afchic
02-05-2010, 11:46
A new opinion piece about LTC Paul Yingling.
At War (NYTimes.com)
February 4, 2010
A Critic Returns
By Michael R. Gordon
WASHINGTON — Lt. Col. Paul Yingling became a pivotal figure in the Iraq debate when he wrote an article three years ago that faulted the performance of American generals. It was a hard-hitting commentary that broadcast out loud the sort of misgivings that many of the Army’s younger officers had been keeping to themselves.
Now, Colonel Yingling is back with a provocative article on the American way of waging war. With his characteristic bluntness, the Army officer has called for the reinstitution of the draft and the reassertion of Congress’s role in deciding when the United States should use force. In a national security debate often filled with fuzz words, equivocation, and not-for-attribution quotes, Colonel Yingling has boldly taken on an issue that has been simmering for years, and that most politicians and policymakers in Washington are happy to avoid.
“In many ways, the prosecution of the war in Iraq is a cautionary tale against bypassing the war powers of Congress,” Colonel Yingling wrote in his article on “The Founders’ Wisdom,” which is being published by Armed Forces Journal, a nongovernmental publication that covers military issues.
“If members of Congress had to impose conscription and fully mobilize the National Guard, they might have been more skeptical of the case for war. Had members of Congress been required to cut popular domestic programs to pay for the war, they might have insisted on prosecuting the war more intelligently and vigorously. Instead, Iraq edged toward chaos over the course of four years, costing the lives of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money. Members of Congress held hearings and asked questions, but took no action to change the course of events in Iraq.”
“As the United States commits additional forces to Afghanistan, Americans would be well served to return to our Constitutional system of war powers,” he added. “The burdens of fighting in Afghanistan cannot and will not be shouldered solely by those in uniform today.”
I first met Colonel Yingling a few years back. As the deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, Colonel Yingling had attended an emotional ceremony for his soldiers who had been awarded the Purple Heart. The troops had given their all. Some arrived in wheelchairs or had terrible wounds. But had the generals developed a strategy that was worthy of their sacrifice? Colonel Yingling was troubled by that question. There was talk going around at senior levels that the military had done everything it could, and that it was the Iraqis or civilians who had dropped the ball. To some, that seemed too convenient, and not entirely honest.
Colonel Yingling’s previous article — “A Failure in Generalship,” completed in late 2006 during the dark days of sectarian cleansing before the surge and published in May 2007 — was a seismic event in military circles. Colonel Yingling received hundreds of e-mails from soldiers endorsing his comments. The reaction from on high was mostly a deafening silence, though one member of the brass, Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, the senior officer at Fort Hood at the time, assembled the captains at the base chapel to hear his rebuttal.
After Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy began to turn things around in Iraq, Colonel Yingling sought to return for his third tour. An officer on General Petraeus’s staff helped him secure a spot on the military task force that was dealing with detention issues. After he finished that tour of duty in July 2009 Colonel Yingling took up a post as a professor of security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany, a research center operated by the American and Germany governments.
But Iraq was still very much on his mind. Colonel Yingling was talking at the Marshall center with a group of Bulgarians, who asked how the United States made decisions on war and peace.
“They started asking about American war powers and the constitutional system,” Colonel Yingling said in a telephone interview. “I started to explain normatively what it was supposed to be and what it actually was — how different what we do is from what was envisioned in the Constitution.”
He put down his thoughts in the article, which was reviewed by the dean at the Marshall center before its publication in Armed Forces Journal.
Colonel Yingling’s essential argument is that the all-volunteer military has placed an enormous burden for the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan upon the shoulders of a tiny sliver of the American population. In so doing, it has effectively exempted the most privileged members of American society from military service, constrained the size of the armed forces, forced the military to pay large bonuses to fill the gaps in its ranks and encouraged the Congress to acquiesce in decisions on war and peace without the sort of thorough review that would be carried out for a military operation that affected a broader swath of the population.
