Styrofoam Cups, Iron Bombs and Gunny Sergeants

There was a strange news item last week: the President got off the helicopter with a Styrofoam cup and saluted the Marines with said cup in his hand.

Taken alone, this isn’t a big deal. Senior folks, including Secretaries and Senators, do things like that. Most Presidents have as well. By itself, a single such event, or even several such events, means nothing.

But… I know some 3 and 4 star generals; these men know the protocol and rules as well as any protocol officer; their wives do too, through simple repetition. Yet, they are still briefed for every single meeting and event, and the staffs keep an eye on things so they know ‘what’s what.’ I know, I was an ‘EA’ - Executive Assistant – to a 4 star Admiral, a Combatant Commander. His staff, like the staffs of other 3 and 4 star officers, was trained from day one to never let certain things happen. The staffs never let the ‘Boss’ step out of the office with something in their hands, a button not right, a crooked tie, etc. Good staffs don’t let it happen. Simply put, Chiefs of Staff, aides and all the strap-hangars are supposed to not only know the rules, they are supposed to take care of the boss – and the boss needs to let them. The more senior the staff, the more true this is. So, when you see a picture and the President has his hands folded, the first lady has her hands at her side and beside her someone has his hands over his heart, the aides and chief of staff are screwed up.

But there is another point: if these things happen during the first few months of a Presidency, give it a pass. After that, everyone should not only have heard the protocol, everyone should be aware that they are supposed to have some aide walk them through precisely what is going to happen when they walk out of the office – whatever it might be. It’s not magic, it’s good staff work and it’s recognition of expertise.

I had a Marine Gunnery Sergeant who ‘worked’ for me for a couple of years. (For those of you who have no military experience, there is a little humor here, the idea that a Marine Gunnery Sergeant – the ‘Gunny’ – works ‘for’ a junior officer is kind of funny. It is more accurate to say that the Gunny is trying to make the junior officer into a real officer. If the officer listens well, he will make it. If he acts like he knows as much as the Gunny, he won’t.) One thing the told me is that you can tell a lot about a unit – and the commander of the unit – by how he looks. If the platoon leader (company commander, battalion commander, all the way up to whatever rank you want to put in here – 4 star general, Secretary of Defense, President) is walking out the door and something is wrong with how he appears, the platoon will stop him and fix it. But they don’t do it for him, they do it for the unit (platoon, battalion, regiment, ship, squadron, etc.), They don’t want their unit to look bad, and he represents the unit.

So, when the ‘Boss’ – of whatever rank – walks out the door, you stop him, give him a quick once-over, and make sure he looks good. If he has to do something – give a speech, officiate at some ceremony, etc. – you make sure he is as ready as you can make him, knows what to do, and when.

And so, as the Gunny told me, if you see a guy do something stupid two or three times in a row, if you see someone show up and his uniform is all wrong – and it happens repeatedly, the unit hates him. It means, very simply, that morale has broken down to such a point that they no longer care how they look, how his appearance will reflect on them.

Why is this relevant?

Because a well functioning staff is about more than getting protocol right, or looking ‘put together’ as you step off the aircraft. It’s about making sure all the little things flow together so that all the big things flow together. And, it means listening to the people who know about ‘X,’ recognizing that the President and his immediate staff have a narrow slice of expertise relative to the vast breadth of issues the nation’s executive branch faces daily.

So, we’re now dropping bombs on Syria, the same Syria that a year or so ago this President wanted to bomb into the Stone Age. (Doing so would have made the victory of ISIS that much more certain.) The US is leading a bombing campaign against ISIS, yet virtually every military authority – including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and every retired 4 star who’s been asked – has expressed concerns about this strategy.

Whenever any strategy is sent forward, it’s presented as one of several options. Each option is presented with its strengths and weaknesses. The perennial weakness with bombing campaigns is that they haven’t worked when conducted in isolation. Even in the much-studied operations in Kosovo, the Yugoslavian government finally agreed to a ceasefire because of the presence of several insurgent armies, and statements from Prime Minister Blair that the UK would lead an invasion of Kosovo with 50,000-men.

The point is this: there’s little likelihood that this current strategy is going to succeed in returning stability, order and security to northern Iraq or Syria. It may well make the situation worse, fueling radicals and insurgents and convincing many that the US and the West isn’t really willing to pay the costs needed to address ISIS.

