Cyber Captains Career Course : The Army Profession

Perhaps there 's no getting away from our awesome political gap, a perpetual conflict of armed forces, and any endeavors to change the guidelines of engagement are purposeless. Alternately perhaps the trivialization of governmental issues has achieved a final turning point, so that the vast majority consider it to be only one more preoccupation, a game, with legislators our paunch-bellied combatants and the individuals who try to focus just fans on the sidelines: We paint our confronts red or

This paper will look at and discuss the presidency’s actions involving Iraq from Reagan to Obama. Each and every president during this time has used different strategies and formats to get their agenda across, to not only convince the public, but the international community as well. We will show how Iraq has gone from an ally to overthrowing the government, to the ensuing turmoil that this created for everyone involved, from ours and their citizenship, governing bodies, and other world leaders. With over 35 years of intervention, we will determine if there has been a consensus of actions among our presidents, and see if there is a cohesive US strategy and long term goals that have been reached for all our effort and actions to all of this.

In Obama’s War, Martin Smith, a veteran correspondent, travels across Afghanistan and Pakistan to see for himself how the president’s new strategy is going on, delivering vivid reporting from the ground. It is evident that American Soldiers are struggling to make things better in Afghanistan villages, but equally vixen encounters remain across the boundary in Pakistan. This is based on the inadequate resources and less time available to do what needs to be done. The major problem in Pakistan is that the American troops are not sure of what to do. This affects my career as an Army officer as we need proper guidelines in completing our tasks

Evaluating General Franks’ and General Casey’s approach against joint functions exposes a trend of inaccurate and insufficient intelligence resulting in an overdependence on movement and maneuver. Determining current enemy activities, capabilities and potential actions promotes the development of an appropriate operational approach. Intelligence failures resulted in weaknesses of both Commander’s plans. General Franks’ incorrect assumptions about Saddam’s grip on power, Iraq’s chemical weapons capabilities, the population’s acceptance of the “liberation” and the failure to identify the Fedayeen’s potential impact on offensive operations greatly increased operational risk. The lean invasion force accepted excessive risk as it raced to the Iraqi capital without the mass to secure its lines of communications or react to unanticipated events. General Casey misunderstood the true cause of sectarian violence and pursued an operational approach that risked strategic failure. Intelligence gaps propagated his belief that the insurgency was the source of sectarian violence and thus the conflict’s center of gravity. Casey believed that American troop presence was an irritant that fueled the insurgency and withdrawing coalition troops would reduce tensions and force Iraq to stand up and accept responsibility for its internal security. This strategy led to record violence in May 2006 and General Casey’s belated realization that he needed more

Franks, instead of developing his own problem statement or attempting to develop his own independent operational approach, simply relied on Rumsfeld’s “slices”, which though operationally useful, provided very little strategic value to guide his planners. (site) Without a proper operational approach, CENTCOM planned their invasion based on incorrect understanding of the Iraqi Operational Environment, this led Franks and his planners to accept bold assumptions about the quality, willingness and availability of Iraqi Police and Regular Army Forces during Phase IV of Cobra II. (site) A correct and current assessment of Iraq’s Operational Environment would have invalidated many of these assumptions. (site) These invalid assumptions allowed Rumsfeld

In the book, the author makes it clear that executing counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is a difficult task for Special Forces operators. She explains that the commanding officers knew these operations would be a challenging feat. For instance, the author details Major General Scott Miller’s efforts to expand the Afghan Local Police initiative to the rural areas of Afghanistan. Major General Miller felt that the same approach that was taken in the cities would not work in the rural areas. In other words, the “Afghan local policemen by themselves were not sufficient to bring peace to rural Afghanistan, and the country had to be stabilized from the village up” (Robinson 2013, 26). In this instance, the book demonstrates the Generals knowledge and awareness of the situation in the region. That is to say, “the only capacities for dispute resolution and law enforcement in much of the country consist of village or tribal councils and mullahs who administer a crude interpretation of Sharia” (Rubin 2007, 76). Both the author and the general realized the importance villages have in securing peace in Afghanistan.

