Abu Muqawama: Post
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Stay classy, Michael Hastings!
One of the ugliest sentences you will ever read in a piece of journalism:
Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban.
That is not a quote from someone else -- those words belong to the journalist himself. Classy. I would recommend reading Michael Hastings' dispatches for Rolling Stone not as sober journalism but as particularly poorly sourced policy papers. Essentially Michael Hastings is doing bad think tank policy analysis with a little character assassination thrown in for extra measure.
When policy analysis is done well, it starts with a research question and then constructs methodology and accumulates data to test an initial hypothesis. When policy analysis is done poorly, the researcher just cherry-picks data to support his desired argument and doesn't ask basic epistemological questions that might call into question the researcher's assumptions or conclusions. Michael Hastings is doing the latter. He obviously has a desired policy preference, and he is cherry-picking the sources that would support that preference. He's obviously not above taking a grotesque cheap shot at a respected senior officer, either.
[In the interests of full disclosure, I should add that Joe Buche, who is one of the officers mentioned in the cited article, is a friend of mine. Also, I once met with LTG Caldwell at CNAS before he took command of NTM-A. But the number of times I have met LTG Caldwell at CNAS is equal to the number of times I have met Michael Hastings at CNAS.]
I've always assumed that the
I've always assumed that the first priority of any officer who gets to be a LGen is his career. Given the "system" how could you get past LTC putting anything else first? Nothing I've seen in Afghanistan would lead me to think that ISAF as a whole has defeat of the Taliban as it's first priority. The lack of a sense of urgency is palpable. Caldwell would simply be following the herd if he thought first about himself and secondly about his assigned mission. This lack of concern about defeating the enemy is the result of the combination of fighting a scheduled optional war with career professionals who deep down know the enemy pose no threat to the US and very little threat to the majority of ISAF personnel.
If you believe, as most senior military people do, that the US could have won in Viet Nam if only they hadn't been stabbed in the back at home then you would conclude that propaganda aimed at your politicians and public far more important than propaganda aimed at Afghans. There is a reason that embedding reporters is done. There is a reason that the ISAF senior press officer is a BGen. There is a reason think tank staff are invited on tours of the theatre.
Whowweeee...... Open you
Whowweeee......
Open you minds and take the pebble. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCyJRXvPNRo
Look at the American political process and tell me what you see? Do you see the hired Marketing firms? The spin doctors?
It was in Politico today that Obama is meeting lobbyiest across the street from the White House http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50081.html , yet there is sunshine on the White House visitor log book. A lesson learned from the Clinton days and the Lincoln bedroom.
There are more news sources than the Rolling Stone and people hear the grasshopper at the administration's feet.
Senators have staff that balance the view of the military Generals. Every one in power knows that everyone else in power has an adgena. We are talking about career professional politicians !
Why do you think that Pelosi increased her budget 71% as Speaker and hired all those Clinton era people handing out six-figured salaries like they were candy to get health care passed.............why is she fired today?
Word gets around, there are no secrets since the invention of the Xerox machine.
Cheers.....see ya in psych ops 2012........ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo
Ok, AM,but Zathras has it
Ok, AM,but Zathras has it right, what about the larger point of the article?
Just because he's a
Just because he's a lieutenant general doesn't make him right. And just because Michael Hastings took down your boy Stan McChrystal doesn't make him wrong.
That wouldn't be like Hillary
That wouldn't be like Hillary asking all the US diplomats to collect intell like credit card numbers on foreign diplomats would it (ahla Wiki-leaks)? HUMINT at its best......
You know, the patriot act opened the door on using firms like Equifax and Transperian (credit history bureaus) to collect information. Once you have a credit card number.....Whow. Private credit bureaus are not encumbered by all those human rights thingys.
PS...We used Equifax for collecting information on employment canidates and you really do get what you pay for!
Zowwwiie...good reading.
The larger point of the
The larger point of the artile is a bit silly, the General did move to have "operations" pushed against US Senators, he simply did what every General does, used marketing skills to lobby for his cause, nothing different than what paid folks and at PACs, Unions, etc...get to do, ie; Lobby. Psy-Ops sounds nefarious but it is really just a "nifty" way of saying "lobby" or "Market".
While I think we should
While I think we should reserve judgement until the other side of this comes out, I tend to agree with Galrahn...sounds to me like the "dossiers" were little more than IPB to allow LTG Caldwell to frame his conversations in a context familiar to his distinguished visitors. Everyone does this, and the task of compiling the info usually falls to staff officers. For example - a few weeks ago, my BDE had to give the quarterly training brief to higher. The BDE CDR wanted all the BN CDRs to emphasize how terrible a certain training management program is...and he wanted the complaints to be framed in terms of basketball. Why? Because the CG played college hoops. IO in action...is that crossing the line?
