Tom Ricks, who I do respect, and love his books, wrote a very biased list of reformers in regard to the COIN movement inside the Army today (he works with a lot of them as well). A lot of these people, if not most, are beltway insiders (I don’t know everyone of them, but do most). They almost all get a lot of media attention for the wrong reasons. I disagree almost totally with Tom’s list. So, I published my own list below.  I disagree as I explain below. Read Tom’s list at the bottom of this post, then read mine here.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas,

Don

My original message in reply to Tom Rick’s list posted on the Warlord Loop, a blog focused on strategy and warfare.  Some of today’s biggest thinkers contribute to this blog.

Why is it the guys on this list of “COINdinistas” the only ones noticed by journalists?

It is easy to read the bed time story to everyone. It sounds good, but more importantly to those in the beltway, it is easy to implement. It does not piss off anyone. It keeps the money flowing. Very few developing solutions that can be implemented today.

By solutions, I mean large-scale programs (not incremental improvements) requiring no substantial political or institutional changes. Not a surprise, as this is a high bar! So, we report on what is comfortable, easy to do, and does not offend many, except those we dont care to hear from anyway! It makes sure the pay keeps coming.

While it makes us feel good in the short term, it is killing us in the long term by minimizing their impacts and ideas. The key is organizational change. A focus on technology and ideas ignores the structural basis of present institutional behavior, giving too little attention to the methods which drive reform – and the countervailing forces which must be overcome.

That is one of my biggest arguments, we are advocating COIN, while not making the necessary structural and personnel laws and policies that will support moving the Army from the 2nd Generation to a 3rd Generation Force, that understand 4th Generation Warfare. I understand 4th Generation, not because, I think we can win it, but to avoid situations where we are putting our Soldiers (and all their cultural, structural biases) against it, with no way to win. This is what is occurring to us today be advocating what most in the beltway want to hear, we can win this one, if you employ this method!

Well, here is my list of the true change agents, some are being listened too, only one gets attention, rightly so for him, but all are people of character, who understand what has to happen for our Army and our nation to survive in the 21st Century. Don Vandergriff’s list:

1. BG H.R. McMaster. HR is the future of the Army! He can lead and command in any environment as demonstrated by his tenure as the commander of 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He is one of the smartest people I know on the subject of war and then translate it to reality. The Army is smart in 1), promoting him to BG, 1) putting him at Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC-at TRADOC) writing the new doctrinal concepts for the future. HR also knows the people and training side as well, something that is not sexy, fun to report by anyone but a few, but is more important to armies than the other side (doctrine and tactics). HR is one of the reasons I have hope for the Army as he rises in the ranks.

2. COL Casey Haskins. Casey is leading the new Army training and education revolution through his concept of Outcomes Based Training and Education (OBT&E) that is already being written into Army training policies as we speak. COL Haskins performed incredible changes how the Army does basic training as well as its leader development when he was director of the Captains Career Course at Fort Benning, GA, and then follow on as commander of the 198th Infantry Brigade at Fort Benning, GA (where he took on and defeated the risk averse training and safety apparatus of the Army). He is now director of the Department of Military Instructon (DMI), where he, along with some great instructors, are changing the culture of West Point, while influencing the future of several thousand Army leaders.

3. COL (ret.) Andy Bacevich. He has torn apart the defense establishment for what it is, and what it is doing to the nation. I am impressed that he has gotten the attention he has on a few mainstream media shows, but if you notice, it is only for the moment, so they can say they are “fair and balanced.” Dr. Bacevich has incredible moral courage for taking on the entire defense establishment and as well as our poor defense strategy or lack there of. Several of his books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002), The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005) and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008)show where he has been “a persistent, vocal critic of the US occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure.” In March 2007, he described George W. Bush’s endorsement of such “preventive wars” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.”

4. Dr. Bruce Gudmundsson. I consider Bruce the best of military historians, or at least one of the best. Bruce is currently, for the second time, leading the revolution in education at Quantico on teaching both officers and NCOs how to think. Bruce’s focus is on the way that modern armies adapt to radical change in their operating environments. He divides his time between historical research and assisting present-day military organizations with their own attempts to innovate. Bruce’s finest book of many, is Storm Troop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army from 1914-1918. I made it required reading for all my students.

5. Mr. Winslow Wheeler. It’s impossible to understand America’s wars unless one sees its political foundation in Washington — our “Versailles on the Potomac.” Few can give us that as well as Winslow T. Wheeler, Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. “The conventional wisdom amongst the elite in Washington is that they have done a pretty good job of taking care of our national defense, that things may be a little expensive but we have the best armed forces in the world, perhaps even in history, and we do the best for our troops by giving them the world’s most sophisticated equipment which is, of course, the most effective. We have, so the elite asserts, demonstrated our ability by knocking off Saddam Hussein’s forces twice and are in general a model to the rest of the world on how to build equipment and provide for forces. That’s all crap. None of it is true. None of it stands up to scrutiny.” Win focuses on budget and acquisition issues, no fun at all, so it gets little attention, but if you study Winlow’s data, research and proposals, few if any can argue with him; so they ignore him.

6. Dr. Chet Richards. Chet has the best understanding of strategy I have seen. Chet Richards (Colonel, USAF, retired), is the author of several books including (most recently) If We Can Keep It: A National Security Manifesto for the Next Administration that focus on strategy. Again, he is ignored by the establishment, because what he advocates is opposite of our ventures everywhere, and you have to do your homework to understand what he advocates. Nothing he writes fits onto a power point exsum. Unlike other publications now coming out on the Iraq War and the counterinsurgency campaign there, Chet rejects the notion that policy-makers can predict how well any such effort will work. The track record of military occupations in culturally and religiously alien lands in modern times is not good in terms of the end result for the occupier, the effects on the indigenous population, and the standing of the occupying nation and army in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Original Message ——  What this list features isn’t the “brains” behind COIN, but rather those who most often are noticed by journos on the subject. Biddle, for example, isn’t exactly a savant on the study. One might have mentioned someone with a similar name, Birtle, but then that would require a more substantive understanding of who actually studies this stuff, and who is influential. When in doubt, look at the footnotes in the studies. On a tangential note, if we’re discussing influence, then Dilegge goes at the top, with Kilcullen. I deserve royalties for “COINdinistas.”

ALL Subject: [Warlord] Fw: The COINdinistas —– Original Message —– From: Dave Dilegge To: Dave Dilegge Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 4:35 AM Subject: The COINdinistas >From December’s Foreign Policy Magazine: The COINdinistas Who knows everything there is to know and more about counterinsurgency and its current role in U.S. military strategy? These guys. BY THOMAS E. RICKS | DECEMBER 2009

Pushed and prodded by a wonky group of Ph.D.s, the U.S. military has in the last year decisively embraced a Big Idea: counterinsurgency. Not everyone in uniform is a fan, but David Petraeus and the other generals in charge of America’s wars are solidly behind it. Here are the brains behind counterinsurgency’s rise from forgotten doctrine to the centerpiece of the world’s most powerful military:

1. Gen. David Petraeus The face of the 2007-08 “surge” in Iraq and now chief of Central Command. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is gonna try the same in Afghanistan, but “King David” rules this roost. ‘Nuff said?