It is not enough to understand that the surge and Petraeus’s strategy were effective; policymakers must be able to comprehend why they were effective, that way these strategies and lessons are properly put into action in the future. I will explain why they were effective by comparing and contrasting the situation in Iraq before and after February, 2007 (when Petraeus took command and the additional troops started arriving) and establishing the causal relationships between the new strategy and the decline in violence and that between the troop surge and the decline in violence. Furthermore, I will address the arguments put forth by those who do not believe the surge or Petraeus’s strategy were the main factors that caused violence in Iraq to fall precipitously.

In March 2003, prior to the U.S. invasion to Iraq, a reporter noted to then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that “Calling Iraq an insurgency or a guerilla war brings to mind Vietnam, which most people can agree was not a resounding success.” Rumsfeld replied, “The reporters are asking is it Vietnam yet? - hoping it is. And it isn’t. It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is correct in that there are many intricacies separating an analogous relationship between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Although it would be over simplification and gross negligence to say that military operations in Afghanistan is today’s version of the Vietnam war, there are similarities between both wars that are worthy

In response to the September 11th attacks, the United States launched the Global War on Terrorism, invading both Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite these wars and the necessity for post-conflict stability operations, military leadership, including the Secretary of Defense, had neither desired nor trained its personnel to effectively conduct stability operations, which require effective interagency collaboration. Failing to effectively leverage interagency capabilities during the early phases of the 2003 Iraq War at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels prolonged the achievement of the U.S. military’s objective—transferring power to the Iraqis.

Strategists will argue that civilians have control of the military. This is in line with Clausewitz notion that war must be subordinate to policy. One will hope for a healthy relationship between both entities; in a sense, while there is no clear line of defined responsibility, both parties should have overlapping knowledge and understanding. As easy as this concept may appear, its applicability can often create discordance among stakeholders. This in turn will create a lack of coordination and participation, all of which are detrimental to the effective integration of

If I was in the role of a senior adviser to the President of the United States will view strategy and grand strategy with such skillful management and wise intelligence of state affairs. Strategy may be defined as an overall plan that is crafted with a series of actions and support in order to increase favorable possibilities of victory, or winning favorable goals to their interests and purpose (Heuser, 2010). Strategy may include the uses of the country’s instruments of power, usually military forces. However, statecrafts have to keep in mind that the conflicting side may have the common interest and a common strategy. Strategy itself is not only a concept, but “an inherent element of statecraft at all times” (Heuser, 2010).

Finding the best course of action for individual circumstances can be a difficult process, as was the case with the invasion of Iraq by the United States in March of 2003. Considering all viable options, for a specific situation or circumstance is necessary to find the most effective solution or action. In this specific case, we examine the government’s response to the crisis in Iraq and need to evaluate which issues define it, as either logical incrementalism or the rational planning model. In this case we learn there were three key players, General David Petraeus, General Jack Keane, and General Raymond Odierno, who use the logical incrementalism method, to relay relevant information among interested parties, in an effort to shift the progress

Determining the nature of the conflict is a crucial first step in understanding what is required to develop an effective strategy. Iraq presented the United States with a highly complex, complicated, and challenging environment to fully understand and assess. The longstanding religious conflicts, unequal wealth distribution, limited economic development, disenfranchised young male population, presence of terrorism, and a multitude of other factors increased the difficulty of assessing the battlefield in Iraq. Any change to the status quo could lead to second and third order effects, which would only further convolute the situation in Iraq. Clausewitz once stated, “The nature of war is complex and changeable,” and the battlefield in Iraq was no exception. In order for the United States Administration to develop an effective strategy, a solid understanding of the nature of the conflict was required. The initial strategy failed to properly balance the ends,

The Iraq insurgency, and the US strategy to deal with that problem ultimately proved to be more complicated than originally thought. The simplicity that framed the initial phase IV strategy was ineffective and lacked understanding of the operational environment. If US leaders and policy makers would have had a better understanding of the context of the insurgency, phase IV planning may have allowed a timelier and more efficient transition to Iraqi government control. As a tool to aid military leaders and staffs, the Cynefin model can increase understanding of problems unique to new operating environments, such as the Iraq insurgency. By understanding cause and effect relationships, leaders can make better contextual decisions within their

“There is substantial evidence that the Bush administration – like many of its predecessors – oversold the threat to foster its preferred policy choice.” ” There is a debate in the public on whether the intelligence that led to the Iraqi war was shifted in the direction by the Bush administration, or whether the I.C simply got it wrong. A realization that the I.C got it wrong might be equally damaging, as it would mean that they did not do their jobs properly.