know-how to defeat the Soviets, it has now turned to the challenging prospect of teaching soldiers how to think for themselves.

"It's a shift from a baccalaureate education to a master's-level education," says Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the college. "It's about developing in an individual the capacity to handle a broad range of problems."

In many respects, this is a task allotted to the entire military, as the uncertainty of today's unconventional wars calls for more thoughtful privates and sergeants, as well as officers. Yet some of today's majors will become tomorrow's three- and four-star generals, who help set the course and character of the Army. The Command and General Staff College, then, is something of a weather vane for the future of Army thought.

At the moment, the arrow is pointing directly toward
Iraq and Afghanistan. The college has already added eight counterinsurgency-related courses, and students can now take electives in Arabic and Pashtun. In a dim hallway outside the main auditorium, a metal rack holds reams of suggested reading lists – but the slots for "cultural awareness," "counterinsurgency," and "militant Islam" have already been emptied.

In Gardner's class, tabletops teem with copies of "The Sling and the Stone" and "No True Glory" – officers' must-read texts on the nontraditional warfare of the new century. The topic for this day's seminar, too, is a twist on the traditional.

A few years ago, a lesson about the Soviet Union would probably have involved detailed study of troop formations and geography in Eastern Europe. But this is one of the new counterinsurgency classes, so the subject is the Soviets' failed foray into Afghanistan – and what the United States can learn from it.

Quite a lot, it seems. When students step to the front of the class to give their part of the presentation, moments of recitation occasionally give way to sparkles of spontaneity. One student seeks to draw parallels to what is happening in Iraq. "Absolutely," a student-leader responds. Another wonders aloud what victory might look like in an Afghan insurgency. A third suggests that it is more about the prosperity and education of the local people than any brilliant military maneuver.

At every turn, students look to Gardner to explain the climate, to describe the interrelationship of tribal leaders – to understand. Every so often, the teacher steps in to direct the conversation, but he knows this is not his show, and the students know it, too. They are helping one another connect the dots.

"The greatest thing is learning from my peers," says Gardner. "The discussion in class has given me a better knowledge of how things can be done in the future."

Clearly, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have given focus to their discussions. The college is no longer simply a comfortable 10-month post where officers can lean back and talk about Sun Tzu and "The Art of War."

"They come in with a huge amount of experience and some very serious professional questions," says General Warner. "They come here [saying], 'I've done two tours in Iraq; help me understand what all this means.' "

That has bred an openness to new solutions. Looking at how the Afghan resistance against the Soviets seemed to have no center of gravity, one student suggests that the best solution is just to try something – and if it works, to try it again.

It's just the sort of flexible thinking that the commandant is trying to instill. "Rather than critiquing your answer, let me critique your problem-solving process," says Warner. "The right answer is something that is not immoral, not illegal, and not unfeasible."

The college, too, has had to learn to be flexible. The days when instructors would just run through 120 stock slides are gone. Today, teachers are trying to incorporate real-time lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We used to say we needed two years to change the curriculum," says Steven Davis, director of the Digital Leadership Development Center, which runs the school's training simulators. "Now, if something happens in theater [in Iraq], we should have it in the schoolroom two to three days later."

For his part, Maj. Tom Hairgrove is grateful for the new curriculum. Before he enrolled in the counterinsurgency class, he had no idea that America has such a long history in fighting guerrilla wars. "It's amazing the amount of material we have in the US experience when you get to digging – the banana wars, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Indian wars," he says.

It won't supplant the basic education he and all soldiers receive on battlefield tactics and troop maneuvers. "But it gives me more tools," he adds. "We need this."
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I guess it's nice to see that something is being learned from this mess.

cpemma · 30 Jun 2006

he had no idea that America has such a long history in fighting guerrilla wars. "It's amazing the amount of material we have in the US experience when you get to digging – the banana wars, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Indian wars,"
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I wonder what they learn from those "wars". How to steal someone else's country?

"I want no prisoners, I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn the better you will please me," was the order Gen. Jacob Smith issued a century ago as his troops slaughtered civilians and Filipino revolutionaries alike defending the first republic in Asia and the freedom they had just wrested from Spain. Smith had ordered his troops to turn the island of Samar into a "howling wilderness" so that "even birds could not live there." When asked by a soldier to define the age limit for killing, Smith replied, "Everything over ten." Foreshadowing the fate of Lt. William Calley, who was found guilty of leading U.S. soldiers in perpetrating horrors in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai and who served only four and a half months of his life sentence behind bars after which he was pardoned by Richard Nixon, Gen. Smith was court-martialed for issuing his barbaric orders, found guilty, and sentenced to – an admonition.
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http://www.todaysalternativenews.com/index2.php?event=link,150&values[0]=1&values[1]=1370

Or as Mark Twain said

"There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation."
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Yes, lessons to be learned.

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How Iraq, Afghanistan have changed War 101

Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

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How Iraq, Afghanistan have changed War 101

Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

cpemma Ecky thump

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