2. John Nagl Writer on Petraeus’s counterinsurgency manual, now beats the coin drum from the outside as president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). But it wouldn’t be surprising to see him in a top Pentagon slot within a year or two.

3. David Kilcullen The Crocodile Dundee of counterinsurgency. Former Australian infantryman with a Ph.D. in anthropology, and one of the most quotable people on the planet. His book The Accidental Guerrilla helped shape the year’s debates; he worked to steer the former Bush administration toward coin from the inside.

4. Janine Davidson The Pentagon insider in this crowd. Former Air Force pilot now sitting at the adult table in the policy shop of the secretary of defense.

5. Dave Dilegge Editor of Small Wars Journal. This is the town square of counterinsurgency, avidly read by everyone from four-star generals to captains on the ground in Iraq.

6. Andrew Exum Abu Muqawama blogger; with Nagl, another colleague of mine at CNAS; and co-author of “Triage,” an influential policy paper on Afghanistan. A former Army Ranger who is doing a Ph.D. on Lebanese militias, and in his spare time has been known to play paintball against Hezbollah — no joke.

7. Stephen Biddle Council on Foreign Relations. A latecomer to the coin debate who has written insightfully about both Iraq and Afghanistan. Like Exum, advised McChrystal on Afghanistan strategy.

8. Andrew Krepinevich Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Penned the classic The Army and Vietnam, about the failure of the Army to apply counterinsurgency in Iraq; wrote an influential Foreign Affairs article on the Iraq war and counterinsurgency.

9. Kalev “Gunner” Sepp Assistant professor, Naval Postgraduate School. Like Krepinevich, an Army officer who ruined his career by getting a Ph.D. at Harvard. Fought in El Salvador and kept his COIN powder dry for years until someone was ready to listen.

10. Col. Gian Gentile West Point professor who commanded a unit in Iraq. The skunk at the coin party who constantly points out flaws in the groupthink. Paints with a broad brush, but absolutely necessary to the debate.

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The Afghan debacle is becoming a case study of how political debate in Versailles drips in a naturally self-organizing way to protect the dysfunctional status quo. As I indicated yesterday and in September, the fundamental flaw that set the stage for the current policy making fiasco was the unexamined analytical hole in General McChrystal’s escalation strategy — namely, its dependence of the rapid expansion of the corrupt and ineffective Afghan national security forces.

McChrystal did not analyze this corruption/ineffectiveness issue, but that crucial omission was ignored the hoorah accompanying the immediate leaking of report by his allies buried somewhere in the Versailles apparat. The only alternative that surfaced during cacophony of the ensuing months, the so-called Biden plan, was equally reckless, because it also glossed over this analytical hole by advocating that we substitute a greater reliance on robotic drones for boots on the ground (drones create their own problems) and further accelerate training of the Afghan forces. With Versailles leaking like a sieve, the debate became a ridiculous fact-free exercise in macho venting.

Now, it is beginning to look like Ambassador Eikenberry (a former Army general and possibly an adult to boot) has moved to pull everyone’s fat out of the fire by blaming the chaos in the escalation debate on corruption by the Karzai government (true enough), but not surprisingly, this blame is being treated implicitly in Versailles as if were a new development that has arisen suddenly since McChrystal’s supporters leaked his fatally flawed report. In this “new” rush of developments, the attached report in the Times [UK] can be forgiven if it inadvertently helps to reinforce the collective amnesia, because it does not connect the dots to link the obvious flaws in the original McChrystal strategy and the cynical leaking of that report which together put the whole dripping circus into motion.

Mr. Obama is in a no win situation, and the time to cut his losses is past due. Hopefully, he has learned a lesson and heads will roll. But I fear the more likely outcome will be double down with some form of mushy middle course, possibly adorned with Mr. Karzai’s carcass twisting slowly in the wind, that protects everyone in Versailles, if only in the short term.

Rift in US war Cabinet as Obama throws out all options in debate over troop surge

Tim Reid in Washingt From The Times November 13, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6914929.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

Two leaked classified cables from the US Ambassador in Kabul voicing grave concern about sending more American troops to Afghanistan have exposed open conflict inside President Obama’s national security team over his war strategy. The contents of the cables, passed to The Washington Post and The New York Times yesterday by three officials, also highlighted growing uncertainty inside the White House about how to prosecute the war, amid deep concerns over the corruption of Hamid Karzai’s Government.

The cables put the Ambassador, Karl Eikenberry — a retired general who in 2007 was the top military commander in Afghanistan — starkly at odds with the current ground commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who has requested an increase of at least 40,000 troops. In the memos, General Eikenberry said that he had deep reservations about sending in more US troops because he was concerned by the unreliability and corrupt nature of Mr Karzai’s Government. It is a problem that has dogged Mr Obama’s deliberations and undermined the urgent demand by General McChrystal for more troops.

RELATED LINKS One last chance to save our Afghan mission US ambassador warns against Afghan troop surge Nato newspaper used to wrap kebabs MULTIMEDIA Graphic: hot or cool on Afghanistan surge The cables appear to have been shown to the media in an orchestrated effort by some members of Mr Obama’s war Cabinet to increase pressure on Mr Karzai to revamp his corruption-riddled Government. They lay bare, however, the deepening rifts within the White House. “I have been appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on,” Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, said. He was referring to the almost daily anonymous briefings given by American officials about how many troops Mr Obama is considering sending to Afghanistan; a numbers game that has led to wildly fluctuating press reports.

Hours before the publication of the cables — which were sent by General Eikenberry in the past week to an unspecified government office in Washington — Mr Obama rejected all four options that he and his national security team had debated in his eighth strategy review meeting. After weeks of deliberation, he essentially sent his advisers back to the drawing board to come up with more, or improved, options. After the White House strategy session on Wednesday, aides to Mr Obama released a statement that appeared to reflect General Eikenberry’s concerns. “The President believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan Government that our commitment is not open-ended,” the statement said. “After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of time.”

General Eikenberry’s memos raise questions about how US policy can be implemented in Afghanistan, given his now very public disagreement with General McChrystal on war strategy. General McChrystal has said that without the additional troops he was requesting, the mission in Afghanistan would “likely result in failure”. The Ambassador also appears to be at odds with Mr Gates, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have in recent days reportedly backed a proposal to send about 30,000 more troops. At Wednesday’s strategy session, Mr Obama was shown four options: to send relatively few troops to Afghanistan — between 10,000 and 15,000 — and another three scenarios, with troop levels set at about 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000.

