Not to turn this into an Army vs USMC thing, but both the Marine Command & Staff College and Marine War College (affectionately known as McWar) have gone out of their way to have provocative speakers in the two years I've been at CSC. Nir Rosen, Ralph Peters, Bob Woodward, Dave Kilcullen, Les Grau, Sir Rupert Smith. We've also done screenings of No End in Sight and The Battle of Algiers each year.
The point isn't that the Marines are mavericky iconoclasts, rather not all of PME is quite as pigheaded (and shortsighted) as the AWC appears in this instance. I know LTG Caldwell has been trying to improve both curriculum and morale at C&GSC in Leavenworth, as well.
Perhaps the climate was different 3 and 4 years ago. But there is a deliberate and concerted effort to expose our students to reasoned and serious dissent now.
Topic “PME”
Guest Post: Insha’Allah they learn something useful
Tim Mathews is a former Army Officer and newly-minted attorney who studies and occassionally lectures on the Afghan legal system. He's usually found on Twitter, and I'm glad to share his >140 character thoughts on effectively teaching U.S. personnel about Islam in the midst of heated debate about the way today's PME is approaching it.
A recent article in Armed Forces Journal (AFJ) (How to teach about Islam, Armed Forces Journal, July 2012) discusses the issue of how to teach our personnel about Islam. When I began typing this, my intent was to critique the article. However, my differences with the article are so nuanced and our areas of agreement are so plentiful, that explaining the differences would require twice as much text as simply laying out my view. Although I will briefly touch on a few areas of disagreement, I encourage the reader to read the full AFJ article as a companion piece to this weblog post.
Issue: Our forces will continue operating in majority-Muslim countries and need some cultural knowledge relevant to those operating environments.
Over the past ten years, hundreds of thousands of members of our armed forces and other government agencies have deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Many more troops and civilians have been involved in deployment activities by doing intelligence analysis and related functions from the United States. Surely, at least tens of thousands of personnel had direct interaction with Afghan and Iraqi civilians on the battlefield. Many personnel who did not engage in such direct interaction were involved in analyzing intelligence, briefing decision makers, and creating products that were designed to inform or influence local civilians. Whether directly interacting with local civilians, or interacting with the information environment that influences local civilians, our personnel need some cultural knowledge relevant to the theater of operations.
Constraints: Efforts to educate our personnel about Islam will continue to be constrained by the time available for training. Time available will increase as dwell time expands and deployments are shortened, but the complexity of the training will increase due to a more diverse mission set.
When operations were concentrated in Iraq, particularly when we had over 150,000 troops in Iraq for a prolonged period of time, it was easy to identify the necessary knowledge that most troops should have. The same is true now, in Afghanistan. Basic vocabulary, cultural taboos, and customary practices are easy to teach (or should be) when nearly everyone is deploying to, analyzing, or supporting operations in one or two countries. But as operations have wound down in Iraq, and as operations begin to wind down in Afghanistan, our forces are not coming home to stay. We are increasing our footprint in the Arabian Peninsula, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Languages skills, cultural norms, and customary practices are logistically more difficult to teach when troops are being shuffled among multiple countries. The optimal number of subject matter experts and learning materials swell with each new deployment destination. However, as the deployment tempo of our forces continues to decrease, there should be more time for training. As dwell times lengthen to two years and deployment times are reduced from 12 months to 9 months (for most of the US Army), commanders and staff should not be forced to stuff "10 pounds of training into a 5-pound bag," as my old Battalion Commander used to say.
High points and low points
We do not always do an adequate job of teaching our deploying and supporting personnel about how Islam influences daily routines and shapes values, norms, and beliefs in the areas where we operate. One example is a lengthy presentation given to personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which portrayed radical Islam as being mainstream. That portrayal is neither accurate, nor useful. A more egregious example is a course formerly taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in which a professor – a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army – reportedly taught personnel to "prep for a 'total war' on Islam using 'Hiroshima'-style tactics." If that report is accurate, then the course was not only useless, but actually counterproductive, possibly causing personnel to be less informed than when they began the course.
Thankfully, there are bright spots in our training efforts that I have seen at our Combat Training Centers (CTCs). When I was a Soldier preparing to deploy to Bosnia, we conducted training scenarios at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana that used Bosnians as role players. When I was preparing to deploy to Iraq, we conducted training scenarios at the National Training Center in California that used Iraqis as role players. Some of the most productive moments in those training events were the unstructured interactions with the role players, after training scenarios played out. We were able to discuss misperceptions and cultural nuances that are difficult to learn from a book or training video. This training was certainly not adequate, because it represented a very small fraction of our training time, but what little time it occupied was used well.
