George w. casey jr. - Federation of American Scientists

Officer. While it took some convincing, reassigning
him to a set of tasks he was more professionally interested
in created the opportunity for on-the-job
development in his future field of Intelligence. It also
reenergized his efforts to perform above and beyond
the standard even eight months into a deployment.
Merging Strategy and Execution
In a recent issue of Harvard Business Review,
Roger L. Martin writes about how the idea that execution
distinct from strategy is a flawed assumption,
and that it is not good management practice to say,
“We have a brilliant strategy, but it may fail because
of its implementation.” 5 Looking at the Intelligence
mission through a wider lens, it is imperative that
the leaders who developed the strategic vision for
Iraq during Operation New Dawn see to it that the
tactical implementers have more than just “buy-in.”
“Buy-in” has been misused in corporate and military
planning sessions and has lost its intended
meaning of getting everyone to an agreeable compromise
based on near-equal vested interests–like
shareholders in a joint venture. In Operation New
Dawn, the term seems to have adopted a lingering
connotation of a cheap deal in which one party (U.S.
Forces) gets another (the ISF) to agree on means in
order to achieve the former’s ends. If we are not deliberate
in our information campaign, the “buyers,”
in this case the ISF, will feel they do not have a
say in the best methods to achieve those ends. They
thereby run the risk of being too dependent on the
U.S. military to reach the stated ends, since they did
not take at least equal part in endstate formulation.
In order to move further into the advisory role,
the ISF needs to have more than just “buy-in” in order
to achieve the best results. At the tactical level,
we are trying to enforce this new deal on a daily
basis through interaction and influence. The same
compromise should be the goal at the strategic versus
tactical levels of the Intelligence Warfighting
Function. Tactical units and the intelligence staff
that support post-combat missions in Iraq ought
to have genuine access to strategists and forums
in the IC where policymakers look for the ground
truth. This way, they remain a part of strategy’s ongoing
refinement and not just its execution. Sending
specialized, handpicked analysts from higher to circulate
at the battalion level would be welcomed by
S2 shops that are under manned in order to build
rapport and understand the ground analysts’ methodology
for collecting, analyzing, and processing information
for higher visibility.
However, these “specifically trained analysts…empowered
to methodically identify everyone who collects
valuable information, visit them in the field,
build mutually beneficial relationships with them,
and bring back information to share with everyone
who needs it,” have not yet materialized down at
the battalion level. 6 In fact, coordinating for brigade
Intelligence fusion has been a challenge because of
how spread out we are geographically.
Escorting the BN S2 from an intelligence sharing meeting with the
District Police Chief. Hand grenades and sniper fire still pose a serious
threat to U.S. troops in urban areas, so Infantry dismounts
are often used in conjunction with armored vehicles going to and
from meeting areas in the heart of cities.
Collecting intelligence that is of immediate interest
to higher echelons is important, but allowing
the ground unit time to analyze at their level before
sending the information directly to the policymakers
is absolutely necessary. First, going around the
traditional chain of command and stove-piping the
Intel is a tenuous proposal and makes ground commanders
wary because they are responsible for the
Intelligence that their staff provides higher. Second,
if an S2 provides unanalyzed intelligence directly to
a policy or strategy maker which may then turn into
directives for that S2’s commander, it leaves little
room for further development or argument against
top-driven operations. I agree with General Flynn’s
argument that commanders need to hold S2s accountable
for answering the command’s priority
information requirements, but being relevant still
means conducting analysis at the ground level be-
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