Just as our troops try to implement the new counter insurgency (COIN) in Afghanistan, they encounter a revived enemy… Bureaucracy.
Our soldiers have learned, adapted and adjusted – but the bureaucrats haven’t been standing still.
For some units, ground movement to dislodge the Taliban requires a colonel’s oversight. In eastern Afghanistan, traveling in anything other than a 20-ton mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle requires a written justification, a risk assessment and approval from a colonel, a lieutenant colonel and sometimes a major. … Combat commanders are required to submit reports in PowerPoint with proper fonts, line widths and colors so that the filing system is not derailed.
Bureaucratic sclerosis results from a few things… first, the length of the war permits bureaucracy to take hold and urgency to wane. Second, the lower the mission urgency, the more risk prevention that will be done.
That a “bureaucracy” developed means the war has taken too long and the mission isn’t urgent.
December 11th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Contrast that with the films recently shown on History Channel for WWII, where just about anything went as far as equipment and tactics, as long as the mission got accomplished. It was assumed that war was risky, if it weren’t, what would be the point?
Police used to have the same mentality that is handcuffing the Army. Surround and wait for SWAT was the mantra. Now we are trained to form fire teams and move in quickly to take out active threats. I think the big departments ( LASD, LAPD) are still risk aversive, but not the smaller ones.
December 11th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
It is sounding a lot like an Army I’d prefer my son not join.