So we’re left with this: why is it that the President has repeatedly decided on strategies that look good in the short term but leave the US with no long-term solutions? For example, some insist the President’s tactics against Al Qaeda have yielded positive results, but consider:

In 2001 al Qaeda was a small, well-funded organization with less than 200 people, and they pulled off an horrific – and spectacular - attack against the US. 13 years later we’ve spent several trillion dollars, lost 6,000+ troops, killed AQ’s founder and leader, and killed perhaps 95% of everyone in AQ who assumed any leadership position, and AQ now has operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Algeria, Libya, Somalia and India. And, we have arguably destabilized Pakistan. Does that look like a good plan?

To return to the earlier point: the President was careless about the Styrofoam cup. He was careless because it simply isn’t important to him what he has in his hand when he salutes the Marines. And that isn’t important to him because he really isn’t terribly fond of the US military. And because of that, he really doesn’t listen to their advice – whether on protocol or tactics or strategy.

So, at a certain point, folks just give up. They don’t consciously give up; but their morale breaks down. They get intellectually dull, because it is too hard to care when your boss keep sending the signals that he doesn’t care about any of the things you care about.

The Secret Service clearly has morale problems. If you have had any experience at all, even the most basic, in security, or any training in security, if you have ever had to work with a personal security detachment for a VIP, the mistakes that were made and now reported in the press are glaring; they are fundamental errors of the sort expected by inexperienced teams, not the Secret Service.

The talent remains in the Secret Service; but the morale has been steadily eroded over time. For the last 5 years the Secret Service has worked in an environment in which their work has been at best taken for granted, and more often, looked down on by the vast majority of the staffers in the White House. The President and his senior assistants may not have actively participated, but they have allowed that atmosphere to persist. The result is what we see in the papers.

The simple truth is that there are people offering practical alternatives to the current strategy in the Mid East, just as there are people who would take that Styrofoam cup out of the President’s hand - and all the other issues in between – and there are a host of them. For some reason no one is paying any attention to any of those people. Maybe it’s time they start.

Remembering

 May 24^th - Memorial Day Weekend 2014

I have a picture on my wall, a copy of one that adorned my Uncle’s Bill’s office, which I have taken from a book Bill wrote – the Americal Generation – about the men he went to war with in 1942, members of various units within the 23^rd Infantry Division, the Americal Division.

The picture was taken in December 1941, a few days before Christmas. In the picture are 12 young men and one older man – Tom Dorgan. They were the bulk of ‘Dorgan’s Baseball Club,’ and they were all friends from Dorchester, Mass., a section of Boston. Several of them, to include my uncle Bill (Bill McLaughlin) had already been in the National Guard before Pearl Harbor, but after it everyone who wasn’t already ‘spoken for’ went to the nearest enlistment center and signed up. Many of the members of Dorgan’s Baseball Club joined the Marines that December and came to be known unofficially as ‘Dorgan’s Platoon.’

The 12 young men in the picture are: Dick Hodgens, Tom Mulkerin, Maurice Driscoll, Harry Holtzman, Francis X. O’Meara (also an uncle of mine), Jim Sullivan, Jack Daley, Billy Walsh, John Hassan, Bill McLaughlin, Charlie Martin and Billy Martin.

They are perhaps a bit more conservatively dressed then would be a similar group today, but perhaps not – just young men in suits. The faces are, however, no different then what you would see in any bar or restaurant on a Friday night. They are young and alive, ‘full of piss and vinegar.’ In the lower right of the picture Billy Martin has reached around FX ‘Red’ O’Meara and is tickling his chin and whispering something – perhaps something slightly off-color – in his ear. Red is laughing.

I note them here because these men, as with many, many others, deserve to be remembered. 2,500 years ago the Greeks would have built temples to them and written plays in their honor. Several centuries later the Romans did much the same thing. But such practices seem to have fallen from favor and we quickly forget the courage, and the wisdom, that these men earned in the hardest school of all.

Bill would later describe them: “…These were all pretty average guys who were just in to do a job and get back to civilian life.”  Of these Bill would later tell me that every single man in that picture received at least one Purple Heart; each received at least one Bronze Star (at the time, Bronze Stars were only awarded as combat awards, what are now distinguished as Bronze Star with V (for valor)), several of them received Silver Stars, and Billy Walsh received the Medal of Honor – posthumously – on Iwo Jima.

Pretty average guys…

I was fortunate; Bill survived the war, as did Red. (My father and my 4 other uncles and 2 aunts also served and they all lived. And I heard stories from all of them. Most of the stories were funny.) But as I grew older I started hearing the other stories. Bill was both an historian and a superb storyteller, with an uncanny ability to remember poignant details. These figures came alive, coming out of the picture on the wall, with the humor and the hardship, and their stories taught a lesson in duty.

The ones who survived came home, and went back to work.  They helped to rebuild the nation after 12 years of depression and 5 years of war. They are all my heroes.  And I thank God they lived, and that I knew them.

