We are the best...

...or so say our leaders.   But most truly successful organizations continually seek proof in reality and ask questions as to how they can become better.  Tom Ricks points out that our military leaders do not do that. 

First of all, Ricks acknowledges that we haven't done that well in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There are enough mistakes to go around.  And, Ricks believes that our generals have made a number of mistakes in these wars, but they have escaped criticism.  The Army did research its efforts in Vietnam and acknowledged that serious mistakes were made.  Thus far, the Army has not said anything about the mistakes that have been made in our 21st century wars.  Rather, the military places all of the blame on our civilian leaders.

Ricks raises some basic questions:

• Why do we serially rotate our top war commanders?  We have had 11commanders in Afghanistan in 11 years.
• Why do our military chiefs pay so much attention to getting our troops to the battleground and seemingly so little to what they’ll need once the initial battles are over?  Such was the case in Iraq: our military commanders focused on planning the 2003 invasion but virtually ignored the task of planning for what might happen during the long occupation that followed. 
• Why weren’t our troops better prepared for the challenges of protecting civilians from resistance fighters, interrogating suspected insurgents and detaining enemy fighters?

These are rather basic questions, but in these days of warrior worship none of our leaders - military or civilian - is asking them.