More on Bureaucratic Failure & Iraq

Two more voices have added themselves to the rising chorus saying that America’s government bureaucracies responsible for engaging the outside world are failing in their basic mission to protect the nation.

One of the voices is that of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On this Sunday’s Meet the Press, Gingrich twice made the point that America’s civilian bureaucracies are not effectively supporting the War on Terror…

I mean, we, we are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war, and frankly, our bureaucracies aren’t responding fast enough, we don’t have the right attitude about this…

…and…

We need to fundamentally reorganize our nonmilitary bureaucracies to be effective. I mean, part of the reason you don’t have an effective Iraqi bureaucracy is the American inability at the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department to provide any level of systematic competence is, is almost zero.

Interestingly, neither time that Mr. Gingrich made this point did Meet the Press host Tim Russert follow-up on it. Perhaps bureaucratic reform is too unsexy a topic for top-of-the-pinnacle MSM journalists.

Or perhaps a more subtle bias is at work. “Objective” news reporters have been known to express some very strange ideas about the role of bureaucracies in a democratic government. Here, for instance, is of the New York Times national-security reporter James Risen (quoted via a column by Michael Barone) describing how he believes that elected and cabinet-level government officials should not discuss policies, even amongst themselves, lying outside of parameters determined by career bureaucrats...

Well, I–I think that during a period from about 2000–from 9/11 through the beginning of the gulf–the war in Iraq, I think what happened was you–we–the checks and balances that normally keep American foreign policy and national security policy towards the center kind of broke down. And you had more of a radicalization of American foreign policy in which the–the–the career professionals were not really given a chance to kind of forge a consensus within the administration. And so you had the–the–the principles–Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tenet and Rice and many others–who were meeting constantly, setting policy and really never allowed the people who understand–the experts who understand the region to have much of a say.

Can a reporter with Mr. Risen's odd theory of democratic governance be trusted to be “curious” (to use the favorite word of reporter-journalists) about the failures -- described by multiple sources -- of American’s civilian bureaucracies? Or is a reporter who believes that the government that governs best is a government composed of bureaucrats operating without interference from those pesky elected officials ideologically predisposed not to pursue stories on bureaucratic shortcomings?

The second criticism of bureaucratic effort in the War on Terror comes from Andrew F. Krepinevich (bio) who suggested in Friday’s New York Times that America’s military bureaucracy also bears some culpability for the sluggish American response to the enemy we are fighting. According to Mr. Krepinevich, some of America’s most effective military units are the units closest to their Iraqi counterparts…

Advisers coach their Iraqi counterparts on how to plan, conduct and sustain counterinsurgency operations involving dozens and eventually hundreds of soldiers. They also work to identify and report the corruption in the Iraqi government that can make it difficult to get adequate supplies to Iraqi troops. Unlike the soldiers in American units, who retreat to fortified bases with air-conditioned barracks and other amenities, the advisers live, train, eat and fight with their Iraqi counterparts.

It is not surprising that many Iraqi officers come to treat their American advisers as “brothers,” whereas they view United States units with skepticism. Revealingly, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training and equipping the Iraqi forces, reports that Iraqi troops have never betrayed their United States advisory teams to the insurgents.

One problem faced by the adviser corps, however, is that our military bureaucracy does not reward them in proportion to the additional risks they take and the additional hardships they endure…

Sadly, the Army’s best officers avoid serving as advisers if at all possible. The reason is simple: the Army is far more likely to promote officers who have served with American units than those who are familiar with a foreign military.

Because of the resulting shortfall, some Army units have been given the task of augmenting the advisory teams. Yet often these units simply send their “problem children” — their most marginal officers and sergeants — to support the advisers. This places an additional burden on the advisers, who must not only coach the Iraqis but also deal with their less-than-capable American colleagues.

America clearly has soldiers in the field who know what needs to be done and how best to do it. What we may be missing is an upper echelon of officers who place top priority on advancing the current mission rather than advancing within an outdated promotions policy.