In Defense: Ukraine, NATO and the US

More than 100 years ago Chancellor of Germany Otto Von Bismarck, remarked that there was nothing in the Balkans ‘worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier.’  The same is now being said by some about Eastern Europe.

We begin with this: Tsar Putin intends to expand the Russian empire.  This is not an idea new to him.  Expansion of the empire has been a Russian imperative since Tsar Ivan (the Terrible) recognized that the cities of Moscow and Kiev – heart of his new empire – were not readily defensible.  They were and are surrounded by grasslands, with no major features – canyons, deep and fast rivers, mountains, or seas – that provided any natural bulwark. The only defense was and is depth – increase the distance an enemy must to travel to reach Moscow.

And so was born the imperative for space, something now bread into the Russian culture by more than 400 years of both expansion (their own) and attack (from Tatars, Swedes, French, Ottomans, Germans, etc.)  From Peter the Great through Stalin to Putin, Russians understand and prize that space, those buffer zones.

And so, very simply, Putin intends to get Ukraine back.

We can argue whether Ukraine is really ‘little Russia’ or Belarus is ‘white Russia.’  But it doesn’t matter what we call it or how we label the people who live there.  Putin wants them, and their land, back under Russia’s flag.  And he will occupy Ukraine, and later other lands, unless and until he is stopped.  Frankly, it is almost a fait accompli that he will get Eastern Ukraine; for them it is arguably already too late.

This is why we are now facing a grave danger.  First, let us accept that in the near term – the next 5 years at a minimum – only the US has the overall military means to stop Russia.  Europe on its own does not have several of the major elements needed to present a viable blocking force, one that would serve to preempt warfare before it began, whether the intelligence assets, the command and control, the logistics, or the quantity of smart ordnance necessary to present a viable counter-force. Russia understands that as well as the members of NATO. Without vigorous US participation any NATO blocking force would only serve as a trip wire for further escalation, not as a credible opposition that would signal real intent to deter.

But in the US two major political ‘camps’ are now, interestingly, aligned against the notion of US involvement.  On the left is the President, the leadership of the Democratic Party, and the establishment left.  They want to withdraw the US from overseas involvement and spend the wealth of the US on various entitlement programs.  In their opinion the US has no justification in getting involved in these various crises, particularly one between Russia and the Ukraine or Eastern Europe.  They eschew the concept of American exceptionalism and regard US actions in many cases as no different then Russia’s or anyone else.  (Except, of course, when they don’t; the left’s willingness to be arbitrary in this regard is remarkable.)  In any case, as the left sees things, words may be exchanged, but no meaningful use of force is contemplated by the White House.

Further, and perhaps more importantly, they undermine the significance of US nuclear forces and the importance, on many levels, of friendly and allied nations ‘living under the US nuclear umbrella.’

On the other hand, many libertarians hold that the US should focus on the US, that if Europe wants to be safe from Russia, then Europe needs to take the necessary actions – they have a combined economy as large as the US, and more people – and that it is preposterous for the US to stand in their defense when they will not.  Their view, like that of Bismarck, is that it is simply not worth the life of a single American.  To put it in the terminology of foreign policy, it is not a vital US national interest.

There are several counter arguments.  The simplest is that we are members of NATO, and the treaty which created and governs NATO (of which the US was and is the driving force) contains this (Article V – in part): ‘an attack against one … shall be considered an attack against all.’

Beyond the call to honor our treaty obligations, and thus maintain our credibility, is the call that Europe’s peace and security IS a vital US national interest, that preserving peace among our trading partners and allies, and moving to prevent war (or conquest) is clearly a US concern.

Both of these arguments have merit, but also can be challenged, and any intelligent debate on US national interests can question as to exactly when the US should honor the treaty or decline to do so, as it is always the case that every nation must first act in its own interest, and that might mean not honoring a treaty. (Rational discussion and the making of cogent strategies requires that such questions at least be honestly asked and answered, even when it is readily apparent that honoring treaties in and of itself is a vital national interest.)

But there are more fundamental issues at stake; Russia is expanding, China is expanding, and there is an ugly trend in other corners of the planet that suggest the last several decades of relative peace (believe it or not) are drawing to a close.  We may let Russia have its way in the Ukraine, but if we do, they will move against Moldova after that, then the Baltic States, and then perhaps Finland.  Certainly, Georgia will be on the list, then Azerbaijan and Armenia.  Then what?  Romania and Bulgaria?  Turkey?  And then: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic?  When will it be in the US national interest to stop this expansion?