As for the retaliatory investigation...at first whiff, it doesn't pass the smell test...
Edward Bernays and Walter
Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman, look into it folks, this is an old tale.
The notion that it's OK for a
The notion that it's OK for a general to spin, hide facts or lie to politicians or the public in order to get what he wants is completely wrong. If he can lie to them why does he have to takes orders from them. Better yet why not just replace them.
How is the POTUS supposed to take military advice if the generals have the same moral code as infomercial salesmen?
What Caldwell is accused of is a disgrace and if true he should be sacked. Similarly "leaking" should be a firing offense. McChrystal should have been fired for leaking his recommendations. It's long past time that the generals- serving and retired- were read the riot act about the cost of deception or attempting to influence public opinion or politicians.
Andrew How juvenile of you.
Andrew
How juvenile of you. Zathras really nailed it, as did Michael Hastings. I expect your unhappiness with Hastings' story is that he did a really good story on the Pope and the Pope, like Humpty Dumpty, fell as a result. LTC Holmes' charges against LTG Caldwell are entirely believable--I saw the same thing on various CODELs I had to endure as a Special Forces officer, although not organized and targeted to this degree--and now its time for the glacially slow and generally ineffective accountability process to go forward, if it goes forward at all. It depends on LTC Holmes.
Were you never ordered by a superior officer to do something illegal? I was so ordered, several times. I refused each time to follow those illegal orders, and as a consequence I found myself in the "Atlas position" on my OERs. That's one reason I never retired. Honor above career.
Dishonorable behavior is all too common in the officer corps. That's my experience as an Army officer. If you can't see it, it makes me wonder about your experience.
RH
"The notion that it's OK for
"The notion that it's OK for a general to spin, hide facts or lie to politicians or the public in order to get what he wants is completely wrong."
I certainly disagree with the "or the public" part. There are times when a general MUST spin, hide facts, or lie to the public, because doing so also confuses, conceals information from, and deceives the enemy. After all, a general can't "talk to the public" without also talking to the enemy. To say that a general must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the public is to say that he must also provide the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the enemy. Which is absurd, unless you live in liberal la-la land.
How many Congressmen and
How many Congressmen and political parties collect information on Congressman ?
J. Egar never did that.
Think we will call this one..." Operation Second Term"
Robert, people get fired in the private sector for not toeing the line. It is the worst at the Director and above because their contracts let them be released with out cause. I know people that were trying to save American jobs from off-shoring. Wish I could work for the government where you can not be fired.
It is no defense of General
It is no defense of General Caldwell to offer sarcastic and repeated descriptions of a Hastings sentence as classy. Neither is it a sensible contradiction of Hastings' point. Public affairs officers have been lying directly to the American people for years, although it's unclear whether General Caldwell is directly responsible for this or simply can't control what junior officers and noncoms get up to.Some USMC reports out of Kabul a couple of years back were pure fiction and it seems that McChrystal throttled them back, or else had them throttled outright. Even after that, we had unnamed military officers telling washington reporters directly "They don't want us to talk about this, but ... " followed by unverifiable claims.
Of broader concern about military veracity is the abundant evidence in the current Woodward book that the generals seem to lie outright to their commander in chief. One datum: the general got a hurry-up first surge out of President Obama by telling him the troops were needed to provide security for Afghan voters in an approaching election. A very large share of the men they got were posted to remote areas where there were few or no voters. It's clear from other sources, which include former Marine commandant Jones, that this first surge was accepted with military promises that no more would be needed. But a few months later ... . And when they didn't get that second (and, it turned out, unjustifiable) surge immediately, the Pentagon started leaking lies about Obama delinquency in not snapping to attention and meeting the fresh demand forthwith.
The entire Afghanistan campaign seems to run on lines similar to what Hastings describes. The generals seem more eager to advance their own careers than defeat the Taliban. They certainly have admitted -- repeatedly -- that they don't think they can defeat the Taliban at all. They'd just like to stay in Afghanistan.
To Galrahn's comment
To Galrahn's comment upthread, let me say that, cases of official misconduct, I don't think it's appropriate to take action based only on one story in the press. It is possible what he assumes was the case in the Holmes affair actually was the case.
