LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

Lamb with Franco
policies in light of new developments. 103 They argue National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice imposed compromises that obscured a clear articulation of
options on how to manage the war in Iraq. As we discuss, Dr. Rice denies this.
It is interesting that in the Obama administration, Cabinet officials sometimes
complained about the opposite tendency. Secretaries Clinton and Gates, for
instance, suggest the Obama administration looked at options in Afghanistan
“from every conceivable angle” and perhaps past the point of marginal additional
benefit. 104
We believe the record on senior leader adaptation to evolving circumstances
is mixed. The innovative dimension of the Surge decisions is discussed
in the previous chapter, and we review other notable successes and failures to
innovate in the rest of this chapter. In summary, however, it seems clear that
the willingness to consider alternative options and courses of action in response
to evolving local conditions varied by leader, issue, and strength of the
organizational culture resisting change.
In sum, there is room for improvement on adaptability, something General
Dempsey and General McChrystal believe is quite important. They observe
that in dynamic irregular warfare challenges, the key to success is not prognosticating
well at the outset but adapting and innovating faster than the adversary.
105 The U.S. national security bureaucracy was not nimble in this respect.
The lack of a clear strategy and bureaucratic conflict contributed to sluggish
performance in Afghanistan and Iraq in several ways. For example, the lack of
coherent strategy was a major factor undermining the U.S. ability to command
and control the war effort for greatest effect. We examine this topic in the next
section.
Command
Unified effort is important because working at cross-purposes is inefficient
and often ineffective as well. The assumption that unified effort is useful reflects
a decisionmaking bias in favor of coherence “based on the principles
of rationality, causality, and intentionality.” 106 This bias inclines “reformers” to
“advocate more systematic attempts to define objectives, establish knowledge
about the world, coordinate among different aspects of a decision, and exercise
control in the name of some central vision.” 107 The reformer perspective
that favors unified effort is consistent with our assumption that senior leader
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