“Soldiers, Marines and their families are bearing the whole burden of the war and 99 percent of the public is disengaged from the war,” Colonel Yingling told me. “The two control mechanisms to control executive ambition: asking the people to supply the blood and treasure for war — are missing.
“I have never heard any political leader ask people to volunteer and fight,” he said. “That is fantastic to me. How can it be that we choose to fight a war but don’t ask people to fight it?
“In Afghanistan, we went through an agonizing decision to commit 30,000 troops, which will take months to get in place. We are a nation of 300 million people. The reason that the burdens of war are so heavy is that they are borne by so few people.”
Many arguments can be made against a return to conscription. Most experts believe the all-volunteer military is better trained and more professional that the Vietnam-era force of volunteers and draftees. If a draft were to be introduced, only a relatively small portion of the population would likely be needed to fill out the ranks, which could foment resentment.
As a practical political matter, the vast majority of politicians, Democrat as well as Republican, prefer things as they are now, as does the Pentagon. The professional military is highly competent and can be used as a tool of foreign policy without sparking the sort of momentous political debate or demonstrations that might follow if thousands were drafted and sent to war against their will. In a capital that cannot reach accord on health care, the possibility of reintroducing the draft seems fantastically remote, barring a major high-intensity conflagration.
But having spent nearly seven years moving from the Iraq battlefields to the Washington policy arena and back, I have enormous sympathy for Colonel Yingling’s argument that most of American society is isolated from the sacrifices that a few Americans make, albeit volunteers. Congressional scrutiny of the Bush administration’s planning before the invasion and challenges of occupation was shallow, and the reflexive opposition of many representatives to the surge indicated that they failed to understand the dynamics on the battlefield.
Would American officials — in the executive and legislative branches — be more rigorous in the decisions on using force if major military operations required a formal declaration of war? Colonel Yingling makes a strong case in his article that they would. “Eschewing a Congressional declaration of war calls into question both the wisdom of the war and the public’s commitment to winning it,” he writes in his new article. It is a debate well worth having and it is revealing that it was a military officer who has sought to stimulate it.
At War (NYTimes.com)
February 4, 2010
A Critic Returns
By Michael R. Gordon
WASHINGTON — Lt. Col. Paul Yingling became a pivotal figure in the Iraq debate when he wrote an article three years ago that faulted the performance of American generals. It was a hard-hitting commentary that broadcast out loud the sort of misgivings that many of the Army’s younger officers had been keeping to themselves.
Now, Colonel Yingling is back with a provocative article on the American way of waging war. With his characteristic bluntness, the Army officer has called for the reinstitution of the draft and the reassertion of Congress’s role in deciding when the United States should use force. In a national security debate often filled with fuzz words, equivocation, and not-for-attribution quotes, Colonel Yingling has boldly taken on an issue that has been simmering for years, and that most politicians and policymakers in Washington are happy to avoid.
“In many ways, the prosecution of the war in Iraq is a cautionary tale against bypassing the war powers of Congress,” Colonel Yingling wrote in his article on “The Founders’ Wisdom,” which is being published by Armed Forces Journal, a nongovernmental publication that covers military issues.
“If members of Congress had to impose conscription and fully mobilize the National Guard, they might have been more skeptical of the case for war. Had members of Congress been required to cut popular domestic programs to pay for the war, they might have insisted on prosecuting the war more intelligently and vigorously. Instead, Iraq edged toward chaos over the course of four years, costing the lives of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money. Members of Congress held hearings and asked questions, but took no action to change the course of events in Iraq.”
“As the United States commits additional forces to Afghanistan, Americans would be well served to return to our Constitutional system of war powers,” he added. “The burdens of fighting in Afghanistan cannot and will not be shouldered solely by those in uniform today.”
I first met Colonel Yingling a few years back. As the deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, Colonel Yingling had attended an emotional ceremony for his soldiers who had been awarded the Purple Heart. The troops had given their all. Some arrived in wheelchairs or had terrible wounds. But had the generals developed a strategy that was worthy of their sacrifice? Colonel Yingling was troubled by that question. There was talk going around at senior levels that the military had done everything it could, and that it was the Iraqis or civilians who had dropped the ball. To some, that seemed too convenient, and not entirely honest.