Do I believe it was? I don't have enough information to say. Do I assume, as he does, that Col. Holmes is just a disgruntled officer venting against a superior? I do not. Hastings notes at least one JAG officer seems to have thought Gen. Caldwell's order crossed a line and that the order was changed after this opinion became known. Nor does the alleged retaliatory investigation against Holmes sound like a step that would be taken against a mere disgruntled subordinate.
After the last nine years or so, I'm not prepared to shrug off allegations of this kind by deferring reflexively to upper ranks or complacently noting that everyone has always done whatever was done here. Perhaps I would have during the 1990s, in peacetime, or in the aftermath of a war an accused general had won. But by this time there isn't a lot of slack left to cut Army generals as far as I am concerned.
McChrystal was no
McChrystal was no accident.
Caldwell is no coincidence.
Hastings is an information operator for somebody.
Will LTC (ret.) Holmes be joining CNAS?
Hello Mr. Exum, I enjoy your
Hello Mr. Exum,
I enjoy your blog and insights, particularly about Egypt.
But, your post is pretty unfortunate, since you do not make any comment on the actual allegations in the article.
Are you mad at Anderson Cooper, for calling Mubarak a liar, too?
Are the points in the article factually incorrect? If so, then fair enough, the journalist is a joke and a hack, regardless of his politics or agenda.
If the points are factually correct, then it seems to me that that horrible sentence you quoted is not a far fetched conclusion to reach.
The key point is here, from the article:
"Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. "It’s not illegal if I say it isn’t!" Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.
In March 2010, Breazile issued a written order that "directly tasked" Holmes to conduct an IO campaign against "all DV visits" – short for "distinguished visitor." The team was also instructed to "prepare the context and develop the prep package for each visit." In case the order wasn’t clear enough, Breazile added that the new instructions were to "take priority over all other duties." Instead of fighting the Taliban, Holmes and his team were now responsible for using their training to win the hearts and minds of John McCain and Al Franken.""
Did the general violate the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948? Further, when the general got push back, did he retaliate by trying to destroy the careers of two army officers? Was his request a misuse of military personnel? Both in the initial request to conduct this targeting of American civilians of the IO team, in addition to the investigators to investigate and write up a report on the IO leaders for not following what could be seen as illegal orders.
If the answer is yes, which the article makes claim, too, then how is what the reporter is saying any more horrible than Anderson Cooper calling Mubarak a liar.
Can you interview your friend and have him refute the allegations in the article? I think that would be more interesting then name calling.
(full disclosure: I am an American citizen who has not served in the armed forces, so I suppose you all can knock me for that, but at the same time, means I don't really care about 'respected senior officers.')
If the articles allegations are true, it's just really creepy, to me.
Visitor3:19 V3:19.... The
Visitor3:19
V3:19....
The entire Afghanistan campaign seems to run on lines similar to what Hastings describes. The generals seem more eager to advance their own careers than defeat the Taliban. They certainly have admitted -- repeatedly -- that they don't think they can defeat the Taliban at all. They'd just like to stay in Afghanistan.
Take the gloves off the Generals and see what happens ! Let them be Generals not bureaucrats in fear of a screw up.
Zatharas mention something about wars with bad outcomes.
Zatharas, upstream.
Frankly, the possibility occurred to me some time ago that this phenomenon was fairly prevalent among senior military officers, and was likely a significant contributing factor in how badly the United States has fared in two separate wars during the last ten years.
Any one at a senior level is more politician than they are (..........) (put in your one job title...police chief, CEO, General). I would expect them to fudge the information. (like Obama tells us the complete truth with all sides explained, no spin) I personally would go to their subordinates and find out what is really up in the organization cause I would expect the dodge. Trust but verify. Any one that takes command at face value is either a fool or someone that will push the blame down stream (it is what I expect Obama to do). Yeah it is about HONOR, that is where it stops, we are not in a dream world were everything works the way it is suppose to. Where does the buck stop, that is were my respect is. After all the guy up stairs is the one that gets paid to see the job is done (how much does Obama get paid to be Commander and Chief ? Damn good wages and benefits are for life....he should be doing his job). I respect the General that goes and finds out what is happening and takes the heat for his officers, and goes to bat for their needs. When the sh*t hits the fan, he is there to back them up. Without being there, I would first expect that this is what is going on. That is why I suspect that Hastings is taking a cheap shot. If , the general involved is bucking for a raise, someone would loose their command.
We have turned the Army into risk aversion. Civilian gets shot, it is a career changing event. Bad headlines, the same. It happened in Vietnam. It is happening in Afghanistan. It happened in Somalia in the 90's. Our leaders do not give the order to go in kick ass and take names anymore. We are choosing the wrong wars for the wrong reasons. We use our Army as World Police. They should be one green chewing machine that protects the CONUS and really very very little else.
