- Joined
- Jul 15, 2008
- Messages
- 34,107
- Reaction score
- 64,393
- Points
- 148
Rather than cluttering up the political threads with military stuff, I thought we could use a separate thread to discuss the present and future U.S. military. Then figure, why limit it just to the U.S. military, since military developments in other nations impact the U.S. anyway. So, this thread.
I'm pinging everyone who posted in the History nerd thread started by @King Stannis as a starting point.
@BimboColesHair
@Tornicade
@Amherstcavsfan
@jking948
@gourimoko
@macbdog
@col63onel
@GreasySpread36
So to lead things off, I just came across an article that discusses the relief of a regimental commander during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was a big deal at the time, and made headlines. The article quotes extensively from the officer relieved, Colonel Dowdy. What is astonishing to me is how his "defense" so completely justifies the decision to relieve him. I only caught this was because it was about Mattis, but it's Dowdy that is so fascinating. Essentially, he was relieved because his superiors did not believe he was sufficiently aggressive. I think it's important because it illustrates the importance of the culture/mindset of a military organization:
Col. Dowdy, in his oral history interview with a Marine Corps historian, blamed the situation largely on Mattis’s assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. John Kelly, who he said had nagged him about not moving fast enough, especially after Dowdy’s regiment had stopped for twenty-four hours outside the city of Nasiriyah, about 190 miles southeast of Baghdad, where both the Army and the Marines had run into stiffer resistance than they had expected. “Are you attacking?” Kelly said to him in a radio exchange during the invasion, according to Dowdy. Yes, Dowdy said, but “we’re still shaping” — meaning that he was in the initial stage of an attack, using artillery fire and maneuvering of units before directly engaging the enemy....
....Dowdy went in to see Gen. Mattis, a quiet but intense officer with a reputation for favoring fiercely aggressive tactics. They were so near the front that artillery shells were passing overhead and tanks were rolling by the tent, creating what Dowdy heard as a whirlwind of noise. Mattis began asking questions that indicated to Dowdy that he would be removed on the grounds of fatigue. Dowdy had not slept for two days and felt that Kelly had just crushed his spirit. “I didn’t give a very good account of myself,” he told the Marine historian when he recounted his relief.
“What’s wrong?” Mattis gently and repeatedly asked him. “Why aren’t you pressing in the cities more?”
Dowdy, fatigued and confused, said that he was attacking but that “I love my Marines, and I don’t want to waste their lives.” By his own account, he then babbled a bit about his “lack of self-esteem” when he was younger. [EDITORIAL COMMENT __ WTF??] Even he recognized that such talk was a fatal misstep. At that point, he said, “I knew I was screwed.”
So he then tells the rest of it, and explains what he thinks should be learned from his experience:
His conclusion about the affair was that relief should never be taken lightly. “It has such an adverse impact on someone, it’s very difficult to describe. But the whole world that you’ve built comes crumbling down. … And then to end it, to be subject to international humiliation. … To be the only commander in the whole war to be relieved, it’s very difficult to deal with that.” He left the Marines the following year and eventually went to work for NASA.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/22...i-wrote-about-general-mattis-in-the-generals/
It's embarrassing to think a guy like that made it to commanding a regiment in combat. He actually thinks the effect of a relief on the commander's personal life and self-esteem should be weighted more heavily. Da fuq? What about the lives of the people he was leading -- the ability to carry out orders and accomplish the mission? How are those considerations not infinitely more important than the feelings of the commander being relieved?
I'm pinging everyone who posted in the History nerd thread started by @King Stannis as a starting point.
@BimboColesHair
@Tornicade
@Amherstcavsfan
@jking948
@gourimoko
@macbdog
@col63onel
@GreasySpread36
So to lead things off, I just came across an article that discusses the relief of a regimental commander during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was a big deal at the time, and made headlines. The article quotes extensively from the officer relieved, Colonel Dowdy. What is astonishing to me is how his "defense" so completely justifies the decision to relieve him. I only caught this was because it was about Mattis, but it's Dowdy that is so fascinating. Essentially, he was relieved because his superiors did not believe he was sufficiently aggressive. I think it's important because it illustrates the importance of the culture/mindset of a military organization:
Col. Dowdy, in his oral history interview with a Marine Corps historian, blamed the situation largely on Mattis’s assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. John Kelly, who he said had nagged him about not moving fast enough, especially after Dowdy’s regiment had stopped for twenty-four hours outside the city of Nasiriyah, about 190 miles southeast of Baghdad, where both the Army and the Marines had run into stiffer resistance than they had expected. “Are you attacking?” Kelly said to him in a radio exchange during the invasion, according to Dowdy. Yes, Dowdy said, but “we’re still shaping” — meaning that he was in the initial stage of an attack, using artillery fire and maneuvering of units before directly engaging the enemy....
....Dowdy went in to see Gen. Mattis, a quiet but intense officer with a reputation for favoring fiercely aggressive tactics. They were so near the front that artillery shells were passing overhead and tanks were rolling by the tent, creating what Dowdy heard as a whirlwind of noise. Mattis began asking questions that indicated to Dowdy that he would be removed on the grounds of fatigue. Dowdy had not slept for two days and felt that Kelly had just crushed his spirit. “I didn’t give a very good account of myself,” he told the Marine historian when he recounted his relief.
“What’s wrong?” Mattis gently and repeatedly asked him. “Why aren’t you pressing in the cities more?”
Dowdy, fatigued and confused, said that he was attacking but that “I love my Marines, and I don’t want to waste their lives.” By his own account, he then babbled a bit about his “lack of self-esteem” when he was younger. [EDITORIAL COMMENT __ WTF??] Even he recognized that such talk was a fatal misstep. At that point, he said, “I knew I was screwed.”
So he then tells the rest of it, and explains what he thinks should be learned from his experience:
His conclusion about the affair was that relief should never be taken lightly. “It has such an adverse impact on someone, it’s very difficult to describe. But the whole world that you’ve built comes crumbling down. … And then to end it, to be subject to international humiliation. … To be the only commander in the whole war to be relieved, it’s very difficult to deal with that.” He left the Marines the following year and eventually went to work for NASA.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/22...i-wrote-about-general-mattis-in-the-generals/
It's embarrassing to think a guy like that made it to commanding a regiment in combat. He actually thinks the effect of a relief on the commander's personal life and self-esteem should be weighted more heavily. Da fuq? What about the lives of the people he was leading -- the ability to carry out orders and accomplish the mission? How are those considerations not infinitely more important than the feelings of the commander being relieved?