The U.S. Army has done something remarkable in its new history of the disastrous first 18 months of the American occupation of Iraq: It has conducted a rigorous self-critique of how bad decisions were made, so that the Army won't make them again.

Civilian leaders are still mostly engaged in a blame game about Iraq, pointing fingers to explain what went wrong and to justify their own actions. That's certainly the tone of recent memoirs by Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense, and L. Paul Bremer, the onetime head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. These were the people making policy, yet they treat the key mistakes as other people's fault. Feith criticizes Bremer and the CIA, while Bremer chides former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the military for ignoring his advice that the United States didn't have enough troops.

The Army can't afford this sort of retroactive self-justification. Its commanders and soldiers are the ones who got stuck with the situation in Iraq and had to make it work as best they could. And this internal history, published last month under the title "On Point II," testifies to the Army's strength as a learning organization. (This study covers May 2003 to January 2005. An earlier volume, "On Point," chronicled the initial assault on Baghdad.)...

Key Quote

Politicians repeat, ad nauseam, the maxim that "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The U.S. Army is that rare institution in American life that is actually putting this precept into practice.

Links

On Point - Through 1 May 2003.

On Point II - May 2003 to January 2005.

... Most people still believe that the MOD is essentially a military organisation. It is not. It is an organisation dominated numerically, culturally and structurally by civil servants and consultants, many of whom are unsympathetic to its underlying purpose or even hostile to the military and its ethos. You just have to spend a few days at the MOD before you realise that the culture there is not just non-military, but anti-military...

The contrast with the US Department of Defense could not be greater. The Pentagon is a first-rate military organisation (at least in terms of status) where the MOD is not. At the Pentagon, every military person is expected to be in uniform; and it's the civilians who feel and recognise that they are the supporting cast. Military officers are frequently loaned to other ministries such as the State Department and they continue to wear their uniforms there. The reverse is true in the UK where the Civil Service and its "unions" not only resist the wearing of uniforms but also any systematic secondments (as opposed to hand-picked placements) from the military.

The MOD has slipped from being one of the top five ministries to one of second or even third rank. Moreover, even if our top generals wanted to oppose some aspect of defence policy, they would find the MOD's structure is now rigged so that civil servants increasingly come between them and the government...

Worse still, the civil servants who now dominate the MOD are a different breed from those who staffed it in the 1980s. In those days there were still many civil servants who had served in the Second World War or Korea, or who had at least done national service. They respected and understood the armed services; they believed an effective military was important and had usually learnt essential skills of leadership and management. They were loyal to the Queen (then the head of the Civil Service), to the Civil Service itself and to its code, and to the service arm they were working for. They have all gone.

Their successors tend to see the services as a tiresome anachronism, peopled by unsympathetic, old-fashioned social types. For many of them the MOD, with its part-time minister, is merely a stepping stone to greater things...

Because the services haven't had the budget increases they need to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is running out of everything. We're running out of trucks, for instance. And when things break they aren't being replaced. Increasingly one gets the impression that the civil servants don't care if the forces are broken - their careers will not be affected. But it may also be that some civil servants and a body of politicians, from both Left and Right, would actually be happy for the military to be broken in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then they will have truly achieved the Europeanisation of Britain's armed forces along the lines of a purely defensive "UK Defence Force". War will somehow have been abolished - until, of course, it returns at a time of our enemies' choosing.

Read the entire article at Standpoint.

The first problem with that self-righteous bull is that Jefferson never said it. On the contrary, he warned of the dangers of political dissension carried to extremes.

The earliest traceable provenance of the slogan goes back to an obscure 1960s lefty who just made it up.

Dissent can be patriotic - it's essential to have an ongoing public debate about the major issues confronting us. But that dissent must be based on facts, not sloppy emotions.

Instead, we get dissent worn as a fashion statement. And fanatic dissent (as Jefferson noted) is the enemy of a democratic system.

--Ralph Peters

"The next president will inherit the most daunting security environment" an incoming commander in chief has ever been handed, said Michí¨le Flournoy, a former top Pentagon strategic planner in President Bill Clinton's administration. "America has not had a grand strategy since the end of the Cold War." Not since the Vietnam War have so many US troops been involved in shooting wars during a presidential transition.

Either Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will inherit the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a number of troubled weapon programs and other military challenges.

There is talk in Washington that the new president should consider keeping some Bush appointees on after he takes office, at least until his nominees are confirmed.

Good choices all - hopefully transition reality will turn this DC chatter into concrete action.

USIP describes the framework as follows - USIP-developed methodologies for measurement of the transformation from war to peace were recently used at the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) and the US Army War College (AWC). At FSI, classes in the Integrated Conflict Analysis Framework (ICAF) are part of courses that aim to build an interagency community of professionals trained to participate in reconstruction and stabilization operations. ICAF incorporates USIP's conflict transformation framework, which tracks drivers of conflict and institutional performance. At the AWC, a recent workshop used USIP's measurement framework for a hypothetical scenario on Chad.