A more recent example that I have seen is the Naval Postgraduate School’s Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) program, which provides mobile and online instruction for troops preparing to deploy. Many lecturers are recent immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, or others with extensive experience in those countries. This program provides an incredible opportunity for units to receive instruction from experts who are among the most knowledgeable and experienced in their field. Instruction includes history, culture, strategic overviews, economic issues, security threats, and specific blocks of instruction about Islam, the legal system, and numerous other issues. The LDESP program is limited by how much time it can spend with each unit, but augments this time by providing online resources and distance learning programs.
It is reassuring to note that I have first-hand knowledge of positive programs, but I am only aware of the negative programs because someone tipped off a journalist. If the problematic programs were more widespread, then I suspect that I or someone whom I know would have encountered examples when serving in the Army, and repeatedly deploying to majority-Muslim countries.
Positive programs like LDESP, and good ideas like using native role-players, will hopefully survive budget growth-rate reductions. The greatest argument for retaining and expanding those methods is that they are useful and can be even more effective if an adequate amount of time is dedicated to them. As noted above, training time will be limited, but should be available as deployment tempos decrease.
The ends sought
This leads to the question of how to educate personnel about Islam. Our personnel will continue to deploy to majority-Muslim countries. They will have more training time to prepare for those deployments. But the content of the education will need to account for a greater number of deployment destinations. There are some basics about Islam that can be taught regardless of the destination, such as introductory material about who Muhammad was, how the Qur'an was compiled, prayer times, what occurs during Ramadan, and so on. There will need to be variation in instruction that aims to teach personnel how Islam shapes local culture, since this varies differently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.
At the start of this piece, I mentioned the recent article in Armed Forces Journal. One of the issues that it dedicates a lot of attention to is the domestic squabbling in the US between two groups: one that includes "those who believe extremism is intrinsic to Islam itself" and the other that includes "those who see no relationship whatsoever between Islamic doctrine and extremism."
I generally agree with the author’s assessment of the dishonest and dumbed-down debate that is unfolding in the United States. Most people in foreign countries, as the author points out, are shocked to discover how Islam is portrayed in the United States. Indeed, the way in which Islam is portrayed by anti-Islam activists here in the US is so far removed from reality as to be useless, and even detrimental, if any personnel were to accept it as accurate and rely upon that knowledge while deployed to majority-Muslim countries. But, as stunningly ignorant as much of the anti-Islamic nonsense is, much of the outrage it generates – real and feigned – is counterproductive. Reacting to an inflammatory statement only gives that statement free publicity and wider attention. Reacting to a minor slight reinforces a perception of being as unreasonable and extreme as your opponents allege.
As should be clear, I agree with problems that the author identifies in the US. However, I fail to see what this has to do with the issue of educating our personnel. We are not training our personnel to be foot soldiers in a culture war fought on cable television and weblogs in the United States. We are training our personnel to conduct operations in foreign countries.
The author laments that our “government educators are often caught between extreme anti-Islamic voices and aggressive lobbying by Islamic organizations to silence criticism of Islam." Perhaps this is true. I lack the knowledge of the personal pressures that are felt within the halls of our professional military education system. He goes on to declare that “there is only one way out of this dilemma." That way, he argues, is "to understand the battle for American perceptions of Islam, to map out the topography of the debate and to teach students to critically analyze rival arguments."
The specific details of what the author advocates includes some good ideas. I actually agree with much of it. But our agreement on ways and means is nullified by a disagreement on ends. The problem that he identifies is not relevant to preparing our personnel for deployments to conduct, and provide support for, operations in majority-Muslim countries. What the author has advocated is a program to help our educators avoid being pulled into battles of a culture war on US soil and, along the way, educating our personnel. The primary focus should be educating and the secondary focus on mitigating public pressure from fringe organizations.
As noted at the start, my disagreements are on nuanced issues. Rather than go point-by-point with what I agree or disagree on, I will simply lay out my view for any readers that have managed to survive this far.
