Interagency Coordination Requires Dems & Reps To Come Together

Neither the White House nor the Congress has behaved seriously enough to either known lessons of Iraq or to in future avoiding such chaotic and disorganized policy and execution. Both are caught up in near-term fixes or flaming.

Instead, needed is a major overhaul of agency capacities and of interagency coordination.

Prior to the 2003 invasion, we thought we had enough interagency consultation and coordination. Since, we’ve learned that what there was may have been adequate to expectations, but has been inadequate to the evolving situation we misestimated. This hasn’t been corrected, or even seriously been addressed.

In the case of the intelligence reorganization, the White House and Congress just compromised on a shuffle of the deck-chairs and to add bureaucracy. The administration, similarly, appears more reactive than proactive in replacing Secretary Rumsfeld, appointing Lt. Gen. Petraeus, and its current tactical shifts in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations fade from memory. Senate Democrats and Republicans dither and dicker about nonbinding resolutions for personal catharsis and political CYA that express irresolution to our foes and friends.

Last night’s Lehrer News Hour discussion with Democrat Beltway columnist Mark Shields has him noting that the Iraq resolution debate is merely a precurser to the more serious attempts by Democrats to challenge Iraq policy by micromanagement of the military appropriations.

The president now is requesting and being required to do so, to come up with an additional request for supplemental appropriations for the war. That is going to be the vehicle over which the real debate is.

Democrats promise to “scrutinize White House war-spending requests more zealously,” as the Washington Post reports. The report quotes a former top Pentagon official that, “The defense budget request is the sleeper political issue of the year.” Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s concern is the “ ‘opportunity cost’ that would cut into Democrats’ ability to fund their domestic priorities.”

Before the 2006 elections and before the release of the ISG report, Col. Austin Bay tried to get Secretary Rumsfeld to reply to a fundamental weakness in U.S. preparedness and execution in Iraq.

My question: "Mr. Secretary, based on our experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the limited interagency and non-governmental organization (NGO) participation in that operation, how do you see 'Unified Action' evolving for future conflicts?"…

"I'll tell you we're better at it now than we were five years ago," Rumsfeld replied. He acknowledged that "challenges remain" in achieving Unified Action and that effective Unified Action is critical to winning 21st century wars.

He's right -- we are better at it than we were. However, I know we aren't as good at it as we need to be….

The politically deft SecDef finessed the question -- and it was finesse, not dodge. The military jargon masked a heavy political hand grenade I was rolling toward the Beltway. You think Harry Reid's land deal or Mark Foley's messages are big stories? How about a stinging pre-election turf battle between Defense and the departments of State, Treasury, Justice, Commerce and Agriculture, complete with zinger accusations of who is or isn't contributing to the war effort?
I know, that's quite a claim, which is why I need to translate the mil-speak: Unified Action means coordinating and synchronizing every "tool of power" America possesses to achieve a political end -- like winning a global war for national survival against terrorists who hijack economically and politically fragile nations and provinces….

Our system for "Unified Action" is still largely a Cold War, 20th century relic designed to prop up governments (so often corrupt and ill-led), instead of helping individuals and neighborhoods become economically self-sustaining and self-securing. Winning war in the Age of the Internet means improving neighborhoods and individual lives. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and micro-finance whiz Muhammad Yunus understands this.

We are in a long, global war, where economic and political development programs must reinforce security and intelligence operations -- and vice versa.

We've been improvising "joint development and security operations," and we've learned from our improvisation (Rumsfeld's "we're better than we were").

But it's time to quit improvising. Effective "Unified Action" requires re-engineering 20th century Beltway bureaucracies -- which means thoughtful, sophisticated cooperation between the executive branch and Congress.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations included the following three:

RECOMMENDATION 74: In the short term, if not enough civilians volunteer to fill key positions in Iraq, civilian agencies must fill those positions with directed assignments. Steps should be taken to mitigate familial or financial hardships posed by directed assignments, including tax exclusions similar to those authorized for U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq.

RECOMMENDATION 75: For the longer term, the United States government needs to improve how its constituent agencies—Defense, State, Agency for International Development, Treasury, Justice, the intelligence community, and others—respond to a complex stability operation like that represented by this decade’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the previous decade’s operations in the Balkans. They need to train for, and conduct, joint operations across agency boundaries, following the Goldwater-Nichols model that has proved so successful in the U.S. armed services.

RECOMMENDATION 76: The State Department should train personnel to carry out civilian tasks associated with a complex stability operation outside of the traditional embassy setting. It should establish a Foreign Service Reserve Corps with personnel and expertise to provide surge capacity for such an operation. Other key civilian agencies, including Treasury, Justice, and Agriculture, need to create similar technical assistance capabilities.

Along with many others, these recommendations have received scant attention, or been dismissed as either too large or serious a project for our chattering politicians.

Instead of seeking headlines or to micromanage tactics, the Congress should be holding serious studies and hearings on how to accomplish better agency capacities and coordination. The administration should be proactive in offering concrete recommendations, and in engaging in serious consultations with the Congress. This will demonstrate whether either the White House or the Congress is serious about better waging the long war that both admit we’re in.