The President questioned Mr Eikenberry, on a video link from Kabul, about his concerns. His greatest worry, which was reflected in the questions he put, was his desire to know what the exit strategy was. He wanted to know when America and its allies would be able to hand over responsibility to the Afghan Government — or, as one official said, “where the off-ramps for the military are”. Mr Gates said that the Obama Administration was trying to balance the need to show a commitment to Afghanistan at the same time as conveying to the Kabul Government that the American presence was not indefinite. Mr Obama’s slow deliberations are, in part, intended to demonstrate that he is not being railroaded by his ground commander and will not send more troops without thinking through the long-term implications for a surge.

The delay has been sharply criticised by Republicans, however. John McCain, his opponent in last year’s presidential election, expressed anger last week about Mr Obama’s perceived indecision. Dick Cheney, the former Vice-President, has accused Mr Obama of “dithering”. John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the UN and a foreign policy hardliner, said: “This is like a slowmotion train wreck, watching this decision-making process, and it really is having a debilitating effect on troop morale in Afghanistan.”

This is by far the most precise, well written piece written on why the war in Afghanistan is leading to failure and why those who support it are self promoting themselves in keeping it going.

I am proud Chuck Spinney is a mentor and friend.

Don

[ Note: I added some hot links to the attached article to assist readers in understanding some the background underpinning my argument. CS ]

November 12, 2009

 Obama and the Triumph of the Will The Afghan War Question By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney11122009.html

Marmaris, Turkey.

In the opening lines of the oldest treatise on the conduct of war, Sun Tzu said that the question of war is vital to the state, and therefore, it is imperative to study it. This timeless advice has been been ignored repeatedly by the United States since the end of WWII. The inevitable result has been an insensible rise of war mongering, fueled by arrogance and ignorance, culminating in the chaotic spectacle now enveloping the Afghan War Question in Washington.

The intellectual content of the debate over whether or how much to escalate our forces in Afghanistan has degenerated into formless ranting by all sides. The content of this debate is not conditioned by a clear definition of military success. Nor is it conditioned by a definition of a desired political endstate. When asked how he would define victory, the State Department’s special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, arrogantly summed up the collective state of mind by saying pithily, “we will know it when we see it.” With thinking like this, it should not be surprising that can be no definition of an exit strategy or a timeline for ending a war we are admittedly losing, even though that war is now in its ninth year.  By the way, Sun Tau also advised to avoid protracted war, and the only protracted shooting war we ever won was the American Revolution, in which we were the insurgents.

Yet, in the middle of the worst domestic economic crisis since the 1930s, President Obama appears to be on the verge of caving in to the irrational pressures for throwing more troops and money into the bottomless pit of Afghanistan. How did the Afghan escalation question degenerate into such a ridiculously chaotic state? Its immediate antecedents are quite clear. At the center of this debate is, or should be, the strategic plan submitted to President Obama in August by the theater commander General Stanley MacChrystal. That plan’s centerpiece is to provide security for the Afghan people by accelerating the training and expansion of the Afghan Army and Police Forces (ANSF). To buy time for this expansion, MacChrystal said a surge in US forces of 40,000 is needed, an estimate, according to subsequent reports, that may have been expanded to as many as 80,000 troops, a number the US would not be able to field and sustain without a reinstitution of the draft.

MacChrystal or one his war mongering allies in the Pentagon or in the right wing of the Republican Party immediately increased the beating of the war drums by leaking a carefully “redacted” version of his “secret” recommendations to the most obliging courtier of the permanent Washington apparat, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. By not attempting to find and discipline those responsible for a blatantly insubordinate act aimed a pre-empting his decision-making prerogatives, President Obama, the constitutionally designated commander-in-chief, telegraphed pusillanimity to the proponents of escalation, and thus set the tone for subsequent events.

In the best of circumstances, building an effective military force from scratch takes a long time. History has shown repeatedly that, absent a well trained reserve force and a highly trained active duty officer and NCO corps, it is impossible to rapidly expand the active duty forces of any military organization without seriously degrading its recruiting and training standards. This is the case, even when one is expanding it from the base of a competent core force, which is certainly not the case in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in September, MacChrystal’s plan was fatally flawed, because it contained no systematic evaluation outlining the strengths and weaknesses of the current state of the Afghan forces he wants to double in size over a very short period. In normal circumstances, such a failure of analysis would have been a sloppy, irresponsible omission.

In this particular case, the omission was made even more outrageous for at least two reasons: First, building a national army that puts loyalty to the state ahead of tribe, clan, and family in Afghanistan’s ancient clan based vendetta culture would be, in the most ideal of circumstances, a highly dubious proposition, because its goal would go against the traditional perquisites implicit in an ancient, highly-evolved culture. At the very least, this challenge ought to have been subjected to the closest anthropological and historical analysis. Second, conditions are hardly ideal. Indeed, it is common knowledge that the current Afghan security forces are already riven by corruption, the conflicted loyalties of warlordism, drug trafficking and murderous criminality, not to mention the central fact that Afghanistan’s Pashtun plurality, whose alienated hearts and minds are crucial to the success of any counterinsurgency strategy, is grossly underrepresented in the army and police forces.

In short, MacChrystal’s cavalier portrayal of the Afghan National Security Forces at the center of his plan ought to have been a show stopper. Moreover, the fact that it was leaked by a politically motivated military officer or a civilian powerbroker to increase pressure on the President for its approval ought have resulted visible discipline. But of course, the huge hole in MacChrystal’s plan was ignored and is now forgotten. No one was hung for crass insubordination. So, it should not be surprising that the Afghan War Question devolved into an evermore formless debate.

A recent AP report by Ben Feller and Anne Gearan introduces two interesting points that will add to the confusion: Rather than lowering the boom and acting as if it was controlling the events it should be controlling, the White is now retaliating by leaking like a sieve. Unnamed officials now tell us that Obama senses (correctly) that he is being railroaded and, in secret diplomatic cables, Ambassador Eikenbury recently injected his objections to the pervasive corruption infecting the government of Hamid Karzai. Obama, reportedly, is using Eikenbury’s objections as leverage to slow down deliberations and to justify his demand for a timetable laying out how long a continued US presence will be needed.

On the other hand, the report, in what is no doubt a trial balloon, says Obama is leaning toward a “compromise” position of authorizing an increase of 30,000 troops, including three Army brigades and an unspecified USMC contingent. Included in this “compromise” head count of 30,000, however, would be an authorization for the bloated overhead of a huge new headquarters housing 7,000 or more troops. Such a headquarters will no doubt necessitate a huge outlay in construction dollars to house it, a quantum increase in the thru-put of logistics pipelines, and a large increase in the number of field grade and general officers to man it. Therefore, this approval also implies an approval for an increase in the size of and vested interests in an open-ended commitment.