Finding the way and means to get there
Our primary goal is not to make life easier for the educator. Our primary goal is to make the educational experience more valuable to the student. To achieve that, the content must be understandable, sufficiently comprehensive, usable, timely, relevant, and conveyed within tight time constraints. Ultimately, training schedules are approved by commanders whose primary concerns are readiness, sustainability, combat effectiveness, logistics, and basic combat skills. It would be wonderful if personnel had the time to read and discuss the works of Maliki and Shafi’i, analyze case studies involving hudud and qesas punishments, debate the views of Robert Spencer versus Tariq Ramadan, and so on. Try selling that idea to commanders.
Some classroom time is needed. For the average American teenager who has never met a Muslim, seen a mosque, and who may not know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu (I’m projecting my 18-year-old self onto others), many basic concepts will seem abstract and are best taught in a classroom. But, as much instruction as possible needs to be integrated into training. Role players at CTCs are an excellent idea that should be expanded and refined. Rather than boring troops in a classroom with do’s and do not’s about barging into a mosque, burning a Quran, or handing out pork chow mien MREs, we should incorporate those things into training. Training scenarios can include:
- an insurgent attack being launched from behind a mosque as the call to prayer goes out
- actors playing the roles of orphan children begging soldiers for food and water at high noon during Ramadan
- leaders being thrust into situations where it is difficult to discern whether role players are motivated by religious extremism or political ambition guised as religious piety
As tactical units respond to those situations, the basic essential knowledge will be retained. The value of understanding the impact of religion will also be enhanced. Commanders will then be more amenable to making space on the training calendar for further instruction on Islam. Ideally, once a unit has begun collective training, developed standard operating procedures, and begun to receive details about its next deployment, it can receive more specific instruction relevant to its area of operations. This is an area that the LDESP program places emphasis upon. The cadre, composed of retired field grade officers and senior non-commissioned officers, explains to lecturers where the unit is deploying to, what the mission is, and gives a general idea of what the unit will be doing on a regular basis. Lecturers then tailor their presentations to be relevant to that mission set.
Challenges
One institutional challenge that we must overcome is that our classroom environments are geared toward identifying articulable and measureable learning objectives to convey explicit knowledge. I am speaking from experience in the Army, but my view is that we are not very good at conveying tacit knowledge. We like to break down the knowledge, skills, and abilities of our personnel into lists that can be selected and installed into our personnel like applications in an iPhone, according to the mission set. If only life were that simple.
The greatest weakness of classroom instruction is that classroom objectives can be achieved without adding value to the unit. Instruction must be geared toward laying a foundation of knowledge that personnel can apply. In order for this to occur, there must be buy-in by unit commanders. In order for that buy-in to occur, there must be perceived value for the training. Instructors need to sell the value of this education to unit commanders by making it relevant. This means digging up case studies where knowledge of Islamic practices in an area of operations enhanced unit effectiveness, rather than reciting doctrinal distinctions between Sunni and Shia theology. This means following up those case studies with realistic and simple recommendations for how to incorporate the concept into training.
As commanders buy in to the value of the instruction, they will offer more details of what type of training they want. When this collaboration occurs, the instruction offered will be better received. It will be more relevant as input from the unit is incorporated into the instruction. But, none of that will happen until the unit leadership buys in to the value of the training.
The first move needs to be made by the educators. And educators will not convince anyone of the value of their instruction if their focus is primarily upon making sure all sides are heard in the classroom (this is where I part ways with the AFJ article and, again, I urge readers to read the entire article). There is not ample time for educators to give all viewpoints a voice in classroom instruction. And, quite frankly, nobody cares about hearing all viewpoints.
Unit commanders want to hear useful information that will make their units more effective. The least likely way to do that is to assure a commander that virtually "any viewpoint would be welcomed," but "not wholeheartedly embraced" and that his troops will "emerge with sophisticated views that are nuanced in all the right ways." I pulled those quotes directly from the AFJ article. Educators need to set out with the goal of convincing a commander that the instruction offered will make his unit more effective. If educators set out with the goal of placating fringe groups within the US, then everyone’s time is wasted.
Full disclosure: the LDESP program that I speak so highly of has permitted me to give guest lectures about the Afghan legal system, on 4 occasions over the past year.
Close the War Colleges? (Updated)
Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships. ...
Why not send young people to more rigorous institutions on full scholarships, and then, upon graduation, give them a military education at a short-term military school? Not only do ROTC graduates make fine officers -- three of the last six chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reached the military that way -- they also would be educated alongside future doctors, judges, teachers, executives, mayors and members of Congress. That would be good for both the military and the society it protects.
