Looking for Warfighters
Where are they? Will someone tell me? Will someone please point them out? Apparently most of the true war-fighters are in the company grade ranks and below in the Active Army, and very few are in the Battalion or higher ranks.
You may be asking yourself “Troy, what are you saying? Are you bashing the military leadership?”
I am calling it like I see it, and it is up to the reader to define what it looks like to them. If you listened to the New Year’s Day You Served Radio show hosted by CJ and myself, then you heard us talking to Scott Kesterson. Scott talked about some of the things he saw over the last three months while embedded as a reporter in the southeast of Afghanistan along the Pakistan border. There are a couple of points Scott brought up that I want to highlight which are very disturbing.
The first is his statement (and Scott had told me about this while he was in country) of a Brigade Command Sergeant Major using high dollar and high-tech surveillance drones to watch his troops in the field on combat operations to see if they were out of uniform. If this is true, and I must say I could see this happening, then it is a gross violation of the Army’s Fraud, Waste and Abuse policy. More importantly it would be a terrible testament to how mis-guided some of the leadership has become. It is one thing for your soldiers to be protected and disciplined, it is something else to use the highly sought after and expensive commodity of unmanned aerial drones in order to spot uniform violations while the soldiers are in combat.
Another point Scott brought up was the Rules of Engagement (ROE) he saw when he was there. The 0% collateral damage ( a result of Hamid Karzai running his mouth about how we save his country and make it stable and keep him in power….ohh I hate that tool) standard that is placed on the soldiers in Afghanistan. It is an impossible goal and causes soldiers and leaders to second guess themselves. When soldiers second guess themselves when it is time to pull the trigger, then our soldiers die. The end result of all the training we do in the army over our entire career is focused on that moment that if you ever have to make a life and death decision on pulling a trigger. When that split-second comes, the training and automatic reflexes kick in and each soldier is responsible for their actions, or in-actions. If we are trained how to spot, positively ID and eliminate an enemy, then that is all there is needed to it. The last thing we want soldiers to do is pause for even a second and re-evaluate the situation to decide if they are going to get in trouble or not. There are some other parts of the ROE that Scott discussed which are also very disturbing, but I won’t repeat them here. I encourage you to go give it a listen yourself.
I asked Scott about the differences between this 3 month tour and his first 12 month tour when he and I were both in Afghanistan. In my frequent conversations with him, I knew this one was tough on him. When asked why, his response was simply he had never seen the American fighting man so demoralized when it comes to the mission and the leadership.
Take a look at the case of 1SG Scott and Cpt Hill and the charges they were brought under. I blogged about this and in fact have been in personal contact with Cpt Hill and I can tell you that their situation is another great example of the higher leadership failing them and their soldiers.
So where are the true warfighters? Where are the field grade officers that put the mission before their own OER? Where are the senior NCOs that have not forgotten what it is like to be a grunt in the trenches? I know they are out there as I run into them every once in a while. If you are reading this blog and you think you are a real warfighter that puts men and mission first above your own self-interest, then I would like to hear from you in the comments. If you are offended by my blog, then you are probably one of the people I am talking about and I invite you to comment also. Maybe we can chat and I can remind you of the term selfless service and putting the Army’s needs in front of your own.
Greg D
January 13th, 2009 at 6:45 amWhile I know you are talking about the real warfighters I know that the higher leadership starts back at the schools. I totally agree with everything you said. I served more than 20 yrs. While deployed on Bosnia I saw that kind of action completely. 1sg more worried about making sure that soldiers (mechanics) were wearing helmets while working on vehicles in a shop that was on a secured base. Also when I was at Aberdeen Proving Grounds at the brigade level, I never saw so many 1SGs trying to screw over senior NCOs. We had a 1SG that told a SFC that had just come off a profile and had not completed the time requirement for rehab, that if he did not make his ANCOC school date he would take his rank off. The soldier came to me for help and I called his branch schools and got his school date changed. The 1SG had told him that he called his branch school and that they could not change his school date. So while the leadership that is deployed with the real warfighters are not 100% supporting thier solders it stems from the very beginning with the leadership in the schools and non-deployed units. After all the Army really screwed up when the leadership decide they wanted a kinder gentler Army. I am sorry but kinder and gentler do not go with war. As much as I loved the Army I was ready to get out of the baby sitting bussiness (of higher Leaders) that were more concerned about their OER or NCOER thatn they were about doing the right thing. I know this may be a hard thing to believe, but during my last year after I had my retirement orders I was threatened by my rater (a WO4) about my NCOER. I guess he did’nt realize that I had been in for more than 20 years and had come up through the stronger Army and I had to remind him that not only did I not care what he put on my NCOER, but I was retiring and did’nt even need one to retire.
CJ
January 13th, 2009 at 7:33 amI think a great deal of our problem, unfortunately, stem from leadership failures at the senior NCO ranks. Our commanders are greatly influenced by their senior enlisted advisors and their purpose is to keep him advised on enlisted issues. That just doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. You just don’t see many Senior NCOs at the E9 level mentoring and advising their commanders – or at least that’s my impression.
When I was in Iraq, I had a Command Sergeant Major when I was in 3/15 Infantry that yelled at us more than once when he saw us coming in from a long patrol in Fallujah. The patrol was fraught with ambushes, weapons caches, and kids throwing rocks at us. It was also 120+ degree temperatures WALKING through an urben environment of mud and concrete. IE: it was hot! To counter this heat, we frequently unbuttoned our sleeves and unbloused our pantlegs allow more airflow onto our bodies.
When we’d return, the CSM would call me and the other senior NCOs over and begin to chew us a new one for being out of uniform and setting a bad example. Never mind the fact that our team was the most successful team in the city for identifying, locating, and destroying weapons and explosive caches and safehouses.
We’re not fighting a two-front war; we’re fighting a three-font war: Iraq, Afghanistan, poor leadership/mentorship at the senior NCO ranks.
Troy
January 13th, 2009 at 9:51 amIn Afghanistan, back in 2006 and even now I can tell you that the embedded trainers and mentors with the police and army face 2 very difficult challenges. The first is an invisible enemy that is trying to kill you, the 2nd is an inept and mostly corrupt and uncaring group of Afghans that are supposed to be taking over their own security. The third is a group of folks from all branches that wear the same US Flag that that we all do who think they are on one big annual training exercise, have no clue they are really at war or are more worried about getting another Bronze Star and good wartime NCOER/OER that they will sacrifice anyone to get it. We called it the ultimate triple stack when I was there: ACM, Afghans, and Americans. Any one of them can kill ya, but all three together are just devastating.