RealMattGallagher

I've seen those articles - the one in The Atlantic was particularly damning. That said, some of the best officers I served with decided to stay in and make it a career. As a citizen, I'm eased by that. Others, though - ones I thought would pin on general stars someday - have said "Enough is enough." And who can blame them? Four, five tours to combat zones will do that to anyone, no matter how tough and committed.

I think we won't really know the effects of the potential 'brain drain' for 15, 20 years, when the young lieutenants and captains of Iraq and Afghanistan are generals making top-level strategic decisions. I'll admit to being a bit pessimistic about the whole thing, though. The military is a bureaucracy that feigns at meritocracy more than it really conducts itself as one.

My unit (2-14 Cavalry, 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division) deployed to Iraq in late 2007. I was a young lieutenant in charge of a scout platoon of 30 or so soldiers, stationed at a small combat outpost northwest of Baghdad. Our mission was to conduct counterinsurgency operations in the rural town of Saba al-Bor. With my command's blessing, I decided to keep a blog, mostly as a way to keep in touch with family and friends.

For six months, I blogged twice a week or so, about our lives and our missions - the mundane days spent at checkpoints, the Iraqi orphan who sold us energy drinks, the firefight we rolled into in the middle of a neighborhood. That sort of stuff. My command was supportive. UNTIL ...

In June, my battalion commander called me into his office and said he wanted to make me an executive officer (XO.) A pseudo-promotion! But it'd have taken me off the line and away from my soldiers. Not thinking about anything but that, I told him (truthfully) that I wasn't going to make the Army a career, and maybe the position should go to someone who was going to? He lost his shit, and we had a one-way conversation, the type that can only occur in the military. He got personal and nasty. My Irish temper stoked, I went back to my hooch and did the same thing I'd been doing for six months when confronted with complex situations - I wrote about it, and I posted it.

Naively, I didn't think the post would do anything. I was just venting. But the Internet is the Internet, and it felt like every commander from Iraq to the Pentagon read it in the next three hours. The battalion commander ordered me to stop blogging, and I followed that order. But there was a lot of pushback - some readers felt he'd gone too far, considering I hadn't violated any OPSEC (operational security) regulations or anything. There were a few congressional inquiries into the matter.

It was kind of silly and surreal compared to the realities of our day-to-day lives at the point. I got yelled at a whole bunch and then back on a counter-IED patrol that night. But yeah, getting shut down like that definitely fueled me to tell my story more - not just my story, but the story of my soldiers and the Iraqis we interacted with every day.

tl; dr - I made fun of my boss on the Internet

I hear you. The rumor was the officer lobotomy happens at Major school. As for the winning battles/losing wars question - I think it's because we keep trying to "solve" geopolitical issues with just armed force instead of using armed force as part of the equation. We can't "win" in Afghanistan, not in the traditional force-on-force way.

If we were serious about combatting militant Islamic extremism we'd have a giant-ass State Department with DOD-level funding. But that's all hippie shit, and it's easier to just bomb things. Just my two cents.

A friend of mine made a mirror site - http://kaboomwarjournalarchive.blogspot.com/

Trying to explain to senior officers what a mirror site was, and why they couldn't get rid of it was a fun conversation!

Yeah, sorry, that wasn't very clear. I'd like to see the State Department receive more funding (perhaps even at the expense of the DOD's budget) and more of our efforts in the Middle East be led by the State Dept rather than the military. "Kill people and break things" is both a common term in the Army and sort of their purpose. And it's an important purpose. It's also something to be utilized with great care and restraint.

A good example of this are the various refugee camps in Europe and the Middle East right now. Places like that, with conditions like that, are where the next generation of extremism can fester if allowed to. The State Department is working with those camps some, but they have a limited reach and limited resources. Meanwhile, something like a billion American dollars disappeared with the "Free Syrian Army." Just gone.