We should also consider closing the services' war colleges, where colonels supposedly learn strategic thinking. These institutions strike me as second-rate. If we want to open the minds of rising officers and prepare them for top command, we should send them to civilian schools where their assumptions will be challenged, and where they will interact with diplomats and executives, not to a service institution where they can reinforce their biases while getting in afternoon golf games. Just ask David Petraeus, a Princeton PhD.
Tom seems to be suggesting we follow the British model of officer training. (As I understand it, the way we have trained our officers is more rooted in the French system than the British or German ones. Someone more knowledgeable about this should correct me.)
Personally, I am more intrigued by Tom's second idea -- that we close the war colleges. Without a doubt, at that stage in their careers I think military officers would benefit more from spending a year or two in a civilian institution learning alongside the men and women who comprise the society they are sworn to protect. The more we can bring the military into society -- and visa versa -- the stronger a compact we will have between the military and the population. This is more important now that American men have -- for two generations -- not had a shared experience of mandatory military education. (American women, of course, never had such an experience, but now that they are pretty much running things as far as our foreign and defense policies, they have as much a requirement as any dude to understand the military as well.)
I have one worry, though, which is that the American academy does not reward those who do strategic studies and military history. Very few history and political science departments have much room for military historians and security studies geeks like me. As Richard Betts and others have lamented, there are no "war studies" departments in the United States. So the government might need to step in to make sure first-rate scholars like the Cronins (Patrick and Audrey), the Biddles (Steve and Tami Davis), Steve Metz, etc. have homes to continue their work. If that means setting up more academic research centers where the war colleges once were, great.
But yeah, overall, I am a big fan of forcing military officers -- future and current -- and civilians to have to interact with one another in the classroom as much as is possible.
Oh, and there is one more potential blindspot in Tom's argument. Tom went to Yale. (The man wears clothes from J. Press!) He also works with two young veterans who went to Dartmouth and Penn. And sure, the Ivy League is probably a more "rigorous" academic environment than the service academies. But not all of those young officers who would have gone to West Point will end up at Duke or Stanford or Amherst. Some will go to good public schools like Georgia or Penn State or Ole Miss. And you can get a fantastic education at any of these institutions. But if we're being honest, the academic experiences at these schools are uneven. You can work your butt off in the honors program at Georgia, for example, and get an education on par with any other. But you can also skate by in a less demanding program. At USMA and USNA, by contrast, you can guarantee your future officers will receive a rigorous education. I'm not sure if this negates any of Tom's argument. But it's important to note that not all of these kids who would have gone to West Point will go to Williams or Princeton instead.
UPDATE: It seemed only natural to solicit the opinion of a former U.S. Army officer Tom greatly admires. Friend of the blog Craig Mullaney is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Oxford University. He then taught for three years in the history department at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He responded to what Tom wrote at my request:
Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as the man who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing. In Tom Ricks’ article, he rightly points out that among the multiple commissioning routes — service academies, ROTC, and Officer Candidate School — the service academies are the most expensive.Sure, but the key question is whether or not Craig was better prepared to take over an infantry platoon than I was after graduating from my godless, pinko-communist Ivy League alma mater. And I honestly do not know the answer to that question.
As a West Point ’00 graduate, I had the fortune of being an exchange student at the Air Force Academy, a graduate student at Oxford University, and finally a history instructor at the Naval Academy for three long winless years (combined football score: 106-40). I served in combat in Afghanistan with fantastic officers from every commissioning source.
The taxpayer should rightly ask not just the cost of the service academies, but also the value. What does America get for the $202,000 it pays to produce each academy graduate?I'd argue that what's unique, and what's worth preserving, is the combination of intellectual preparation, character development, and leadership training that the service academies provide.
- A first-rate undergraduate education that emphasizes instruction rather than research. The academies afford students a broad curriculum in science and engineering, humanities, and the social sciences. West Point is routinely ranked among the top 10 universities in the country for no accident — the instructors have a level of professional commitment to their charges that few civilian institutions can replicate. The number of Ph.D.s in the faculty is no proxy for the quality of their instruction. The average instructor at West Point taught me more than the best Oxford dons.
- A four-year leadership laboratory. Leaders are trained, not born. Every semester and every summer cadets are put in positions of leadership of their peers or subordinates. You cannot cram for the leadership “exam” you get the first time you step in front of a platoon. Surrounded by hand-picked role models who’ve succeeded in the Army, cadets learn from their example and have the opportunity to practice before it counts.