It is the reason why I do not what to get deeper involved in the ME. It just is not our war. We are killing our troops slowly giving orders that are impossible to execute with HONOR and it is massively screwing with the heads of our troops.
Zatharas. If our army was given a simple order. Go defend the homeland at any cost. I think you would see a win each and every time. This bullshit of field striping GI's cause they screwed up or shot too many Arabs is just heaping on more stress. It should be point their, bang. Good.....Point their band ....Good. Good day.
It is the reason we should not be held up in Afghanistan doing nation building. The directions are too complicated for an Army. I am not saying that our military can not do it.......I am saying it is the wrong thing to do
.....they are not police.........I am not worried about the General bucking for a raise....I am worried about the guy in Congress or the President trying to get another term.
Visitor @ 2:30: It's not OK
Visitor @ 2:30: It's not OK for a general to lie to the public with the excuse that he's fooling the enemy. Even during the "good war" the generals didn't lie to the public. For example Eisenhower never went on radio telling the American people that the second front would be in the Balkans.
This story is about how routine it is for US generals to treat politicians and the public as targets to be manipulated- not in order to deceive the enemy but to wrangle more resources out of the tax payer. How many "bomber gaps" do we need to assume that a general is exaggerating when he says more spending is vital?
The military has proven it can't be trusted to provide the political leadership with the unvarnished truth. Without trust there is no point in even having a Joint Staff.
Apologies but after reading
Apologies but after reading the article, I would have to say that in substance, there is not a great deal there beyond the spin. It should be investigated and it apparently is going to be judging by news reports. However, if I learned anything in the Army is that the first report is always wrong and I suspect that there is a great deal more here to this story than what is written. NTM-A from personal experience is extremely high profile with a large number of people working with it (US, multi-service, and Coalition) and I think something like this would have broken way before this if it was nefarious. Additionally, the fact that there was a 15-6 begs the obvious question: Is the 15-6 a retaliation for the story or is the story retaliation for the 15-6? Interesting that noone has seized upon this point. Finally, I have to say that if you take the order in question just on the face of it (build dossiers on the CODELs, assist with the Command Messaging), I am not sure that it is illegal because I have seen Staffs do it for last 10 years. It might be un-wise to direct your PSYOPs guy to do it, but is it illegal? Not so sure. I counsel waiting to see what the Army does on this one before making judgement on a single biased datapoint.
For those impugning
For those impugning Caldwell's integrity solely on the basis of one uncorroborated source, Rajiv Chandresekaran notes in the WaPo: "The article did not cite evidence of false or misleading information being provided to the senators and other visitors."
Caldwell was actually involved in stopping a rogue Embassy staffer's effort to IO the American people in Baghdad in December 2006, a story that Hastings actually broke while with Newsweek. Given that Hasting knows this but doesn't mention it (nor, when discussing Caldwell's effort to update the Info Ops FM while at Leavenworth does Hasting note that the old manual was nearly 20 years old and predated any modern thinking about COIN) suggests the possibility that he and Rolling Stone are making a concerted effort to undermine the war (see his previous article on Petraeus which was riddled with factual errors) and are willing to resort to character assassination to do so.
Not saying either the prosecution or defense of Caldwell is proven yet, but that to rush to judgment based on this article is ridiculous. (Not to mention the idea that Senators McCain and Lieberman needed to be "psy-op'd" into supporting more spending on Afghanistan is absurd).
"Caldwell was actually
"Caldwell was actually involved in stopping a rogue Embassy staffer's effort to IO the American people in Baghdad in December 2006, a story that Hastings actually broke while with Newsweek."
To bad he didn't stop Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell from IO'ing the American people in 2003.
Perhaps the rouge embassy staffer's IO campaign was interfering with the official IO campaign.
Ex, I commented about this
Ex,
I commented about this over at Rick's blog. I'm with you about Hastings being a terrible journalist. The story was interesting, because of the facts and nuanced differences between Public Affairs and MISO/Psyops/Whatever we are calling it now. Its a great debate for strategery geeks like us.
The question that I haven't heard answered, or discussed is: Why does a big Foreign Military Training Command need an IO cell? Seriously, what were those dudes supposed to be doing? Sounds like they got tapped to do DV visits and maybe pull the midnight to 0600 radio watch. Sounds like they had six guys doing the job of one or maybe two protocol officers/staff secs.
