As my tour in Afghanistan wraps up, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned. Looking through my notes, I am reminded that many of those lessons had already been encapsulated by CPT Thompson. Here’s a taste of the frustration of a company-grade that wants his work to be meaningful:
blog comments powered by DisqusThe US military has become more attached to procedures than it is to outcomes. This mindset has the effect of causing us to lose a war and no one cares as long as we are following the procedures. The first step to winning is to stop losing habits. We continue to “check the blocks”, so we must be successful because that is how we have now defined success. Success is a completed process, not an outcome to the military. The rotations come and go through Afghanistan, people collect a good OER and an award, but we continue to lose. However, no one is ever held accountable for the failures and everyone just continues to cycle through and get a “go” for their career. Consider a few issues:
- We have well educated officers leading capable soldiers. Our enemy is generally led by illiterate or partially literate commanders with part-time minimally trained soldiers — yet the enemy is winning
- We bring billions of dollars into a country to try and win a war. Our enemy doesn’t spend 1/1000th of the money we do, but they are holding their own — and winning
- The strategy for many is not to win or defeat the enemy. It is to rotate through and go home with a good award and OER or NCOER
- We cannot get scopes for weapons in-country, but we had so much new office furniture and flat-screen television sets on the FOBs people were throwing away things that still workedHow can we possibly be losing in a war we should be easily winning? Because we are tied to a myriad of multiple processes that are not outcome based. Additionally, these processes are completely uncoordinated. For the military, the process is definitely more important than the results. The processes must be followed even if they result in the unnecessary loss of life, equipment or even a war. This mentality must change drastically for us to achieve victory.
What the leadership, across the board from lieutenant to general, needs to realize for us to win is that everything needs to be oriented toward what works on the ground. Every person at every level is putting in place a policy. There are policies for going to sick call, leaving the wire, taking prisoners, writing memos, reporting to higher, etc. Most of these policies were put into place in order to make it easier for someone in a bureaucracy to do their job. This does not make it easier for the person on the ground to do their job or to win the war. It makes it harder. Every policy or rule throughout the military is one of two things: an enabler or distracter. There is nothing else. What happens is a soldier is required to take an action or not allowed to take an action according to a policy. That policy either helps him accomplish his mission and win the war or it distracts him from his mission and makes it tougher to win.
There are multiple policies in place that prevent us from winning and there are more being added every day. We were doing better in 2002-2005 when soldiers were unobtrusively running around Afghanistan in ordinary pickup trucks and no body armor. Now we have large HMMVs that limit us to certain roads and are required to wear large amounts of body armor which prevent us from moving. We have lost our flexibility, maneuverability and versatility because someone who is not even fighting (and probably never has) wrote a policy about what the soldier needs to do on the ground at all times.
These policies put into place and stacked on top of each other, have eroded our combat effectiveness. In some areas it has made our soldiers useless and combat ineffective. From stateside training to operations in theatre, there are multiple policies put in place that PREVENT us from winning. The argument can easily be made that we are a tougher obstacle than the enemy. Policies are usually put in place based on the assumption that if the last guy did X, then the next guy needs to do X + Y. The problem is that X was good enough and should have been left alone. The addition of Y canceled any value X originally had.
There is one key element to remember in all of this — there is a limited amount of time and effort for anything. If we need to win, we need to be flexible enough to do what it takes to achieve victory and not let people who are completely enamored with policies and procedures get in the way. They look at victory as a nice, clean bureaucratic system. Victory should be seen as dead enemy, reliable governance and a peaceful place for people to live.
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