Weekend Odds and Ends
1) My buddy Steve McInerney -- an old friend from both Beirut and Cairo -- is now at the Project on Middle East Democracy and has edited a new volume, available free of charge via teh internets: Speaking Clearly: What Should Obama Say to the Middle East? Steve is wicked smart and has assembled some valuable contributions from regional experts.
2) Man, this "fiasco" at the U.S. Army War College that Tom Ricks has been writing about has really heated up. Tom has a new post featuring testimony from Mark Perry, who writes that at a conference held at the War College, his unorthodox views weren't given a fair hearing. If this is the same conference I remember, Mark was recruited to speak on Hizballah along with one other scholar -- me. And my recollections of both the tenor of the discussion and the way Mark's views were received were ... well, different than those of Mark. But I have a lot of respect for Mark, and maybe he encountered some stuff in the small groups to which I was not a witness. Meanwhile, our own Charlie weighs in:
Let me try and put this to rest. I believe two points are important.I kinda agree. Mountains and molehills come to mind.
First, the email that I sent to my colleagues in 2005 (which, I believe, was dredged up and sent to Tom Ricks by a disgruntled employee seeking to embarrass me) was NOT about academic freedom at the Army War College. It was about journalistic methods. Several of us had experiences with Tom where what we said was portrayed as more critical of the administration than we intended, or things written by individual War College authors were portrayed as official positions. I was attempting to draw that to the attention of my colleagues.
Was that a purely time and context specific problem? I noticed that Tom's Foreign Policy blog entry of 31 December is headlined, "The U.S. Army Speaks Up For Hamas." It was summarizing a recent publication by an Army War College professor that includes the following disclaimer on p. ii: "The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government" so everyone can decide on their own.
In Tom's blog, I see that his major source for the fact that there is an academic freedom problem at the Army War College is someone who was a guest speaker for a few days a couple of year ago. This fellow drew his conclusion from the comments of some unidentified people who came up to him during lunch.
I've been in the Professional Military Education system for nearly 23 years. I've been on the faculty at the Army War College for nearly 18 of those. In my opinion, academic freedom in PME is, by necessity, different than in a secular, civilian university, but it is robust and rigorous. I think that DoD and senior military leaders deserve great credit for allowing, even encouraging their employees to second guess and critique their decisions. I doubt few industries or even civilian universities would be equally open to that kind of free discourse.
So when it comes to academic freedom in PME, my personal opinion is that there's nothing to see here folks--let's move along and discuss issues that really need it.
3) Guess who else is home on a Friday night with nothing to do? The nerds at Small Wars Journal, that's who. They're now blogging on foreignpolicy.com every week. And I would totally make fun of them for not being able to find a date for the weekend if I weren't myself sitting here in my boxers with a bag of Cheetos and a copy of this book.
Which isn't stopping my West Coast-living girlfriend from calling to tell me about the party she is attending tonight.
War and Film
Some of you may have noticed that our Counterinsurgency Reading List actually includes a number of movies. This is obviously not accidental. This blogger's first exposure to teaching through film was at SWAMOS, the Summer Workshop for Analyzing Military Operations and Strategy. After long days in class, Eliot Cohen, Dick Betts, and Steve Biddle led us through a variety of movies: Zulu, Battle of Algiers, Twelve O'Clock High, Dr. Strangelove, etc. Charlie brought those lessons back to Boston with her and began showing Glory, Paths of Glory, Go Tell the Spartans, Black Hawk Down, and The Quiet American along with BoA and ToH.
There's an art to teaching through movies (and other forms of fiction, for that matter). But it's often easier to engage characters than real events. The Battle of Algiers always seems to present this duality most starkly; in dealing with complex and controversial subjects like torture, students are often willing to let their guard down a bit more and engage the subject when the actual substance is fictional. Who is the hero: Ali La Pointe or Col. Mathieu? How does Ali change? Would you want to fight for Mathieu? All this elicits a much greater response than current events from Guantanamo.
The only problem is that once you go down this rabbit hole you can't stop: Charlie can't watch any war-related movie without thinking how she might teach it. (Even when she takes her 15 year-old brother to Charlie Wilson's War she can't help running seminar in the car afterwards.)
So, those of you engaged in the civilian academy or PME, what movies do you like to teach? Any other fictive recommendations? Sound off in the comments.
Update: Abu Muqawama here. Would I want to fight for Mathieu? I think I did fight for Mathieu. Abu Muqawama's old battalion commander made us all watch The Battle of Algiers and floated the idea of our battalion giving up our tan berets for lizard caps. For the record, that would have been awesome...
