So You Want to Be an Adviser
2006; The MIT Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture
ResumoYour ideal position is when you are present and not noticed. -Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence, 1917(1) THE LAST THING I ever expected was to go to war in my 27th and 28th years of service. Oh, sure, I'd done the shadow-boxing in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 1990 and in Haiti for a few days in 1995, but those hardly counted. Like most Americans, I hadn't heard much about this Osama bin-Laden individual and his ilk, though I'd watched as our embassies were attacked in Iran, Lebanon, Kenya, and Tanzania; had seen the Marines pay the ultimate price one ugly Sunday in 1983; and knew what had happened in Mogadishu on another Sunday 10 Octobers later. I definitely understood that Saddam Hussein had his fingers in some of this rotten stuff, aside from the outrages he had inflicted on his own suffering people. Of course, I knew all of that, at least as some kind of barely noticed backdrop, heat lightning playing on the horizon of a summer evening. So off I went to Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) rotations and joint duty and various exercises, all great experiences, and all pretty familiar to anyone in our Army in the 1980s and 1990s. But America's terrorist enemies had their timetables regardless of mine or yours. On 11 September 2001, they moved with horrific results. This time they hit our home, and hit us hard. We have been at war since that bright September morning. If you look at the beginning of the latest Quadrennial Defense Review, you'll see this flat declaration: United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war.2 The passive voice might be kind of awkward, but I think we all get that one quite clearly. This Long War, the Global War on Terror, World War IV, or whatever you want to call it, has fully encompassed all of us in uniform. It will do so for many years to come. Such a stark reality carries some freight. Our enemies are cunning, ruthless, and numerous. They move in the dark corners of many regions of the world. They lash out on their schedules, not ours. Because of those characteristics, they defy conventional solutions. Smacking such foes with Aegis cruisers or armored brigades or F-22A Raptors may work now and then, in the same sense that if you hammer mercury blobs you get smaller and smaller blobs. But the mercury will still be there, and if left intact, it will come back together. The goal here is to destroy the terrorists, not disperse them. That takes presence and persistence in a lot more places and times than we can fill with troops, planes, and ships. Even an aspiring hyperpower has limits. So we have needed and will continue to need help. Fortunately, we have that, and in great numbers. We have more countries working with us in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and other theaters than we had in the Korean War. Some can keep pace with us step for step, like the British, Australians, and Danes. Others fill distinct military roles or work in key locations, like the Koreans, the Czechs, and the Georgians, among many others. But the bulk of the folks out with us are local friends. In today's major theaters, most of the fighting is done by Afghans and Iraqis.3 They have signed on, but they could use our help. The Coalition is willing, but sometimes the flesh is weak. That's where I came in, old enough but of some use, I guess. Like many, I got the call to join this Long War not with U.S. forces, but with Iraqis. If I ever thought somebody might need me for the real thing, I sure never expected it to be with foreign troops. All my life I had read about advisers like Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence in Arabia, General Joe Stillwell in China, and Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann in Vietnam.4 I couldn't help but notice that these famous ones were often eccentric, regularly frustrated, and commonly came to unpleasant ends. I resolved right then and there not to be famous, and I'm happy to say I've succeeded very well in that aim. Your goal as an adviser is to make your counterpart famous, not you. …
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