President Obama has been accused of dithering by delaying his decision to escalate, but his politically costly purchase of time is not serving to bring clarity to the debate. He has allowed the huge hole in MacChrystal’s incompetent plan to remain unaddressed, except perhaps obliquely by Ambassador Eikenbury, and to metastasize into a festering state of confusion. This confusion has opened the door to the displacement of rationality by emotion. Not surprisingly, given the growing tolerance for irrationality in Versailles on the Potomac, the war mongering proponents of immediate escalation are becoming increasingly hysterical.

If the mindless mutterings by the likes David Brooks (New York Times) and Michael Gerson (Washington Post) are representative, the proponents of escalation have now reduced themselves to emulating the irrational exhortations made by Adolf Hitler, from the depths of his Fuhrer Bunker cut off from reality, about victory being merely a question of willpower. This kind of lunatic ranting should not be surprising, because as my good friend Werther recently explained, the triumph of the will over the intellect is an example of the Right Wing’s historic preference for emotion over reason. This kind of ranting also sets the stage for a future stab in the back argument that blames Obama for losing what was in reality a collosal Bush screw up.

Of course, the histrionics of Brooks and Gerson do not come close to rivaling the emotive power of the torchlight Nuremberg parades immortalized by Leni Reifenstahl in her artistic classic, “The Triumph of the Will.” But the feebleness of their imitation makes it all the more pathetic when a man as intelligent as Barack Obama, a gifted speaker who has all the advantages of the bully pulpit together with the awesome status of commander-in-chief, lacks the moral courage to lift his nation out of their kind of darkness into light of reason.

On War # 321: 4GW Comes to Ft. Hood

William S. Lind 10 November 2009

Last week’s shootings at Ft. Hood, in which thirteen U. S. Soldiers were killed and 30 people wounded, appear to be a classic example of Fourth Generation war.

The shooter, U. S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was a practicing Muslim. He sometimes wore traditional Islamic dress and carried a Koran. He reportedly cried “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire.

Though American-born and a U.S. citizen (and army officer), Major Hasan appears to have transferred his primary loyalty away from the state to something else, Islam. For his new primary loyalty, he was willing to kill. That is what defines Fourth Generation war. This incident should put an end to the misinterpretation of 4GW that defines it as “what Mao did.” Mao Tse-tung’s wars were not 4GW. They were fought within the framework of the state, for political control of a state. Mao had nothing to do with the “leaderless resistance” last week’s shootings represent. Major Hasan’s motives transcended the political.

According to the November 9 Washington Post, a few hours before he opened fire, Major Hasan said to a neighbor, “I’m going to do good work for God.” The Establishment, which continues to pretend the state (or Globalist super-state) has a monopoly on primary loyalty, predictably proclaimed the shootings the actions of “a madman.” That is what old and passing orders always say about the first avatars of the coming order (or disorder). It’s how the old order whistles past the graveyard – its own graveyard. The cultural Marxists, leaping to the defense of “diversity,” their favorite poison for Western societies, claim Major Hasan’s massacre of his fellow soldiers does not represent Islam.

Sorry, but it represents Islam all too well. Islam does not recognize any separation between church and state. States have no legitimacy in Islam; legitimacy adheres only to the Ummah, the community of all believers. The only legitimate law is Sharia. All Muslims are commanded to wage jihad against all non-Islamics. Loyalty to Islam must be the believer’s primary loyalty. Nightwatch for 5 November writes:

Two years ago, a devout Pakistani cabdriver told Nightwatch that if Allah called him or any devout Muslim to go on jihad and to kill his family and even the riders in his cab, he must do it immediately. He made that statement calmly as a matter of fact, while driving north on US 1.

This was not the statement of an insane man, but of an educated man with a degree in engineering who was making ends meet; a devoted family man and a good cab driver. There are of course peaceful Islamics; peace be upon them. But peaceful Islamics are also lax Islamics.

The ongoing Islamic revival is converting more and more Muslims, especially young men, to its purer version of Islam. That is happening everywhere, including among Islamics in Europe and America. As Islamic Puritanism spreads, violence will spread with it. At the same time, it would be an error to think of 4GW threats within Western societies as confined to Islam.

The U.S. military has already seen soldiers kill other soldiers as part of gang-related activities. Gangs may be as important an alternate primary loyalty as religion. As the state loses its legitimacy, the variety of new primary loyalties that arise to replace it will be limitless. As this column has often warned, Fourth Generation war is not just something fought “over there.” It comes to a theater near you. That includes places like Ft. Hood.

Many 4GW entities know that the best way to deal with hostile state security forces, police as well as military, is to take them from within. Last week also saw the killing of five British soldiers in Afghanistan by an Afghan policeman working with their unit. Many police departments along the southern U.S. border are owned by the drug traffickers. The Establishment will attempt to label the massacre at Ft. Hood an “isolated incident.” On the contrary, it is just a foretaste of many more such actions to come.

How might states reverse that trend? Three things might help:

1. Stay out of Fourth Generation wars overseas. Intervening in areas of stateless disorder imports their disorder.

2. Be prepared to outlaw violent alternative primary loyalties, including some religions (which in the case of the U. S. would require Constitutional amendments). To those who argue that religious tolerance must be unlimited, I ask, would we tolerate the re-establishment of the Aztec religion, with its demand for ceaseless human sacrifices, on American soil? Of course not.

3. Strengthen the legitimacy of the state, which in Western societies usually means reducing, not augmenting, the power and intrusiveness of the central government. Nothing undermines the legitimacy of a state more effectively than attempts to “re-make” a society according to some ideology’s demands, as is now happening in the West in the name of cultural Marxism, aka “multiculturalism.”

A legitimate government defends its society’s traditional culture, it does not assault that culture. Ask not for whom the bells at Ft. Hood toll; they toll for the state.

William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. To interview Mr. Lind, please contact (no e-mail available): Mr. William S. Lind Free Congress Foundation 1423 Powhatan Street, # 2 Alexandria, Virginia 22314 Direct line: 703 837-0483

My friend and September leader of the month Winslow Wheeler is now writing for Huffington Post. He points out in this article, while most Senators have no care for supporting Pork at the cost to our troops, a few Senators are showing character and leadership. One of them is Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma. Read on and as I do, pray we start to see some leadership regardless of short gain, for the long term health of our military and country.

Don

Tuesday, the Senate passed its version of the DOD Appropriations bill. Bereft of a debate on Afghanistan, the Senators busied themselves exercising their default activity: porking up defense spending and slapping down those with the ethics to oppose them.

This year, the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Senators Inouye and Cochran, sank to a new low. But also, some events in this year’s debate (actually, there was not much of that) offer a ray of hope that we may be witnessing the high tide of the Pork Uber Alles era. I provide details below. I have been asked by the Huffington Post to join them as one of their blogger/commentators. My new piece on the Senate porkers is my inaugural piece for the Huffington Post, which they are now running at their politics home page. Find it at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winslow-t-wheeler/support-our-troops-the-se_b_314393.html, and below.