Further, there are now reports from Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine that Jews are being told to register, a horrible mirror of an 80-year-old evil. As the situation moves closer to war we can expect that there will be efforts to generate a ‘scape-goat.’  Will the Jewish minority be once again terrorized for their religion? 

The concerns are greater than the issues laid out above. For example, as has percolated out recently in an article by Seymour Hersh re the current administration’s planning against Syria, there was a growing momentum in 2012 to pound Syria into rubble.  In and of itself such actions might not be a bad idea, the Assad regime are criminal thugs. Heavy applications of force under the right circumstances can be the correct operational response. But in this case it smacks of something else, it smacks of petulance.  And this administration has all the earmarks of petulant leadership, the passive-aggressive response to any difficult situation, the pontification that is supposed to bring immediate agreement, the anger when it doesn’t, and then, at some point, the heavy-handed response.

The problem with petulance of course, is that, in the international arena petulance often leads to escalating tensions.  And when weapons are displayed, a hard-nosed practitioner of real politik like Putin will not respond to White House bullying in the same manner as a small business or a non-profit organization with one-billionth the assets of the federal government.  Instead, what sometimes happens is that the situation takes a turn that is both unexpected by the players, and usually violent.

This kind of thing has been war-gamed in the past.  And the results were never satisfactory.  In the 1970s and 1980s war games were held that tested how rational and cautious were various decision-makers, with samplings of both uniformed and civilian personnel.  In far too many cases civilians, particularly those who held a low opinion of the military, routinely failed at first to respond to provocations, often allowing themselves to be forced into difficult positions, then allowed situations to escalate with little control, and tried to use nuclear weapons to restore order.  And that never worked.

In short, unprofessional decision-making, rashness and passive-aggressive leadership invariably led to uncontrolled escalation, and a host of unintended and negative consequences.

Arguably that is where we were headed in Syria (and perhaps still are). And it may well be where we are headed with regard to Eastern Europe and Ukraine.  Delay, garbled ‘signals’ between Washington and Moscow, words without actions, etc., and Putin will come to believe that he has nothing meaningful to fear from Washington.  And then he will take a step that the White House suddenly fears has gone too far and they will over-react, precipitating a much greater crisis.

There is one final issue with a failure to act to, at least in some way, protect Ukraine, and it is of the greatest concern; such a failure to act will send one real signal to every thinking leader around the world: nuclear weapons count.  When the Soviet Union fractured, Ukraine was left with 176 ICBMs and more than 1,900 nuclear warheads.  Ukraine turned those warheads over to Russia in 1994 under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum, because under the memorandum the US and UK pledged to ensure Ukraine’s security.  It goes without saying that the only meaningful threat to Ukraine’s security then or now was Russia.

The lesson is obvious: Ukraine would face a different security threat from Russia today if it had retained those nuclear weapons.  North Korea recognizes this, so does Iran. So do many others, and the list is not one packed with believers in democracy and the rights of man.

Putin is not a bully, the analogy is inapt.  Putin is an amoral, power hungry practitioner of hardball politics.  He also, in his own twisted way, loves Russia (don’t get dewy eyed, Hitler loved Germany.) Behind him he has groomed a handful of deputies.  If Putin goes, he will be replaced by a very similar figure.  The expansion will continue.  China, which is watching this very closely, struggles to rebuild the maritime reaches of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty and casts a covetous eye on the South China Sea, Singapore and points south.  This is ‘real politik,’ nothing more.  And they both will take their cue from what happens in the next 12 months or so.

We have a very clear choice – act now or later.  Act now and we stand a chance of defusing this problem.  And of telling the world that nuclear weapons are not necessary for guaranteeing your security.  The longer we wait, the greater the likelihood that this situation spins out of control (and the greater the likelihood of further nuclear proliferation in the long run).  And then a question of the security of Eastern Europe will become a question of the security of the United States.

The Tortoise, the Rancher and J. Edgar Hoover

You have probably heard about the standoff between the Nevada rancher and federal officials.  The rancher, whose family has grazed cattle on those same public land for some 130 years, was ordered by federal court to remove his cattle in 1993, he refused, counter-suing that his rights pre-dated the BLM and implying that there needs to be some sort of pre-eminence due to his families long use. Needless to say, neither the BLM nor the court agreed.  Since then it has been ricocheting in and out of courts and government offices.  Other ranchers who did use the land have since left, and only one rancher remains.

The issue might have remained of little significance until in the last year or so a suit was filed in federal court that posited that the cattle threatened the desert tortoise.  Interestingly, the desert tortoise, formerly listed as ‘endangered,’ was recently re-listed by the federal government as ‘threatened,’ a lesser classification of risk. This is apparently partly the product of a survey of the region, which showed more tortoises then previously believed. Of course, cattle and tortoise have gotten along fine for nearly a century and a half.  But now, suddenly the cattle pose a threat.  Who knew?

