What a Charlie Foxtrot.

Pray for our troops.

Oh, and recommended. And tell Steven Pressfield no one wants his input .

and I’m not even military.

What the **** do you mean that wasn’t his mission?!? There’s no excuse for any sort of leadership evaluation to go on for more than a few days without sufficient communication establishing precisely *what* we’re trying to do here.

The fact that these bozos think that this is an out tells more about them than anything else I’ve read yet.

Proper grammar saves lives.

Let’s eat Grandma.
Let’s eat, Grandma.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

Nobody in the upper echelons of Comrade Obama’s regime has ever led anything. Many, probably most, would philosophically deny the validity of leading, though most in their hearts are would be tyrants. In lefty dominated academia and government, where Comrade Obama and his merry band all come from, nobody leads. Somebody in an artificially created block on the org chart might be responsible for scheduling and facilitating gatherings to make decisions but even if that person’s title is director or manager, or even President, they don’t lead, they just set up the forum in which all the stakeholders can achieve consensus on whether to do anything and if so what and making sure everybody feels good about it.

Having endured a lot of “meetings” under Democrat misrule, for those of you in small private business (big corporate business is just like government) this is how it goes: Since old-fashioned hierarchal and even patriarchal organizational structures still persist in most of academia and government, there will be somebody whose title is Boss. Since there is rarely formal communication chains, through some sort of social osmosis or by a scandal breaking on TV it comes to the Boss’ attention that something might need to be done about something. So, some time is spent on identifying all the subject matter experts and stakeholders. If it looks like maybe a big deal the SMEs will be tasked to write up briefing packages with all sorts of options and cover my butt pros and cons to be handed out to the stakeholders – and leaked to the friendly press and legislators. The stakeholders and SMEs will be invited to a conference on the issue. They will spend an endless time discussing whether everyone feels good about being there. Then they will spend and endless time discussing whether there is a problem. And if there is consensus that there is a problem then the butcher paper goes on the walls and everybody gets to get up and make their spiel about what the problem is. Then the facilitator nee Boss takes some more butcher paper out and has someone summarize all the stuff written on the previous pieces of butcher paper. Then they spend endless time talking about each of the summary points and prioritizing them. Then more butcher paper goes up and everybody gets to do their spiel about what if anything should be done and writing on the butcher paper. Then the faciltator summarize it all on more butcher paper. Then they talk and talk to achieve consensus on what if any of the actions they might take. This process goes on in something akin to the infinite division of time until they finally achieve consensus on what if anything to do – usually nothing. Then they prattle endlessly about making sure everyone feels good about the process and the result, if any. This can take from a day to week for the simplest issue. And you’re shocked they don’t have mission clarity on a foreign war?

Make sure you know the mission from your superiors before passing it down to your troops.

I guess the NSC has forgotten or failed this basic lesson.

Messing that up, you wouldn’t pass any Platoon Leaders course or Company Commander’s course in any army in in any country in the world.

I know because I’ve taught in many.

attempting to run ANYTHING in the REAL world. They have ONLY their books and their leftist ideals and the REALITY is that NONE OF THAT works on the ground. I pray everyday for our country because these stooges are going to get us killed and barring that they are going to BREAK the very backbone of this country. I pray that WE make it to 2010 and I beg in my prayers for God to watch over the United States Military because they are working underneath an IDIOT!

” Is that what you really think your mission is?

I was blown away when I read this a few days ago.
Gross incompetence and completely off the charts.

The Obama/Gates team should receive dereliction of duty citations, plus negligent homicide charges… reckless endangerment of our troops….in addition to the Nobel prize for stupidity…

Pat, your piece is right on and I am glad to see that I was not the only one who understood the significance of this matter.

I too, was completely taken aback. Dumbfounded. Amazed.

I have no idea what on earth to do about it though…
Mark

but it seems to me

1. Obama doesn’t care and is trying to get out of this to save face.

2. The military is trying to reconcile the “noble” purpose set up by the Bush administration and it’s pro-American roots WITH the radicalization of the Commander in Chief — the entire Executive Branch.

i.e. It’s tough to be American when your boss wants to hand your ass (and the ass of your country who you swore to protect and defend) over to the world on a silver plate.