Please feel free to leave a comment there or to send it to me directly. There is more to come on what Congress is doing to our defenses this year. I look forward to writing about this in the coming weeks.

Winslow T. Wheeler Director, Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information Posted: October 8, 2009 04:56 PM BIO

Support Our Troops: The Senate Porkers’ Approach

In 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year. Despite that, I see signs that we might be on the cusp of a change for the better. This past week, as the Senate debated the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill, a tiny bipartisan group of senators stood up to fix an important part of the gigantic mess in our defenses. This minuscule bunch lost at every turn when the votes were counted, but for the first time I can remember, senators revealed previously unrecognized aspects of their colleagues’ appalling pork-mongering — and took action against it. In the process, a few supremely powerful senators who have been corrupting the process were exposed as contemptible frauds.

Now, if only the press would notice. The Hill’s most rancid, but heretofore unrevealed, gluttony occurs year after year when Congressmen root around in a large but obscure Pentagon budget account called “Operations and Maintenance” (O&M). O&M pays all of our troops’ training, all of the maintenance, repairs and spares for their weapons, vehicles, planes and ships, all of the food and fuel they consume, and all of the upkeep of the bases and ranges where they live and train. In short, when our nation goes to war, as now, O&M is the most important and direct way we support our troops.

For the 2010 budget President Obama asked for $156 billion for routine O&M and an additional $81 billion in O&M for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because business as usual in the Pentagon is to prefer buying big ticket hardware in the separate Procurement account, O&M requests get shouldered aside and are always much less than the troops actually need.

A few examples: Air Force and Navy combat pilots training to deploy are getting about half of the flying hours they got at the end of the Vietnam War. Army tank crews get less in-tank training today than they did during the low readiness Clinton years. Earlier this year, the Navy curtailed at-sea training and flying, canceled transfers of 14,000 sailors, and stopped re-enlistment bonuses to pay for a $417 million shortage in urgent ship repairs.

We are short-changing our combat troops so badly that some must use their own pay to buy the patrol packs, gloves, GPS navigators, and body armor they need to fight. And what did the Senate Appropriations Committee do to better support our troops in the new 2010 DOD Appropriations bill?

They cut the already-skinny O&M account by over $3 billion. The Defense Subcommittee Chairman, Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), with the full support of his Republican counterpart, Thad Cochran (R-MS), cut Obama’s request for basic O&M by $2.4 billion and for wartime O&M by another $655 million.

Is there some trick here?

Did they refund the support of our troops somewhere else?

No, Inouye and Cochran have higher priorities. According to their own committee report, they wedged 778 earmarks (pork) costing $2.6 billion into their bill. That didn’t count some of their major goodies: one extra DDG-51 destroyer to be built in Cochran’s Mississippi but unrequested by the Navy ($1.7 billion) plus $2.5 billion for 10 unneeded, unrequested C-17 cargo aircraft pushed through by a gaggle of senators with parochial interests.

To pay for this $6.8 billion mountain of lard without raising the total DOD budget, Inouye and Cochran picked the pockets of selected accounts in the bill. (Inouye calls them “reallocations.”) More than $3 billion of those “reallocations” came from the already-bare O&M cupboard. All that raiding and juggling of accounts is hard work for busy senators but, as TaxPayers for Common Sense points out, it pays off in the form of campaign contributions.

(See “Inouye, Cochran Benefit from Earmark Recipients” at the TCS website at http://www.taxpayer.net/.)

This and last week, Inouye and Cochran brought their DOD Appropriations bill up for debate in the Senate. Happily, they met a few bumps in the road. Two senators introduced six separate amendments, each in its own way unveiling the profound corruption of today’s defense appropriations process. Though all the amendments lost, they dramatically opened a window onto the clammy corridors of the congressional pork system. Though he has been a huge disappointment in the past for talking big and acting little on pork, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) authored four important amendments: 

Two amendments stripped $2.5 billion for the ten superfluous C-17 aircraft. The first lost by a vote of 34 to 64. Persisting, McCain moved a second anti-C-17 amendment a week later but lost again just as badly. The pro-C-17 crowd included senators from many states, including California (Boxer and Feinstein), Missouri (Bond and McCaskill), and even Iowa (Grassley and Harkin). Without loud and strong help from Gates and Obama, which McCain did not get, McCain had little chance. 

A third McCain amendment challenged something called the Mariah Hypersonic Wind Tunnel, a $9.5 million boondoggle in Montana. Neither NASA nor the Air Force nor the Army want it. The booster, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), pathetically asserted it might be needed someday. Of course, McCain lost by a 43-55 margin. 

Lastly, McCain offered an important general amendment requiring competitive bidding for certain earmarks. Horrified that earmark money might end up in the hands of localities and firms not intended by the congressional sponsor, Senator Inouye hastily patched in a substitute amendment riddled with loopholes to end-run the detested competition. McCain lost by more than 50 votes.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered two exquisitely important amendments threatening to plant a wooden stake in the heart of the pork system. Coburn was the first senator to catch on to the unconscionable raiding of the O&M budget that Congress’ appropriators use to fund their pork; he understood that the first step in unraveling the system was to let the world know that hard core support for the troops was quite literally paying for earmarks. His first amendment prohibited 47 earmarks carved out of the O&M budget costing $166 million, and he clearly stated the money was to be returned to the originally intended purposes, such as training.

The Senate’s TV broadcast even officially described the amendment as “Restores $166 million for the Armed Forces to prepare for & conduct operations.” Shamelessly, the Senate gave Coburn a whipping; he lost by a 25 to 73 margin. Coburn and his staff also uncovered one of Inouye’s more outrageous O&M raiding scams: the Inouye bill assumed that future inflation would be lower than previously projected.

The committee asserted its analysis was based on work from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO); therefore, they claimed $294 million could be stripped out of the O&M request as “savings.” The only problem was CBO never made any such projection; in fact, it projected future inflation to be higher. Caught red handed, Inouye recanted, but only slightly. He permitted his $294 million O&M raid to be reduced to a $194 million raid.

Can there be a breath of fresh air in this festering abattoir?

Two, actually.

This was the first time any member of Congress took public notice of how the appropriations committee short changes the troops to pay for its pork. In defending himself, Senator Inouye baldly asserted that the O&M budget is “fully funded … There is no shortage … [and] every member [of the Armed Forces] has the equipment, gear, training and support they need.”

Though unrepentant to the end, Inouye was clearly on the defensive as he scrambled to shield himself with phony rhetoric in which the troops in Afghanistan and Iran will find little consolation. Secondly, despite the huge pro-pork margins in the Senate’s voting, there emerged a small bipartisan core of senators who voted for most of the McCain and Coburn amendments. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) actually voted for them all. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) supported all but the C-17 amendments. (Boeing has a major facility in St. Louis.) Other Democrats sporadically joined in. Several Republicans helped, for example, Charles Grassley (R-IO); although he stumbled onto the C-17 parade.