In any case, the Bureau of Land Management police, with the help of the FBI, moved forces into the area.  I say forces because this is more than simply the sheriff showing up and say: “Mister, you’ve got to get your cattle of the land.”

So, some 200 federal officers, to include SWAT teams, K-9 teams, 4 sniper teams and 8 helicopters, have staked out the grazing area.

Bureau of Land Management. Cattle. Tortoises. SWAT.  Really.

Before going further, consider this: suppose you are an FBI agent. You walk into the corner drug store to buy aspirin. You see a man with a baseball bat beating the man behind the counter.  Are you required to lend assistance? You have no jurisdiction, you are a federal agent, no federal crime is being committed. The answer: of course you are. Not only has it always been assumed and expected, the LEOSA – Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004 – was drafted to codify the concept that off-duty and even retired police retain a responsibility to public safety. 

Here’s another: what federal office has a 200 man uniformed police force, a 75 man special investigations unit and several incident command units (those neat command trailers we see in movies)?  In 2012 they engaged in more than 11,000 police actions, of which 1,920 were drug related.

Give up.  It’s the Bureau of Land Management, within the Interior Department.  The BLM, whose mission is: “to manage and conserve the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations under our mandate of multiple-use and sustained yield.” BLM manages 245 million acres of land (380,000 square miles, almost 1/9^th of the U.S.); 155 million acres of which are used for grazing livestock.

But that doesn’t explain why BLM has SWAT teams or needs snipers (borrowed from the FBI) and command trailers and all. Before you try to grasp that, consider this:

The Federal Reserve – you know, the bankers – has a 1,000 man security force with 5 special response teams, EOD, and Active Shooter response teams.

The Department of Education, which insists it doesn’t have SWAT teams, has a police force trained, per their spokesman, to use weapons and serve warrants, which sounds a bit like ‘high risk warrant serving,’ part of most SWAT training. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, dresses in body armor like a duck…

The EPA not only has SWAT teams, it has its own ‘ten most wanted’ list - EPA fugitives.

More than 40 different federal departments and agencies have their own police forces that are trained and equipped for special tactics.  Why do most departments and agencies need anything beyond security police to watch the doors and check people entering the buildings? Beyond security guards to protect facilities, why would, for example, the Department of Agriculture need specially trained police units? 

When asked, these departments all say they need a police force that has the full jurisdiction of the department – or some such nonsense. But, the fact is that if you are in violation of a federal statute, the federal marshal’s office can serve warrants and do all the things these various police forces do. For crisis response, every state police force, and the other federal police forces (FBI and federal marshals), have not only the ability but also the responsibility to respond and support – as noted for years, and as codified in law.

How did we get here?  Since the early days of J. Edgar Hoover’s reign as Director of the FBI, Hoover – and every director of any federal agency with any police powers, tried to expand its reach, all ‘necessary for increased public safety.’  The noted federal law – passed years after the Lindbergh baby kidnapping – making it a federal crime to transport a kidnap victim across state lines – can be seen as a major step down the road of rapidly expanding federal police authorities. Since then the federal government not only has created more and more federal police forces, it has continued to expand both their range of authorities and the actual capabilities of each office. Each director of each office wants his own police and SWAT, one that responds to him, without having to worry about justifying his actions to anyone else. 

It is worth noting that there is an excellent lesson in unintended consequences in all this.  In every case there were seemingly sound arguments as to why the Department of the Interior needed their own police force, their own criminal investigators to look into incidents on Department of Interior property. But, the solution is now worse than the problem, the cure worse then the cold.

And yet there is literally no need for it. The EPA, BLM, etc., would be just as secure if they relied on federal marshals for crisis response, and investigations. The only difference would be this: the Director of the EPA et al wouldn’t have his own SWAT team, but would have to request support from federal marshals, presenting a cogent argument as to the need to redirect assets. And that would make all of us more secure, knowing that police forces were focused on the most serious crimes.  And wouldn’t that be a good thing?

And let’s face facts: in the vast majority of cases the federal marshals would help if the manpower were available.  But it would also mean that there would be less chance of abuse because there would be a ‘check on the system’ by someone outside of the given department of agency.

And for the record: the Fish and Wildlife Service - responsible for monitoring and protecting the tortoises in question - is a bit short on cash.  So, they are going to ‘euthanize’ about 700 tortoises.  The same tortoises 200 federal officers are protecting from the rancher’s cattle.