Why is anyone surprised about this? Read McChrystal’s Report. He justified asking for up to 80,000 troops at a time.

And this president “parcels” out the “surge.”

Clearly non-commital.

And now McChrystal speaks to the public with a “can-do” attitude, when we all know a few months ago he was publicly condemned for publicly speaking up without blessing of Das Administration.

My heart breaks for what this man is doing to our military, our country — and for what our military is having to put up with.

PW, I don’t know if you were a contractor for the military or part of the military itself,when you taught the rangers, but thank you for all you’ve done & for your support of the mimlitary.

This subject scares the hell out of me. My boy is a new Marine getting deployed in January. I’m fairly certain he hasn’t had enough training. Although he loves his “brothers”, he tells us stories that would make you wonder if anyone in his unit are ready. Combine that with an iffy goal in Afgan and you get reason for serious concern

Someone needs to give Gates and the NSC staff a copy of the Ranger Handbook. It has (or at least had) a nifty thing in it called an OPORD (OPerations ORDer for those non-Army types). Seems to me, “Mission” was right near the top of said OPORD. Might make a reasonably good template for decision-making…

Gates has never impressed me as SecDef, and it has been amateur hour in the White House since this administration took office. So this episode is not terribly surprising, as saddening as it is. It is doubly saddening as many of my neighbors are on the tip of the spear, as far as the “surge” is concerned.

Thanks for bringing this to light. And thanks for your service.

Biden came out of a national decision making exercise which the O was involved with and said something to the effect the the O should never be in charge of anything-ever-because of his inability to make a tough decision… to bad the MSM was to busy with tingly lieg syndrome to notice…

I’m racking my brain trying to think of a time in the history of warfare where one side wasn’t trying to defeat the other side. This Gates guy is a real piece of work. At least Rumsfeld made mistakes trying to do the right thing. Not wanting to defeat an enemy in warfare is egregious (they certainly want to defeat YOU!) but then not communicating that to the troops just shows a fundamental lack of respect.

This fits into the Obama narrative that he is hands-off, inexperienced, and elitist. Obama seems to care little about the military. He can sign all the letters he wants and watch all the caskets go by he wants, but we ALL know, despite his many faults, George W. Bush deeply cared for soldiers and families. We know the famous photographs of him. What photos have we seen of Obama? Haven’t seen him shed a tear or comfort a family member. Meanwhile cheerleader Chris Matthews sneers at the Corps of Cadets, of which body the biggest dirtbag of the bunch is more American than 10,000 Chris Matthews.

Obama is rapidly headed for sub-Jimmy Carter status as a president. I expected the pendulum of the American conventional wisdom to swing to the Right this year, but not to clock me upside the head in the process!

He Did better with regard to Iraq. Is Obama That contagious?

And if there is consensus that there is a problem then the butcher paper goes on the walls and everybody gets to get up and make their spiel about what the problem is. Then the facilitator nee Boss takes some more butcher paper out and has someone summarize all the stuff written on the previous pieces of butcher paper. Then they spend endless time talking about each of the summary points and prioritizing them. Then more butcher paper goes up and everybody gets to do their spiel about what if anything should be done and writing on the butcher paper. Then the faciltator summarize it all on more butcher paper. Then they talk and talk to achieve consensus on what if any of the actions they might take. This process goes on in something akin to the infinite division of time until they finally achieve consensus on what if anything to do – usually nothing.

The above scenario is also enthusiastically employed against politically inconvenient individuals. The consensus is decided beforehand and the “problem” is always solved by transferring all of said individual’s chips to another player. Firsthand advice here… If you get called to one of these as a guest of honor, start looking for another job before they apply the tar and feathers… it’s a b!tch finding a friend afterwords.

on his civilian advisors more heavily than the military in formulating his so-called new strategy. So no surprise about this taking place. Only surprise is that we have access to a report like you point to. Perhaps connected to this is, as told in the Weekly Standard, that Napolitano nor DHS were consulted about the decision to try KSM in a NY civil court. Why do we have a cabinet if they do not work together? Seems that consolidation is rampant, and diffusion of power is nonexistent.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

Can you imagine how many combat operations were undertaken to fulfill this mission where guys got into a hostile engagements unnecessarily?