There clearly exists in Senators like Coburn, Feingold, and McCain, and maybe McCaskill and Grassley, a bipartisan core that could start assaulting some of Congress’ worst abuses. One of these senators may have the skill to build a larger coalition dedicated to giving the taxpayers the defense they’re paying for and the troops the support they deserve.

Just as important, Coburn’s courageous frontal attack on the O&M raids has handed this potential coalition a winning argument: a vote to enable the pork in our bloated, grossly mismanaged defense budget is a vote against support for our troops. Today, it’s the unconscionable raids on O&M; tomorrow, it may be the appalling waste of money and soldiers’ lives supporting weapons that don’t work. Who knows, it just might catch on.

Winslow T. Wheeler is the editor of the new anthology America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress. _____________________________

Ron Paul was my favorite for President.  He raised more money than any other candidate in the Republican primary, the highest of active duty military contributions. He won every debate. But why was he not selected to represent the Republican party?

Why, because the Washington Establishment, big money, lobbyists and special interest, does not want a man that is smart, has strength of character, and most of all understands the Constitution better than anyone in Congress, for that matter in Washington.

So, the media, backed and funded by big money, made sure that they isolated and kept Ron Paul out of the public’s eye. I first noticed it when Ron Paul debated successfully all the other Republican candidates in early 2008, and was given little time by the sponsors.

So, we don’t own our country anymore, unless, you have a lot of money, so you can buy the policies and politicans you want. Instead of measuring success as being a good citizen today, we measure success by how much money and things you own.

I agree with Ron Paul’s recommendation for foreign policy.  As they said, what brought down the Soviet Union was two things, it over spent on its defense, and blue jeans and rock and roll. 

I am for a strong defense, but one not modelled on the one we have today. My military is tough, equipped with rugged, well tested and as- simple as can be equipment; its an expeditionary force with little overhead with the centerpiece of personnel policies being unit cohesion and leaders selected through a tough accessions process (my ratio of officers to the force is 5%). A military that can go in, punish the threat, leave a calling card, then pull out, while handing it over to those who own the country (Read my 2002 book Path to Victory for the details).

AntiWar.com October 6, 2009 l, http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2009/10/05/instead-of-bombs-and-bribes/

What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on U.S. soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children?

And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the U.S., had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here? Most Americans would not stand for it. Yet the above hypothetical events are similar to what our government is doing in Pakistan.

Last week, Congress did approve an aid package for Pakistan for the stated purposes of improving our image and promoting democracy. I again made the point on the floor of the House that still no one seems to hear:

What if this happened on U.S. soil? What if innocent Americans were being killed in repeated drone attacks carried out by some foreign force who was trying to fix our problems for us? Would sending money help their image?

If another nation committed this type of violence and destruction on our homeland, would we be at all interested in adopting their values?

Sadly, one thing that has entirely escaped modern American foreign policy is empathy. Without much humility or regard for human life, our foreign policy has been reduced to alternately bribing and bombing other nations, all with the stated goal of “promoting democracy.”

But if a country democratically elects a leader who is not sufficiently pro-American, our government will refuse to recognize them, will impose sanctions on them, and will possibly even support covert efforts to remove them. Democracy is obviously not what we are interested in. It is more likely that our government is interested in imposing its will on other governments. This policy of endless intervention in the affairs of others is very damaging to American liberty and security.

If we were really interested in democracy, peace, prosperity, and safety, we would pursue more free trade with other countries. Free and abundant trade is much more conducive to peace because it is generally bad business to kill your customers. When one’s livelihood is on the line, and the business agreements are mutually beneficial, it is in everyone’s best interests to maintain cooperative and friendly relations and not kill each other.

But instead, to force other countries to bend to our will, we impose trade barriers and sanctions. If our government really wanted to promote freedom, Americans would be free to travel and trade with whoever they wished. And if we would simply look at our own policies around the world through the eyes of others, we would understand how these actions make us more targeted and therefore less safe from terrorism.

The only answer is get back to free trade with all and entangling alliances with none. It is our bombs and sanctions and condescending aid packages that isolate us.

Two opinions on Afghanistan which I recommend everybody read:

Reform or go home, by David Kilcullen in yesterday’s New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/opinion/04afghanistan.html

Pretty much sums it up — it’s the Afghans’ problem. Although I think his emphasis on early elections is misplaced (in IWCKI, I quote Lee Kuan Yew as observing that elections may be the end point of an evolution to democracy, but the are not the beginning), his point that it’s all about governance is hard to dispute. Of course, “governance” is the one thing that outsiders cannot provide. Draw your own conclusions.

Theories about 4GW are not yet like the laws of thermodynamics, by Fabius Maximus, a reprint from March 2008.

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/internal-6/

Fab reminds us that what we’re involved in in Afghanistan is not 4GW for the most part but “counterinsurgency,” that is, interfering in somebody else’s civil war, and occupation (a losing game, at least since the end of WW II).

The 4GW part — attacking the remnants of al-Qa’ida in Pakistan — is a very small part of it, requiring at most a few hundred troops. If this seems low, ask yourself: How many al-Qa’ida, that is, fighters under the command of OBL and his staff, are there? How are they organized and equipped?

So why would we need more than a battalion of US special operations forces, marines, or armored cav to defeat them? Finding and eliminating them might require an awful lot of other types of people, but relatively few combat forces.

Please tell me why the historian’s report on this needs to be reviewed and “revised” and then redone by Petraeus.

Oh, never mind; now I understand; a senator (Webb) is involved. Webb may have the background to understand all this, but I will bet any of you lunch that the only person who testifies on this to the esteemed Senate Armed Services Committee has eagles or better on his shoulders and certainly will not be the original historian author. To permit otherwise would impede the SASC staff from groveling for jobs in the Pentagon.

The key questions of who we are really fighting and why we are fighting them are simply ignored. Similar questions were not asked in Iraq either with the result that we made war on the Sunni Arab population until we and they found it advantageous to stop it. AQ in Iraq did not turn out to be the monolithic powerhouse the generals insisted they were. The Sunni’s had good reason to cooperate. We had stupidly established an Iranian-backed government in Baghdad the Sunni Arabs wanted to survive and potentially destroy in our eventual absence. Without Sunni Arab support, AQ became irrelevant. We could not take the casualties and stay in Iraq. Hence, the cash for cooperation strategy, not COIN, worked.

In Afghanistan, we are once again killing lots of people who are not the enemies of the United States . They are simply killing us because we are there. Meanwhile, AQ is not there nor is AQ in Waziristan the powerful force claimed. But we cannot buy off the Pashtun Tribes the way we bought off the Sunni Arabs. The Iraqi conditions don’t exist in Afghanistan . The whole business is depressing.