Dennis Skocz, a specialist on strategic planning and professional development, lauded the USIP framework. "The concepts are clear, intuitive, and flexible. Aspects of a conflict that might be ignored using a stove-piped approach to lining up tasks come out through the analysis, allowing for a holistic response to situations that typically involve many 'moving pieces,'" he said. "As for the metric framework, it's an idea whose time has clearly come. It combines the sophistication that comes from almost two years of development along with a foundation in the conflict analysis that USIP has pioneered."

Also posted this month - Integrated Security Assistance: The 1207 Program by Robert M. Perito.

In January 2008, the US Departments of State and Defense requested that the United States Institute of Peace conduct an independent assessment of the process by which projects funded under Section 1207 of the National Defense Authorization Acts of FY 2006 and FY 2007 were developed, reviewed, and approved for funding. They asked that the study include recommendations for changes in the application and approval procedures to ensure that project proposals were reviewed through an efficient, transparent, and well-understood interagency process. The Institute agreed to conduct the study because the 1207 program is an example of the US military's growing involvement in integrated "whole-of-government" approaches to US security assistance programs. The study is based on interviews with staff members of the Senate and House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees and representatives from the Office of Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of State, and the US Agency for International Development.

And on Iraq - USIP Dialogue on Media and Conflict in Iraq Spawns Call for Partnership. (Full text in English) (Full text in Arabic)

USIP convened a groundbreaking conference on media and conflict in Iraq in Istanbul May 14-16, 2008. The event was part of the Institute's Iraq and its Neighbors project and was co-hosted by the Center for Sustainable Peace at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.

Participants included media executives from Iraq and across the region. These executives, who represented entertainment, news, citizen media and new media technology, met with officials from the Iraqi government and international experts to explore media's effect on the conflict and vice versa.

The participants called for "a partnership between a government committed to freedom of expression and media committed to responsible use of the means of communication" to enable both to weather the current conflict and look forward to a more peaceful future.

The meeting resulted in a two-page "Istanbul Declaration" featuring specific recommendations whose implementation should be feasible within the next five years.

Here are several highlights from the article:

(1) A new draft Defense Department Joint Integrating Concept (JIC) for Defeating Terrorist Networks, which is being drafted to help implement DOD's broad vision for irregular warfare, won a key endorsement from the Joint Capabilities Board (JCB).

(2) US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) will continue as the lead sponsor of the JIC.

(3) The idea behind the Defeating Terrorist Networks JIC is to take "a more holistic approach to tackling the root causes of these networks."

(4) USSOCOM is also leading the development of three other intertwined JICs: Counterinsurgency, Foreign Internal Defense and Unconventional Warfare.

(5) The Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept describes how future Joint Force Commanders may conduct protracted irregular wars to meet national strategic objectives in the 2014 to 2026 time frame. The latest JICs connected to Irregular Warfare are in their infancy and "don't have a lot of flesh on the bones yet."

(6) The Unconventional Warfare JIC describes destabilization of foreign nations that pose a threat to US forces. Foreign Internal Defense has to do with training and equipping foreign forces to battle an actual or threatened insurgency in a foreign state. While work has just begun on the Counterinsurgency, Foreign Internal Defense and Unconventional Warfare JICs, the next-most advanced concept following Defeating Terrorist Networks is Strategic Communications. US Joint Forces Command, in conjunction with US Strategic Command and USSOCOM, are leading the development of the Strategic Communications JIC.

(7) The Strategic Communications JIC will describe how a Joint Force will Conduct Strategic Communications activities in eight to 20 years.

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Iran is one of the United States' most important foreign policy concerns. It has also been an extraordinarily difficult country with which to engage. Ironically, while the leadership has been hostile to the United States, Iranian society has evolved in ways friendly to the United States and US interests. This monograph assesses current political, ethnic, demographic, and economic trends and vulnerabilities in Iran. For example, the numbers of young people entering the Iranian labor force are at an all-time high. The authors then provide recommendations for US policies that might foster trends beneficial to US interests. For example, greater use of markets and a more-vibrant private sector would contribute to the development of sources of political power independent from the current regime. The authors finally note a need for patience. Even if favorable trends take root, it will take time for them to come to fruition.

Rand Press Release:

The United States should pursue a mixed strategy toward Iran, using a variety of means to promote favorable social developments within the country and at the same time exploiting vulnerabilities in the nation's political, economic and demographic conditions, according to a study issued today by the Rand Corporation.

However, Iran's vulnerabilities are "not extraordinary" and have become less severe over the last decade as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders have consolidated their power.

"The United States can use Iran's vulnerabilities to advance US goals, but expectations should be kept low," said Keith Crane, the study's lead author and a senior economist at Rand, a nonprofit research organization. "This is going to be a long-term proposition. Although economic and social forces within Iran are pushing for liberalization, the current regime has been able to maintain its hold on power."