Sounds like someone was asleep during the latest edition of "What is and isn't Information Operations" brief.
Cheers,
IC
Andrew/others, Interesting
Andrew/others,
Interesting response to the piece by Hastings and great comments.
You approach the article as if it should be a peer-reviewed academic product; whereas Hastings wants the sexiest and most subversive narrative he can corroborate with facts that he can prove.
Thus, no reason to get upset about it. This is a typical "impossible to see from inside [the beltway] looking out" problem.
What executive branch
What executive branch department doesn't "message" visiting Congressmen? The legislative branch distributes the money, so it only makes sense to try to show them the good work that one's organization is doing in order to justify continued funding or to substantiate a request for more money. I don't think this is an earth-shattering revelation for anyone, but Hastings wants us to think that LTG Caldwell is a deceptive manipulator for doing it.
As others have stated, the motives of Hastings and Holmes are the ones we should be questioning. I guess LTC Holmes thought he shouldn't be doing "DV prep" type work, and he didn't like it when the CSTC-A chief-of-staff told him to "shut up and color." Sorry to break the news, but there are a lot of us here who aren't directly engaging the Taliban on a daily basis. The reality of the "tooth-to-tail" ratio means that very few people are conducting operations which have a direct impact on the Taliban day-to-day. And in the COIN environment, not all of us need to be working on the Taliban.
Abu M: When you say "policy
Abu M:
When you say "policy analysis," could you substitute "social science" without losing or changing any of your meaning? Because I think that's a pretty interesting epistemological question right there (if I do say so myself).
Thanks
ADTS
IRONCAPTAIN hit the nail on
IRONCAPTAIN hit the nail on the head. I've been trying to figure out exactly what these IO cats DO for some time now. As far as I can tell, they "synthesize" information, whatever that means...If you check out the FA30 proponent site on HRC, it doesn't tell you a damn thing. It sounds to me like this is more a case of misallocation of resources than using "mind-control" on distinguished visitors. I'm an 11A - but I'm on staff. If I have to plan an FRG event, does that make it an infantry operation? Of course not. Let's all take a deep breath and go back to avoiding the BC and cruising facebook.
This is the same guy who
This is the same guy who tried to sell the story of his "girlfriend" getting killed in Iraq before the body was cold. Seriously.
"Visitor @ 2:30: It's not OK
"Visitor @ 2:30: It's not OK for a general to lie to the public with the excuse that he's fooling the enemy. Even during the "good war" the generals didn't lie to the public. For example Eisenhower never went on radio telling the American people that the second front would be in the Balkans."
Bzzzzt, wrong. The D-Day deception campaign involved planting a lot of false stories in the press that "lied" to the British and American people. In particular, they planted stories about large (and in reality, fictitious) armies in Scotland and eastern England in order to make the Germans believe the Allies intended to invade Norway and the Pas de Calais. After the Normandy invasion, Ike lied to the BBC, calling D-Day "the initial assault" in order to make the Germans think Normandy was a diversion and the "real" invasion would be elsewhere. In short, they most certainly deliberately misinformed the press and the public about US military capabilities and intentions.
The upper-ranks are rife with
The upper-ranks are rife with careerists. That isn't even debatable.
These allegations are what is
These allegations are what is scandalous. CNAS, Hastings and Rolling Stone should all be sued for their incompetent reporting, for defamation of character, and for promoting outrageous personal attacks on individuals. Where are the grownups?
The deception plans for D-Day
The deception plans for D-Day involved false radio traffic, phoney bases and moving high profile officers such as Patton about. Lying to the press about future ops would have been too obvious. The plan required subtlety for the Germans to believe it. It didn't involve lying to the public- who wouldn't have been informed about future operations under any scenario.
Why put on an IO driven dog
Why put on an IO driven dog and pony show for Senators already all for the war?
That's a good question but the answers are quite simple.
1) it was reflexive- every pol would have got the same treatment
2) it was designed to impress the Senators with just how brilliant Caldwell was
3) the spin cycle is on automatic- every pol is subjected to the same story on how the war was "under-resourced".
Why is nobody even looking at
Why is nobody even looking at the facts that holes was asked to do staff work and he was disgruntled because he thinks he is some "special" operator. Truth be told he misrepresents himself as a PSYOP officer...but he is not trained as one and the Texas guard does not even have PSYOP units because they only exist in the AC and USAR. Bottom-line is that the command did not require an IO task Force or it's commander (holmes) so the command wanted to make them useful and have them do command briefs. Something that holes believed was below his self worth. But he couldn't even do that right.
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