U.S. Review Of Battle Disaster Sways Strategy On Afghanistan

New York Times October 3, 2009

U.S. Review Of Battle Disaster Sways Strategy On Afghanistan By Thom Shanker WASHINGTON

— The paratroopers of Chosen Company had plenty to worry about as they began digging in at their new outpost on the fringe of a hostile frontier village in eastern Afghanistan. Intelligence reports were warning of militants massing in the area. As the paratroopers looked around, the only villagers they could see were men of fighting age idling in the bazaar. There were no women and children, and some houses looked abandoned. Through their night scopes they could see furtive figures on the surrounding mountainsides.

A few days later, they were almost overrun by 200 insurgents. That firefight, a debacle that cost nine American lives in July 2008, has become the new template for how not to win in Afghanistan. The calamity and its roots have been described in bitter, painstaking detail in an unreleased Army history, a devastating narrative that has begun to circulate in an initial form even as the military opened a formal review this week of decisions made up and down the chain of command.

The 248-page draft history, obtained by The New York Times, helps explain why the new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing so hard for a full-fledged commitment to a style of counterinsurgency that rests on winning over the people of Afghanistan even more than killing militants.

The military has already incorporated lessons from the battle in the new doctrine for war in Afghanistan. The history offers stark examples of shortcomings in the unit’s preparation, the style of combat it adopted, its access to intelligence, its disdain for the locals — in short, plenty of blame to go around.

Before the soldiers arrived, commanders negotiated for months with Afghan officials of dubious loyalty over where they could dig in, giving militants plenty of time to prepare for an assault. Despite the suspicion that the militants were nearby, there were not enough surveillance aircraft over the lonely outpost — a chronic shortage in Afghanistan that frustrated Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at the time.

Commanders may have been distracted from the risky operation by the bureaucratic complexities of handing over responsibility at the brigade level to replacements — and by their urgent investigation of an episode that had enraged the local population, the killing a week earlier in an airstrike of a local medical clinic’s staff as it fled nearby fighting in two pickup trucks.

Above all, the unit and its commanders had an increasingly tense and untrusting relationship with the Afghan people. The history cited the “absence of cultural awareness and understanding of the specific tribal and governance situation” and the emphasis on combat operations over the development of the local economy and other civil affairs, a reversal of the practices of the unit that had just left the area.

The battle of Wanat is being described as the “Black Hawk Down” of Afghanistan, with the 48 American soldiers and 24 Afghan soldiers outnumbered three to one in a four-hour firefight that left nine Americans dead and 27 wounded in one of the bloodiest days of the eight-year war.

Soldiers who survived the battle described how their automatic weapons turned white hot and jammed from nonstop firing. Mortally wounded troops continued to hand bullet belts to those still able to fire. The ammunition stockpile was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, igniting a stack of 120-millimeter mortar rounds — and the resulting fireball flung the unit’s antitank missiles into the command post. One insurgent got inside the concertina wire and is believed to have killed three soldiers at close range, including the platoon commander, Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom.

The description of the battle at Wanat — the heroism, the violence and the missteps that may have contributed to the deaths — ends with a judgment that the fight was “as remarkable as any small-unit action in American military history.

 The author, the military historian Douglas R. Cubbison, also included a series of criticisms in his review, sponsored by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that laid blame on a series of decisions made before the battle. The draft report criticized the “lack of adequate preparation time” before arriving in Afghanistan, which meant there was little training geared specifically for Afghanistan, and not even a detailed operational plan for the year of combat that lay ahead.

Pentagon and military officials say those initial criticisms are being revised to reflect subsequent interviews with other soldiers and officers who were at Wanat or who served in higher-level command positions. After a round of revisions, the study will go through a formal peer-review process and be published.

The battle stands as proof that the United States is facing off against a far more sophisticated adversary in Afghanistan today, one that can fight anonymously with roadside bombs or stealthily with kidnappings — but also can operate like a disciplined armed force using well-rehearsed small-unit tactics to challenge the American military for dominance on the conventional battlefield.

Official judgment on whether errors were made by the unit on the ground or by any leaders up the chain of command will be determined by a new investigation opened this week by Gen. David H. Petraeus of United States Central Command at the urging of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The call for such an independent review came from family members of the fallen, including David P. Brostrom, father of the slain platoon commander and himself a retired Army colonel, as well as from a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia. The history is replete with wrong turns at every point of the unit’s mission, starting with the day it was reassigned to Afghanistan from training for Iraq.

After having served for more than a year in other hot zones of eastern Afghanistan, the platoon arrived in the village at dark on July 8, 2008, just two weeks from the day it was supposed to go home to its base in Italy. The men wore their adopted unit emblem — skull patches fashioned after Marvel Comics’ antihero, the Punisher. They unloaded their Humvees, packed with weapons, water and the single rucksack each had kept when the rest of his kit was shipped home.

They had plenty of ammunition. But at the end of an intense tour of combat, they had run out of good relations with an increasingly distrustful population. They named it Outpost Kahler, after a popular sergeant who had been killed by one of their own Afghan guards early that year. His last words as he moved ahead of his comrades to check whether their Afghan partners were asleep while on duty had been, “This might be dangerous.” (The shooting was ruled an accident, but relations between skeptical American troops and Afghan forces deteriorated.)

Although the 173rd Airborne Brigade had been scheduled to return to Iraq from its base in Italy, the need for forces to counter a resurgence of militant violence in eastern Afghanistan prompted new orders for the brigade to switch immediately to preparations for mountain warfare — many of the outposts were linked only by narrow, rutted trails, and some could be reached only be helicopter — and a wholly different culture and language.

“Unfortunately, the comparatively late change of mission for the 173rd Airborne B.C.T. from Iraq to Afghanistan did not permit the brigade sufficient time to prepare any form of campaign plan,” the history reports. The unit arrived at Wanat ill prepared for the hot work of building an outpost in the mountains in July; troops were thirsty from a lack of fresh water, and their one construction vehicle ran out of gas, so the unit was unable to complete basic fortifications.

The soldiers had no local currency to buy favor by investing in the village economy, the history makes clear. The soldiers also said they complained up the chain of command about the lack of air surveillance over their dangerous corner of Afghanistan, but no more was provided.

Even as they settled into their spartan command post, the unit’s commanders were insulted to learn that local leaders were meeting together in a “shura,” or council, to which they were not invited — and which might even have been a session used to coordinate the assault on the Americans that began before dawn the very next morning. The four-hour firefight finally ended when American warplanes and attack helicopters strafed insurgent positions. The paratroopers drove back the insurgents, but ended up abandoning the village 48 hours later.

I have been thinking from a leadership prospective about  the health care argument going on in Washington. I have had some ideas, posted a few articles on my blog over the summer, but until now, I have not been able to find an answer to the health care reform.  By the way, it is not what the policians in Washington are proposing!

