Does LTG Bill Caldwell read this blog?
Charlie apologizes for her absence...she's only recently returned from The Flatlands and has just begun to unbury herself. But the last week has brought two Bill Caldwell related notes that she just *had* to share with her loyal readers. (It should be said that we here at Abu M are officially in the bag for LTG Caldwell.)
First, while the good general is well known as an advocate of increased (and improved) blogging by soldiers, it turns out he's turned this into a graduation requirement for the majors attending CGSC at Ft. Leavenworth. At least, that's what he told Charlie. If she can figure out a way for you fine field grade officers to get credit for blogging here, she'll be sure to let you know.
Second, one deep bit of inside baseball from the world of professional-military education (affectionately known as PME) is the difficulty in recruiting foreign services officers as students in the intermediate courses (like CGSC or its Marine equivalent at Quantico). While these schools are geared toward military officers, there is a noticable interagency presence as well. FSO's, however, are more commonly found only at the "top-level schools" like the National War College). Now, astute readers of this blog will know that's because State is miserably under-staffed. (Insert military band comparison here.)
So, LTG Caldwell has once again put his money where his mouth is: he's offered to cough up one officer for each FSO the State Dept. sends to CGSC. (Charlie's guessing these officers take up slack at Main State, not in the Embassies, but she's willing to be corrected on this score.) This is exactly the kind of wealth transfer Secretary Gates has been calling for: using the vast resources of DoD to enable more flexibility at State.
Bill Caldwell: our favorite three star.
17 comments:
That's a damn good idea.
I've quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/09/re-does-ltg-bill-caldwell-read-this.html
If State Department made some of their positions to be "Federal Technician" positions for Reserve and National Guard, they will see plenty of applicants for those positions :)
Yes Jimmy, and then those technician/AGR positions would attract exactly the WRONG people for them.
1. Folks looking for a safe, non-deployable sinecure
2. Has-beens/never-weres who could never hope to make the equivalent of AGR pay in their middling daily lives. We've have thousands of these "self mobilizers" since 9/11.
You might recall that my response to Abu Muqawama's blog of 28 May, 2008, entitled "The Warrior King" fulfilled my blogging requirement for Intermediate Level Education. The requirement is simple. The student must state his rank and name, disclose his identity as a student attending a CGSC course, present his comment, print it, and deliver it to his proffessor for credit. LTG Caldwell regularly comments on student's blog submissions. So it seems safe to infer that he (or his aide de camp)spends some time surfing the net to gain an appreciation for what his students are thinking.
Respectfully,
Richard K. Cassem II
Major, United States Army
@Jimmy,
That sounds like a really bad idea. FSOs at the level/grade appropriate for military schools such as CGSC and above are the equivalent of majors thru brigadier generals, and typically hold down very responsible/senstive duty positions. In the case of the FSOs who would be competitive to attend such schools, that even even more true. Any "exchange" (hostage?) officers sent over from DA to cover their absence while attending military courses would need to be top material, not "we can spare this guy" sorts.
If LTG Caldwell is offering "trades" to the interagency they'll be quality officers. You can bet the farm on that.
yes.. blogging is a requirement for graduation but the required blogging is done on an internal school site. however, LTG Caldwell encourages officers to blog for strategic outreach.
MAJ WD
recent CGSC grad
PS.. many officers of all grades read your blog.
I have linked to and quoted you here: http://lifeafterjerusalem.blogspot.com/2008/09/public-diplomacy-and-resource-shortage.html
@MAJ Doyle,
I don't doubt that, I was responding to Jimmy's suggestion of providing a "training float" for this using AGRs or the equivalent.
Errm, can anyone in here debunk this one? Is George Bush getting worried about Argentine redux?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/index.html
Quote: "beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The article details:
"They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it. They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and *crowd control*" (my asteriks..)
fnord, that story is just a wild misunderstanding.
basically, the army is saying, look, we have all these soldiers in the US sitting around and waiting for their next deployment. We'll give them something to do, a reason for the training and a reason not to give them a 1-yr vacation, by telling some of them to stand ready. Ready for what, who knows?
Y'all, it was kind of a joke about the federal technicians system there. However, that says more to the accountability of the people in the tech system than the system itself. The system can work, if only the leadership is willing to hold them accountable to standards.
It is perfectly possible to, say, have Army Reserve Europe to have several technician positions in European embassies, where the employees support the various civil service functions there. That's just an idea to get more bodies into the embassies.
If LTG Caldwell read the blog, would he sign on as Frontier6?
SNLII--one would assume (hope?) so.
Jimmy: Regarding the story, I would hope you are right. The Army Times story paints a different picture, though (click my name). It goes on in a positively gleeful tone about how they are to perform crowd-control, how they are all getting tazered, and how they look forward to employing the skills from Iraq back home.
Quote: "“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
So while I am not too paranoid, I think in the advent of another Seattle these folks seem ready to go crack heads. We saw a taste of it at the republican convention earlier this year, where my poor anarchist vegan friends were used as testing rabbits for various non-lethal techniques. There is also quite a lot of legal issues surrounding this one, no?
Gen. Caldwell's great and has some good ideas, but the senior career leadership at State has passively-aggressively resisted all of the way. State's personnel assignment system ignores CGSC graduates with a studied indifference that equates "learning as not working."
The newly created Political Advisor positions are at the FS-01, and Senior Foreign Service ranks (0-6, flag officers). The new positions in the Office of Reconstruction and Stability are at the FS-02, and FS-01 levels (0-5, 0-6).
State's personnel system looks down on "stretch" bids for all of the most undesirable assignments (Central Africa). State also does not see the need for Staff and Liaison officers like the military does, they want "big-brain" ambassador types to detail and opine to the commander instead of working as a staff officer at the operational level.
Without change-management at State, real interagency cooperation at the operational level will continue to suffer.
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