Small Wars Journal

First Active-Duty Civil Affairs Officer Promoted to BG

  1. Blog
Sun, 07/17/2011 - 6:05am
Ferdinand Irizarry is First Active-Duty Civil Affairs Officer Promoted to One-star General by Henry Cunningham, Fayetteville Observer. BLUF: "The promotion represented 'a great historic day for the United States Army,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr., commanding general of Fort Bragg's U.S. Army Special Operations Command."

Comments

A historic event of course and one a long time coming. Hopefully this illustrates our commitment to the importance of Civil Affairs for our Army and the US military writ large.

Congrats to "BG Ferd!"

As an aside some of the visionary SOF leaders back in 1987 when USSOCOM was established believed that it was best to put CA and PSYOP in USSOCOM (despite some who were adamantly opposed), otherwise they felt we would lose this capability entirely (not meant as a slight against the Reserve Components but it is hard for the Reserves to sustain capabilities if there is no active duty force to do the Title 10 man, train, educate, equip, and doctrinal development functions effectively). I think their foresight was vindicated in part by this decision to raise active duty CA to the general officer ranks (more so of course to expand the size of the active operational CA force to two brigades to support both the regular force and SOF). But you vote with your people and the Army and OSD supporting the establishment of a CA GO position is a postive sign for the force and for the CA discipline itself. I think PSYOP/MISO will soon follow.