Despite hostile rhetoric expressed by Iranian leaders toward the United States, Iranian society has a generally favorable view of the United States, partly because there is a large population of Iranians living in America, Crane said. Although it faces many problems, the current Iranian regime is likely to resist external pressure for change. It may, however, become more democratic over time, as economic, political and demographic pressures from within force the government to respond to popular desires for a more democratic state.

The Rand report is based upon an assessment of the ethnographic, political and economic literature about Iran, in addition to official Iranian government statements and monitored blogs maintained by Iranians. Economic assessments from the Central Bank of Iran and the International Monetary Fund also were a part of the material assessed.

The study recommends that US policy should be crafted with the goals of fostering conditions for a more democratic Iranian society, weakening the ability of the Iranian government to crack down on dissenters, and penalizing the Iranian government for policies that harm the United States...

National War Powers Commission - Miller Center of Public Affairs

The Miller Center's National War Powers Commission, co-chaired by former Secretaries of State James A. Baker, III and Warren Christopher, Tuesday recommended that Congress repeal the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and substitute a new statute that would provide for more meaningful consultation between the president and Congress on matters of war. In a report released Tuesday after 13 months of study, the Commission concluded that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has failed to promote cooperation between the two branches of government and recommended that Congress pass a new statute -- the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009 -- that would establish a clear process on decisions to go to war. The Miller Center impaneled the National War Powers Commission in February 2007. This bipartisan commission met seven times, interviewing more than 40 witnesses about the respective war powers of the president and Congress.

Put War Powers Back Where They Belong - Baker and Christopher, NYT opinion

The most agonizing decision we make as a nation is whether to go to war. Our Constitution ambiguously divides war powers between the president (who is the commander in chief) and Congress (which has the power of the purse and the power to declare war). The founders hoped that the executive and legislative branches would work together, but in practice the two branches don't always consult. And even when they do, they often dispute their respective powers. A bipartisan group that we led, the National War Powers Commission, has unanimously concluded after a year of study that the law purporting to govern the decision to engage in war — the 1973 War Powers Resolution — should be replaced by a new law that would, except for emergencies, require the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the matter before going to war. Seventy years of polls show that most Americans expect Congress and the president to talk before making that decision, and in most cases, they have done so.

Ex-Secretaries: New War Powers Policy - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

The 1973 War Powers Resolution is ineffective, possibly unconstitutional and should be repealed, two former secretaries of state said yesterday in proposing new legislation to govern the war-making powers of the president and Congress. "The rule of law is undermined and is damaged when the main statute in this vital policy area is regularly questioned or ignored," former secretary James A. Baker III said of the existing law. Baker, along with former secretary Warren Christopher, headed an independent, bipartisan commission that spent the last year examining the issue.

Report Urges Overhaul of the War Powers Law - John Broder, New York Times

Two former secretaries of state, concluding that a 1973 measure limiting the president's ability to wage war unilaterally had never worked as intended, proposed on Tuesday a new system of closer consultation between the White House and Congress before American forces go into battle. Their proposal would require the president to consult senior lawmakers before initiating combat expected to last longer than a week, except for covert operations or rare circumstances requiring emergency action, in which case consultation would have to be undertaken within three days.

Fixing How We Go to War - David Broder, Washington Post opinion

Just shy of eight years after they squared off in the Florida recount battle, James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher have joined forces to clean up one of the ugly legacies of Vietnam -- the misguided piece of legislation called the War Powers Act. Passed in 1973, when Congress was mightily frustrated with the undeclared war in Southeast Asia, that statute is proof of the adage that hard cases make bad law. Cases don't come any harder than Vietnam, and the War Powers Act has turned out to be one of the worst bills ever to reach the president's desk and be signed into law.

Repeal the War Powers Act - Michael Barone, US News & World Report opinion

I tend to be cynical about proposals advanced by bipartisan panels of the great and the good. But I'll make an exception for the National War Powers Commission sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. The commission was chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher and included former Democratic members of Congress Lee Hamilton, John Marsh, and Abner Mikva and former Republican Sen. Slade Gorton (Marsh presumably counts as a Republican, since he served in the Ford White House and was secretary of the Army in the Reagan administration). Other members: Republicans Carla Hills, Edwin Meese, and Brent Scowcroft; Democrats Anne-Marie Slaughter and Strobe Talbott; and retired Adm. J. Paul Reason. In its admirably brief and well-written report, the commission calls for repealing the War Powers Act of 1973 and replacing it with a War Powers Consultation Act that would require the president to consult with a new bipartisan, bicameral Joint Congressional Consultation Committee.

Commission Recommends War Powers Overhaul - National Public Radio

A bipartisan commission is recommending new legislation that would foster more consultation between the president and Congress before the nation goes to war. The proposed legislation would replace the War Powers Act, passed in 1973 by a Vietnam-weary Congress that wanted to check the president's ability to initiate an unpopular war. Observers of all political persuasions have called the 1973 resolution vague and impractical. The National War Powers Commission, led by former secretaries of state James Baker and Warren Christopher, recommends creating a joint congressional committee with whom the president would have to consult before sending troops into conflict. The full Congress would have 30 days to ratify any military action.