The Higher The Rank, The Smaller The Mind---

--Or so it so often seems to the Geek.

SecDef Gates may have taken a firm grip on reality, but many of the highest ranking officers under him are charter members of the out-to-lunch bunch, uniformed division. The Secretary accepts the unpleasant feature of the world today and into the near-term. The major use of American combat forces will be as it has been for more than a decade now--stability operations.

As the Geek well remembers from his encounters over this subject years ago, the men with stars on their shoulders all-too-often will not march on the sound of reality. They prefer to hang on to the hopes of a conventional conflict.

The most recent outbreak of uniformed nostalgia for the good ole days of War As We Would Like To Know It eluded the mainstream media but was caught by by Wired News. Take a look, http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/some-observers-.html. Further details can be found on http://insidedefense.com/. This latter source can also shed light on internal inconsistencies within the massive military establishment concerning what kind of threat(s) our forces should be preparing to counter.

There is no surprise that the Air Force is particularly unhappy with the idea of stability operations including counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, and counter-terrorism. The majority of senior zoomies such as Lance Smith are jet jocks. The kind of guy who lives to strap on umpteen thousand pounds of thrust between his legs and pull back on the stick.

Experience shows that the fast-movers which are the heart and soul of the Air Force are massively irrelevant and even counterproductive in stability operations except in unusual and narrowly circumscribed applications. That doesn't help come appropriation time.

It doesn't help come promotion time either.

While it is easy to understand why the boys in light blue don't want to be thought of (or think of themselves as) a collection of airborne bus and truck drivers providing dreary logistic support to the actual warfighters, it is a little harder to understand why the upper echelon of the Army is unhappy as well.

Army Chief of Staff George Casey like his predecessor Peter Schoomaker have made mighty groans concerning the possibility that the ground-pounders are "off-balance" and less able to engage in conventional war. Joined by Marine Commandant James Conway, the two have viewed with alarm the tilting of American ground forces toward the requirements of stability operations.

The latest voice in the chorus is that of Admiral Michael Mullen, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Gotta admit that is an impressive constellation of stars, right?

It is that. Impressive amount of tin on the shoulders and braid on the hats. Taken in totality, the pounds of tin and braid mean these men are fine bureaucratic politicians.

Possession of stars, however, does not mean that the individual is an experienced fighter of real wars. Neither does it imply that the man under the stars and braid has a grip on the nature of present and future wars.

The initial blundering in the planning and execution of our adventures in regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq show two realities quite clearly.

Our senior military commanders were either intellectually bankrupt or moral cowards when they agreed to execute the lamebrained notion of "shock and awe" sponsored by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his neocon ninny brigade. Then, the events on the ground until quite recently demonstrated that our forces were far too heavily tilted toward conventional war with a symmetrical opponent.

American officers of stratospheric rank have never cottoned to guerrilla war. They certainly didn't like the counterinsurgency portions of the Vietnam War. Even way back when, in the late Nineteenth Century, unconventional approaches to defeating the Indians such as practiced by General Crookes were cast aside (as was Crookes) by the senior commanders in favor of less effective, more lethal conventional means.

Generals Smith, Casey et al, and Admiral Mullen are captives to a set of paradigms. Deadly paradigms because they are ill-suited for the world as it is and will be for some while yet.

The buried paradigm is that of war as a pursuit for professionals sharing common world views and values. It is the paradigm of a sand table exercise enlarged to cover thousands of square kilometers. It is the paradigm of Clausewitz with movement and concentration of forces ending in "bloody and decisive combat."

The surface paradigm is that of the post-World War II experience, culminating in the concept of the Air-Land Battle, which has been enshrined in doctrine for two decades and more. It is the paradigm that assured quick and bloodless victory over the hopelessly overmatched opponent in the Gulf War of 1991 and the conventional portion of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Air-Land Battle represents War As We Would Like It To Be to these generals and many like them. It is the kind of war, with its emphasis on breaking things and killing people, at which we are best prepared and equipped to wage.

The paradigms guiding the thinking of these generals (as well as lurking under Rumsfeld's concept of shock and awe) promise quick and decisive victory. Victory fast enough and cheap enough in American lives to assure the end of the war before the political will of We the People is exhausted.

Here is the subtext message upon which to get a grip.

The generals listed as well as Admiral Mullen and many others are desperately afraid of stability operations. They are more afraid of counterinsurgency than they are of death itself.

Why?

Simple. These men are scared of us. They are made fearful, not by any actual or potential enemy, but of We the People.

They are afraid that We the People and our "representatives" will lose the political will to continue the stability operation, the counterinsurgency, the peacekeeping mission, the counter-terrorist campaign when "victory" proves elusive and expensive in time and lives.

When that happens, they will be left holding the same bag as their predecessors following the self-inflicted Vietnam defeat. They will be left with the hollow forces, the empty appropriations, the testimony before hostile committees, the blighted careers.

Where does the fault lie?

It is easy to say it lies with backward looking, intellectually deficient military politicians more worried about careers, promotions, appropriations and glory than about the effective use of the military in support of national interest. That is the easy, attractive way to point the finger.

Or, we can take the harder route. We can look in a mirror.

The present and future reality is that Secretary of Defense Gates is right. Stability operations are and will be the order of the day. This unpleasant fact of life requires both the changes in military doctrine and orientation so recently undertaken.

But, it requires more.

Of our senior military officials, particularly the bureaucratic politicos in uniform, it requires honesty. It requires that they shift the paradigms that have served as pole stars for their entire careers. That is tough--damn tough. But, no tougher than slogging along looking for the ambush or the roadside mine.

Senior military commanders have to both adjust to the new reality of war and insist that We the People do the same.

The ultimate (perhaps unachievable) requirement is that We the People and our "representatives" acknowledge that there are no quick, decisive, and cheap victories in the offing. Wars today and tomorrow are going to be long, indecisive, and quite probably not completely satisfying in their outcome. That is the nature of all stability operations, most particularly counterinsurgency.

Presence on the ground, persistence over time, and patience are the prime requisites. This means the political will of We the People is the foundation for achieving the minimal acceptable outcome of any stability operation.

The minimal acceptable outcome?

Not losing. As the Korean War demonstrated, not losing is both the minimal acceptable and often the only possible outcome of a war.

We are and will be again in situations far more akin to the Korean War than World War II. We best get a grip on that.

Our future administrations had best get a grip on it as well. Getting into war is a lot easier than getting out of it without declaring defeat. Vietnam showed us that. Iraq is showing it again right now as is Afghanistan.

A hint to future administrations from the past: Don't march off to war unless and until you not only have a clear understanding of what is at stake, what is the desired better state of peace, and, most importantly, what is the definition of "not losing?"