I realize the blame game doesn’t produce any positive results and thereby one you don’t want to play. Nonetheless sir, I “fail” Obama and his entire National Security team including Gates. The penalty? They are toast when their term is up.

Rangers lead the way.

Not that I have heard word one of any follow up to it. Until this post. (Although maybe it’s been all over the diaries, which I just don’t have the time to read all of.)
The idea that the four star General in charge of the ‘new’ strategy set by the new CINC spent 6 months, hell 6 hours, planning, developing and certainly to some extent executing a strategy to perform a mission, only to have said CINC claim it’s the wrong mission????????
Are you kidding me?
Can this possibly be a serious report? (I don’t doubt the report, I’m just in shock.)
Is Sec Def Gates really that much an idiot?
General Petraues?
Retired Marine General Jones (National Security Adviser)?
Admiral Mullen?
Good God, there has to be better then a century and a half of combined Military experience among just the Generals/Admiral, and they allowed such a fundamental Chain of Command Failure to not only happen, but drag on for half a year?
I think very little of the current Oval Office Occupant, and even less of most of his minions.
But I honestly expected that the Senior Military Officers would recognize the requirement to be far more careful then usual when dealing with political types.
That they did not……..that actually scares me more then the potential impact on the country of Communist China all but owning our debt. Or the plethora of laws, regulations and rules that this Administration is putting in place to throttle the American Economy.
If the Nation has lost the General Officers at the highest levels of the Defense Establishment, if said Generals have forgotten their primary Oath, then it is just a matter of time before the Nation is done for.
I know that this is a reactionary statement on my part, but if the Four Star Officers knew that General McChrystal was operating under a ‘mistaken’ understanding of his orders, or they themselves were operating under a ‘mistaken’ understanding of the orders, and the lot of them do not Resign in Protest, then they have, IMO, failed to honor their oath. How any of them can face the public, the Congress or, most importantly, the troops, and declare that NOW they are 100% behind the ‘new’ plan……..until what? The next correction of a ‘mistaken’ understanding of their orders?

omes in the military schools.

Why? Well, in the military, if you get something wrong, there are immediate, obvious and often catastrophic consequences.

It’s one thing to waste $100 million on a study that determines that we spend too much time on studies. It’s another to waste a platoon on a combat mission that ultimately doesn’t achieve anything really worthwhile.

In what the Army calls the Military Decision Making Process, (MDMP) the VERY FIRST thing you do is analyze your mission and come up with an agreed-upon mission statement. That way, everybody’s on the same sheet of music once the work really started. This minimizes wasted time and effort and helps ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, all the efforts of all the people in the unit are directed toward tasks that accomplish something meaningful, not superfluous.

In MDMP, we even make the commander review and then approve the mission statement, before any serious staff planning begins.

Didn’t someone make our Commander In Chief review GEN McChrystal’s mission statement?

If this is how this administration conducts war,it is long past salvageable.

It is lost. Bring our guys home, I don’t want any more of America’s finesat dying while The Most Impeachment-Worthy President In History holds his ‘little richard’.

In prior wars one heard about mission creep whereby a precise military goal morphed and expanded. The problem with this change of mission is it is prompted by political ends. The time frame must suit his political needs and thus, the mission is diminished from “defeat the Taliban” to “degrade the Taliban.” It is not the fault of McChrystal that Obama can’t make a tough decision and stick to it. Obama will shift unremittingly to suit his ego.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

And someone in the situation room says
” Is that what you you really think your mission is ?”
How is McCrystal supposed to take this? He’s out there doing his best to win in an operation and he gets this out of the chain of command?
This is complete PERVERSION! It is SICK!
General McCrystal can’t quit on our boys. I don’t think he ever will.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they hung him out to dry.

This ignorant phlemball of ego took months to respond to a strategic request for troops, then reponded with only 75% of what was needed.

This Nobel Prize Meal with Fries purchaser is inexperienced, ignorant; immature and in over his head!

I’ll be going into my coma now, and awaking in 2012. Make sure the moron in chief doesn’t get us nuked before then.

Disgusted, sure. Worried, absolutely. But not surprised.

