By: Fernando M. Lujan
Military journals are normally a pretty boring read. The articles published in long-standing publications such as Parameters, Military Review, and Infantry are rarely imaginative and never critical. The ambitious officers who submit their writing for review in these journals typically do so in order to pad their resumes with “published articles”- they have little incentive to propose a controversial idea.
But in this month’s issue of Armed Forces Journal, something very strange occurred: A Lieutenant Colonel with an impeccable combat record and a bright future published an article that-in any other year-would have ended his career immediately. In a 5,000 word invective, Paul Yingling openly criticizes the military’s General officers, blaming them for directly for “intellectual and moral failures.”
Citing clear parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, Yingling holds the Generals responsible for 1) failing to adapt the armed forces to the changing nature of warfare and 2) failing to provide civilian policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. He goes on to provide a detailed analysis of the shortcomings in the military’s current promotion system-asserting that only the most conformist officers rise to senior ranks-and calls for direct intervention by Congress to impose reforms that “reward adaptation and intellectual achievement.” Here are a few memorable excerpts:
“America’s Generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics did little to prepare for these dangers.”
“Having spent a decade preparing to fight the wrong war, America’s generals then miscalculated both the ways and means necessary to succeed in Iraq. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books. However, when the US went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win,these leaders did not make their objections public.”
“The need for intelligent, creative, and courageous general officers is self-evident. An understanding of the larger aspects of war is essential to great generalship. However, a survey of Army three and four star generals shows that only 25 percent hold advanced degrees from civilian institutions in the social sciences or humanities. Counterinsurgency theory holds that proficiency in foreign languages is essential to success, yet only one in four of the Army’s senior generals speaks another language.”
I think the Paul Yingling is dead on. But what makes his article so interesting is not necessarily its content-though insightful and accurate, the criticism is not new. Many others have written similar accounts in newspaper articles or books such as “Fiasco” and “Cobra II.” What is so striking about the article is that it was written by a successful active duty officer and then published in a military journal. If Yingling isn’t immediately fired or blacklisted, this will mark a clear change in the military’s internal climate. Public sentiment may be so negative over Iraq that military officers can dare to say “the emperor has no clothes” and still keep their jobs. If this is the case, expect the floodgates to open soon-dozens of similar articles by military officers will follow. The change will be both postive and negative: Positive because the American public will have greater insight into the real dynamics of the war as seen by those fighting it. Negative because the insight will be bleak and feed the frenzied call for immediate withdrawal.
Regardless of the potential outcomes, we should all be watching the career of Paul Yingling very closely. The stakes are much higher than we can imagine.
Tags: Armed Forces Journal, Army, Generals, Insurgency, Iraq, Yingling
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Comments 3
Paul Yingling, as an Air Force officer, is probably pretty safe. I say “probably”, because the truly byzantine “career management” that constitutes OPMS (or whatever its successor is called) has been notoriously capable of any miscarriage imaginable. Although an LTC in the Air Force may have slightly better odds of making full “bird”, on average only about 4% of LTC’s ever make the cut DoD wide. This is primarily a function of slot availability-you can’t promote to COL without a slot. So, my calculations are that LTC Yingling isn’t really interested in making COL.
Be that as it may, you are quite correct that the U.S. Military needs serious reform-but that’s been true since at least the Civil War. The major part of what animates senior officers to keep silent: 1) they are directly appointed by the President they’re serving under; and 2) he may relieve them at any time for any reason.
Gen. MacArthur (and others) who have spoken out are not an exception to this rule-I’m seriously convinced that MacArthur wanted to be relieved by Truman so that he could influence the political landscape enough to allow himself to run for President.
As usual, the need for reform starts at the top. The JCS is a joke and should be liquidated in place of a general staff system. Only a relatively branch-free environment will allow military decisions to be made rationally, objectively, and securely. Securely in the sense that all but the top ranking officers in the general staff will not be presidential appointees and will therefore be much more willing to stick to their guns on issues of operations and strategy.
The Marine Corps needs to be merged with the Army so that we no longer have two competing land arms duplicating efforts at enormous cost. Since the Air Force has proven unwilling to fly close support aircraft like the A-10, the “gentlemen’s agreement” restricting the Army from flying fixed wing attack aircraft should be lifted and most of the tactical ground attack assets of the Air Force should be shifted to the Army where they will be “loved” considerably more than they are in the Air Force.
The “gutting” of service support units from all branches started by Reagan and finished by the Bushes needs to be completely reversed. Privatizing service support has proven to be neither a cost savings nor a performance improvement. All it means is any brigade sized unit has about 30 days on the ground before contracts need to be issued to Cheney’s company to keep them watered, fed, and transported.
The Volunteer Force shows its weakness in any operation that lasts longer than a term of service (which can be only two years in certain cases). It has failed us in Iraq in two ways: 1) the intelligence and linguist specialists we need are unavailable because these people don’t walk off the street and enlist very often; and 2) not nearly enough sons and daughters of Congress and the Administration have been killed, wounded, or psychologically maimed to make the war real to the ruling class.
Finally, the problem with officer promotions is not that the occur too slowly. The problem is: 1) junior officer promotions are centralized far, far away from the units these men and women serve in resulting in all manor of miscarriages (too numerous to discuss briefly).; and 2) if anything, promotions comes too fast in the beginning which results in brain drain at the base and too slowly at the top which results in further drain as otherwise gifted officers simply retire because, as LTC’s, you need a waiver to go past your 20th year (which usually means you’re slotted for a command position and/or you’re on the COL promotion list).
P.S. The experiment with the regimental system in the 80′s should not have been abandoned but expanded. Rather than fling officers and soldiers from one assignment to the next, officers and soliders not selected for major unit command should stay with one unit for their whole career. The unit cohesion this breeds is essential to fight the sort of wars we are now engaged in.
jmc
Posted 06 May 2025 at 10:03 am ¶Mr. Cooper, you raise some interesting points. Thanks for your comments. I would say that LTC Yingling might be more interested in making COL than we would believe: He was commissioned an Army Field Artillery officer, taught at West Point, and was the Brigade XO under the famous COL H.R. McMaster (author of “Dereliction of Duty” and architect of the successful plan to reclaim Tall Afar, Iraq in 2004). His likely career trajectory-at least before this article-was exceptionally good. I think it’s refreshing that he’s taken such a bold stance against the existing military hierarchy. Moral courage like that is uncommon. My main point was that we should watch what happens to LTC Yingling over the next few months to discover what the Pentagon’s internal climate really is.
Posted 06 May 2025 at 11:25 pm ¶I totally agree with your comments about the Air Force and Army’s “gentleman’s agreement” being dissolved. We faced a number of problems last year communicating with Air Force Close Air Support pilots simply because the cultures are so drastically different. But a question regarding your logistics comment: All the studies I’ve seen show that contracting out support functions is significantly cheaper than recruting/ training/ deploying regular troops as logisticians. Do you have some data that shows the opposite?
I am not sure where John M. Cooper is coming from. LTC Yingling is an Army Officer, not an Air Force Officer.
Posted 07 May 2025 at 5:32 am ¶Post a Comment