Colonel Yingling’s previous article — “A Failure in Generalship,” completed in late 2006 during the dark days of sectarian cleansing before the surge and published in May 2007 — was a seismic event in military circles. Colonel Yingling received hundreds of e-mails from soldiers endorsing his comments. The reaction from on high was mostly a deafening silence, though one member of the brass, Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, the senior officer at Fort Hood at the time, assembled the captains at the base chapel to hear his rebuttal.
After Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy began to turn things around in Iraq, Colonel Yingling sought to return for his third tour. An officer on General Petraeus’s staff helped him secure a spot on the military task force that was dealing with detention issues. After he finished that tour of duty in July 2009 Colonel Yingling took up a post as a professor of security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany, a research center operated by the American and Germany governments.
But Iraq was still very much on his mind. Colonel Yingling was talking at the Marshall center with a group of Bulgarians, who asked how the United States made decisions on war and peace.
“They started asking about American war powers and the constitutional system,” Colonel Yingling said in a telephone interview. “I started to explain normatively what it was supposed to be and what it actually was — how different what we do is from what was envisioned in the Constitution.”
He put down his thoughts in the article, which was reviewed by the dean at the Marshall center before its publication in Armed Forces Journal.
Colonel Yingling’s essential argument is that the all-volunteer military has placed an enormous burden for the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan upon the shoulders of a tiny sliver of the American population. In so doing, it has effectively exempted the most privileged members of American society from military service, constrained the size of the armed forces, forced the military to pay large bonuses to fill the gaps in its ranks and encouraged the Congress to acquiesce in decisions on war and peace without the sort of thorough review that would be carried out for a military operation that affected a broader swath of the population.
“Soldiers, Marines and their families are bearing the whole burden of the war and 99 percent of the public is disengaged from the war,” Colonel Yingling told me. “The two control mechanisms to control executive ambition: asking the people to supply the blood and treasure for war — are missing.
“I have never heard any political leader ask people to volunteer and fight,” he said. “That is fantastic to me. How can it be that we choose to fight a war but don’t ask people to fight it?
“In Afghanistan, we went through an agonizing decision to commit 30,000 troops, which will take months to get in place. We are a nation of 300 million people. The reason that the burdens of war are so heavy is that they are borne by so few people.”
Many arguments can be made against a return to conscription. Most experts believe the all-volunteer military is better trained and more professional that the Vietnam-era force of volunteers and draftees. If a draft were to be introduced, only a relatively small portion of the population would likely be needed to fill out the ranks, which could foment resentment.
As a practical political matter, the vast majority of politicians, Democrat as well as Republican, prefer things as they are now, as does the Pentagon. The professional military is highly competent and can be used as a tool of foreign policy without sparking the sort of momentous political debate or demonstrations that might follow if thousands were drafted and sent to war against their will. In a capital that cannot reach accord on health care, the possibility of reintroducing the draft seems fantastically remote, barring a major high-intensity conflagration.
But having spent nearly seven years moving from the Iraq battlefields to the Washington policy arena and back, I have enormous sympathy for Colonel Yingling’s argument that most of American society is isolated from the sacrifices that a few Americans make, albeit volunteers. Congressional scrutiny of the Bush administration’s planning before the invasion and challenges of occupation was shallow, and the reflexive opposition of many representatives to the surge indicated that they failed to understand the dynamics on the battlefield.
Would American officials — in the executive and legislative branches — be more rigorous in the decisions on using force if major military operations required a formal declaration of war? Colonel Yingling makes a strong case in his article that they would. “Eschewing a Congressional declaration of war calls into question both the wisdom of the war and the public’s commitment to winning it,” he writes in his new article. It is a debate well worth having and it is revealing that it was a military officer who has sought to stimulate it.