And, contra Pat, I DO blame Obama. He is the CINC. He is the one who, if he had any management skills at all, would have ensured that everyone under him in a position of authority — from the NSC to SecDef to GEN McCrystal, agreed to and understood exactly what the mission was. In MARCH.

But he never met with GEN McCrystal, until his flying trip to Copenhagen to sell the Chicago Olympics. And then, it was for a mere 25 minutes.

Teh Won doesn’t give a rat’s hindquarters for the military as a whole, or the individuals in it. Frankly, I wonder sometimes that, if not for the political hit he would take as CINC, he isn’t secretly happy when “baby-killers” die. He IS a 60′s radical at heart, and that’s what THEY think of our military.

in anything but academics and posturing. And he’s poor at the former, at least, he won’t let us see his grades…

His expertise is posturing so that he achieves whatever he needs for the next advancement of THE OBAMA LEGACY.

Need street cred as an authentic & angry black?– Attend The “Rev” J. Wright’s “church” for twenty years, have your daughters baptized there, etc.

Need public proof that you’re not a racist hack?– Throw the aforementioned J. Wright under the bus.

Need further proff that you’re not a racist?– Trash and then throw the grandmother who raised you under the bus.

Need cred that you’re not a commie? Throw your pal Van Jones under the bus.

Need an endorsement from the far loonie left? Castigate your predecessor and make ridiculous campaign claims.

Need to not look like a fool after realizing your campaign promises were nonesense?– Throw Gen. McCrystal and the troops to the wolves.

And so it goes…

under Kissinger and Nixon for BO not to know this is criminal. I do fault him. Everything I have heard is that he is intellectually lazy. He does not read the reports to sent to him. He delegates all authority even within the White House. He is the image not the intellect behind his administration.

but in the CIC role they are dangerous.

When I read the story about McChrystal’s troop request in August, the WH reaction, it was clear to me that Obama had not the slightest comprehension of the policy he had approved in March, and Gen McChrystal acted on. Obama simply signed off on whatever Jones put in front of him. The consequences of this staggering ineptitude and ignorance on the part of the President are huge — leading to the disastrous months of public dithering, leaks, undermining of various principals and so on. At various times leaks portrayed McChrystal as leading a coup, Karzai entirely unreliable, and so on.

The Post story (known in the biz as a tick-tock) confirmed my view. The problem lies with the fact that Obama has no understanding of, no talent for, no experience in the duties of the executive: these are, prioritizing, delegating, and decision-making.

This failure to understand leadership, let alone any ability, has doomed Obama’s Presidency. This is obvious on a host of issues. In the area of national security, defense and war leadership, his Presidency is a disaster.

In the area of decision-making, consider the following, from a fawning New Yorker study of Obama’s economic team (another team of geniuses) and their handling of the economic crisis of 2008-9. The story (11/12/09) describes a meeting where rivals argue over whether to adopt Little Timmy’s plan to use your money to bail out the banks, and if so should the amount be changed. After hours of arguing, Obama announces his decision:

“You guys work this out, and when I come back I want you to tell me what your agreed-upon approach is.”

This is what thinks decision-making is — signing off on a consnsus. The problem, of course, is that there is no agreed-upon approach to Afghanistan. I venture to guess that Obama tried some variation of the above quote over the six-months of dithering, and someone explained to him that his job was to actually decide.

I wish I could say it comes as a surprise……..

I read about this meeting several days ago, sir, and was shocked and disturbed for two reasons. First of all, that anyone could disagree with such a basic mission statement. Why else would we embark on combat operations if not to defeat our enemy and defend the weak or defenseless? Second, that such a failure to communicate at the highest level of command could exist and go on for such a period of time undetected and unresolved.

I came to the conclusion some time ago that that the people in charge and the ones getting the most support in the media have an aversion to identifying our enemies. This is evident by avoiding words or concepts like “victory”. Talk of negotiation with the Taliban comes from this mindset. This sort of thing makes me wonder what happened to the country I thought I was a part of. Did the sheep decide they didn’t need the sheepdogs anymore? The wolves can’t believe their good fortune.

Achance’s decription of management by committee is bureaucracy personified. We need leaders rather than managers. Nessa’s Samuel Adams quote describes bureaucrats to me, their tranquil servitude does us a disservice.