In my travels throughout the nation, I have been blessed to meet several good citizens and leaders. One of them is Dave Hubbard, as well as his wife Melinda. If you recall Dave and Melinda took the dog Darlene that I rescued last year when I was travelling through Northern Georgia touring Civil War sites.  Since then, we have forged a friendship, and they and Darlene have been blessed with each other (See my post ”Saving Darlene,” September 2008).

Dave Hubbard, former NFL Offensive Lineman, Minister and now a Fitness and Motivational Expert has just published a book that provides a blue print for America’s health care crisis, called Fat to Fit. Dave gets at the heart of what I have been trying to say, but have not found a way to say it-that health care reform as the politicians want to do it will make our own health (mental and physical) worse.  We must start with ourselves to reform our health care.

How, other than that everything big government gets involved in is mismanaged and the burden of its costs is/will be put on the backs of the middle class and our children, will it get worse? 

More centralized health care in the form of big Government takes more ownership of decisions away from the individual and places them on someone else, higher than you in the chain of command or whatever you serve or work-for most of us that is at the Federal level.  People become more and more dependent on the government for more and more of their decisions on how they live and work, while ”we the people” have less say on those decisions made by people far removed from the issue. In  Dave’s and my opinions this will occur particularly with dire results through health care.   People will find more excuses and place responsibility on the government for their own health care. The obesity crisis we are currently in will become detremental to our nation’s strength if the government manages health care.

The nation already has an obesity epidemic, and as Dave points out, it is not due to our intense life styles or how much we eat (we actually are eating less he points out), but due to the fact that we have been led to believe that society and government can provide a quick fix to everything or bail us out of the bad choices we made (just like everything else). Just take a pill and watch the pounds come off to paraphrase many commercials we are bombarded with daily.

Additionally, we have the government and corporations already making excuses for us that it is our high intense lifestyles that leave us no time to work out.  Then there is risk aversion, or are growing addicition to law suits, to the point that public schools limit physical activity for children, and what type they can do, out of fear that someone will put the blame on the institution and not themselves for a accident. The public education dollar largely goes to a bueaucracy to protect itself from these lawsuits instead of directly to teachers and on the children.

I say Bullshit to all of these excuses.  I am one of the busiest people around, and I have made working out and exercise a mandatory part of my life, alongside self study, eating and sleeping.

Dave’s soluton to health care reform (which I call health care reaction) is not with the government (he tells Michael Moore that before he spouts more about health care for every citizen, he needs to lose a hundred pounds-lead by example baby!), but with ourselves. As adults and citizens, we must take responsibility for our own health care, as well as for our children. I go further, we also take responsibility for our fellow citizens. I stay healthy, eat right and work out daily for my family, but also because I don’t want to be a burden on my fellow citizens as I grow older. 

My Father, who I love dearly, was vastly obese, and as he reached is sixties, he was constantly in and out of the hospital.  Over a years time, before he past away four years ago, he medical bill was close to a million dollars.  The bill was fully taken care of by Medicare, but who really footed the bill? WE did, the citizens of this country. While there were some complicated medical issues behind my Father’s weight, it was also on him.  I remember he did not eat well at all, and exercise just did not happen.  He worked very hard, went to school at night when I was growing up, all to take care of us, provide us a decent living, but he did not devote care to himself. I believe if he did follow them, well, he might be around longer and not cost his fellow citizens a million dollars for health care that only extended his life five years. While my Father set a lot of attributes, such as honestly, self study, and character I want to emulate, I also learned from the bad example with his health-what not to do.

Dave’s approach and recommendations are sound, and I am using them myself.  They consist of two areas, how we eat and how we exercise.  None of them are expensive or complex. There is just one issue, they require self discipline. Self discipline is the basis for everything else we do and to do it well.

The first one, how to eat, does not prescribe a diet, but what not to eat-avoid all process foods. Dave contends, and as my wife has told me for years the same thing, if you go on a diet your only going to gain more weight back when you go off of it.  Additonally, eating right is not hard, it is just changing habits. I say again, self discipline! Dave got me to thinking with what he said in his book, when you go to the supermarket, go toward the sides, and avoid the middle (where most of the process foods are).  Process foods are foods cooked at very high tempatures, for preservation reasons, so they can be shipped, stored and fed for our large population, but in the course of doing this, these foods are high in fat and salt, with little nutritional value (it has been cooked out at high temperatures).  Dave prescribes some recommendations, but I love the simplicity at the heart of his first recommendation-avoid process food (all or most of fast foods are processed).

The second one is dealing with working out and exercise, two different areas by Dave’s approach.  A small percentage of us in the overall U.S. Population exercise, but do we really workout? Dave defines through great stories about himself and his dogs a workout similiar to what animals do constantly in nature (and when I watched my six dogs on their walk with me after reading the book, I saw Dave’s wisdom) intense, short bouts of running, jumping, turning, etc…as they do when they really have to use these abilities to survive and eat.  Then they rest for short periods, and again return to short, intense bouts of activity. They build and sustain muscle. The incredible thing Dave mentioned as well about animals, is that they do this constantly. My dogs get pissed at me if I don’t get them out for their hour and half walk.  We went on a two week string where we were out every day. Not one day did they not get excited to go when I said the words “go walk” or “outside” and grab their leads.

So Dave has patented a workout machine called Quick Strength Trainer, that a person can use 10 minutes a day for an intense workout.   I am getting mine today, but since I have read Dave’s book last Thursday, I have modified my own workout to do what he recommends (I have a small gym in my basement with all the gear I need to adapt).

Then there is exercise, which Dave relates with the Aerobic fad of the 80s and 90s.  Exercise is also what some of us consider a workout (even me), which is like a good walk or run (Dave does not say these are wrong, but solely on their own do not do what people should be seeking, good health through strong muscles).  Building and sustaining muscles, along with eating right is the key. I already can tell the difference after a few days.

How does this relate to leadership?

When I taught the Gettysburg residency at the Georgetown Executive Masters in Leadership (EML) many of my students would ask me the same thing as I led them walking all over the Gettysburg battlefield for three days on foot. Of course I had already been saying this in my lectures before we went to Gettysburg in June of the last four years. No matter what your specialty, a healthy in shape leader (or manager) is more productive and sets a better example to their people (all studies done over the last few years support what I have known for years).  This in turn makes for a better organization that is more effective and adaptive when its leaders are healthier in turn makes their morale higher, less down time from illness and fatigue, as well as more alert-attention to detail.

Dave Hubbard’s Fat to Fit is recommended by me as a way to solve our healthcare crisis, cheap and beneficial for all that follow it, as well as a book for all leaders and citizens of this country to read and follow. Not only that but the book is well written and fun to read. Dave’s use of stories to exemplify key points makes for a great book.

You can order the book for ten dollars by going to www.buyfattofit.com

You can also visit Dave’s web sites at

www.AmericasFitnessCoach.com

www.QuickStrengthTrainer.com

His book is at the lower right hand side of this blog page.

Okay, lets got on with it.

Don