Via Hilzoy, I just learned that soldier-scholar-blogger Andrew Olmsted was killed yesterday in Iraq. According to various reports, including comments on his blog for the Rocky Mountain News, it looks like he was serving as an adviser to the Iraqi Army in Iraq's volatile Diyala province, where he was ambushed and killed. I traded a number of emails with Andrew over the years and thought quite highly of him, and regret that I never had the opportunity to meet him. Now I mourn his loss, and extend my condolences to his family.

His last blog post, published posthumously, is a powerful and moving essay about personal service and politics. This section stood out to me:

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

On a similar note, while you're free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I'll tell you you're wrong. We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.

Update I: It appears that MAJ Olmsted was killed during combat operations near Muqdadiyah, a particularly nasty town northeast of Baqubah in the Diyala river valley. According to the AP:

The U.S. military has stepped up operations against al-Qaida cells and networks north of Baghdad in Diyala province, of which Baqouba is the capital.

* * *

The cease-fire [with al-Sadr] has allowed the U.S. military to concentrate on pursuing al-Qaida in Iraq, which was pushed out of Anbar province by the Awakening Councils and largely expelled from swaths of Baghdad by the U.S. and Iraqi armies.

The majority of the insurgents are thought to have sought shelter in Diyala province, its northeast Diyala river valley region, and around the town of Muqdadiyah and the northern city of Mosul.

The U.S. military said it killed two insurgents and detained 12 in that area. The operations also resulted in the deaths of two American soldiers and the wounding of another in a small-arms attack Thursday.

Update II: The Department of Defense published its official release announcing MAJ Olmsted's death, as well as that of CPT Thomas J. Casey. According to the release: "They died Jan. 3 in As Sadiyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit using small arms fire during combat operations." Both men served on a Military Transition Team in the Diyala province of Iraq, meaning that they were advisers to the Iraqi Army. As Sadiyah is located near Muqdadiyah in one of the most violent parts of the Diyala province, a place where Sunni insurgents, Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters, and Shiite militias all fight each other. It has been the site of many recent combat operations. MAJ Olmsted and CPT Casey were serving at the tip of the spear, in one of the most difficult jobs in Iraq, in one of the most turbulent places.

I was thrilled this morning to read the final results from the Iowa caucus. My candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, won decisively. The victory speaks for itself, but I think there's more to the story. Sen. Obama won by rallying Democrats, Republicans and Independents. He earned the support of voters with different backgrounds, beliefs, party identifications, faiths, and ages — and I think that says a lot about the broad appeal he will have in the general election. Voters connect with his post-partisan politics because they want a fundamental change. I believe that he's the right candidate for America at this point in our history, and that the voters in New Hampshire will rally behind him too.

His acceptance speech was downright inspiring. Check it out:



Fired up — ready to go. But let's remember that this is an Ironman Triathlon, not a sprint, and we've only just come out of the water on the swim. There's a long race between here and the Democratic nomination, and a marathon after that to election day in November.

The Military Times publishing company, which publishes the independent newspapers like the Army Times and Marine Corps Times, just published its annual poll results for the survey it took of active-duty, reserve and separated/retired troops. The surveys are an imperfect look into the minds of America's servicemembers, because they tend to focus more on career military officers and NCOs, rather than junior enlisted personnel. Nonetheless, they're the best look we have, because it's very tough to do opinion polling for the U.S. military, and the Military Times does the best job possible. I find the data interesting both for what it shows about this year's opinions, and for the trends over the past several years in military opinions.

Of particular note, check out the morale survey for reservists. Some of the more startling statistics which leaped out at me:

6) Would you recommend a military career to others?
Yes 86.9% / No 9.1%

7) If you had a son or daughter who was planning to enter the military, would you support that step or would you:
Support that step 83.4% / Suggest different occupation 13.7%

8) If you had to decide today, would you re-enlist or — if an officer — extend your commitment?
Yes 74.7% / No 15.9%

10) What are the three most important reasons you indicated that you would not stay in the military?
Frequent deployments 58.4%
Poor leaders 54.4%
Better job opportunity 38.3%

15) Overall, officers in the military are:
Excellent 19.6% / Satisfactory 64.8% / Poor 11.4% / Very Poor 3.2%

16) Overall, enlisted leaders in the military are:
Excellent 31.9% / Satisfactory 60.5% / Poor 5.3% / Very Poor 1.5%

19) The civilian leadership of the Department of Defense has my best interests at heart.
Strongly agree 3.3%
Agree 30.3%
Disagree 38.3%
Strongly disagree 20.5%
No opinion 7.7%

20) President George W. Bush has my best interests at heart.
Strongly agree 14%
Agree 37.3%
Disagree 22.4%
Strongly disagree 19.1%
No opinion 7.3%

21) The senior military leadership has my best interests at heart.
Strongly agree 15.5%
Agree 48.6%
Disagree 23.2%
Strongly disagree 8.5%
No opinion 4.3%

22) Congress has my best interests at heart.
Strongly agree 1.7%
Agree 16.1%
Disagree 39.2%
Strongly disagree 38%
No opinion 5%

Very interesting. Also check out the morale numbers for active troops, and the other surveys on the Times website. I'll post more later, but for now, check out the surveys and let me know what you think in the comments section.

If you've seen the movie Heartbreak Ridge, you'll recognize those three words as the mantra preached by Gunnery Sgt. Tom Highway to his Marines. He took it as a given that his recon team would encounter novel challenges in combat, challenges for which they might not be trained, equipped or organized. Nonetheless, Gunny Highway wanted a team that could improvise, adapt, and overcome. A generation of military guys like me grew up on this movie, and we adopted the mantra too.

Greg Jaffe wrote in Saturday's Wall Street Journal about how this generation of officers has taken the initiative to improvise, adapt, and overcome challenges in Iraq -- often despite what their services and higher headquarters were ordering. It's a good vignette about the way that institutional learning has played out in the context of this war, good and bad. But it's a fragile kind of learning, one which is difficult to sustain without the institutional Army and Marine Corps getting behind the effort. Jaffe writes:

These mostly junior and midlevel officers -- many on their second and third tours of duty in Iraq -- literally built walls to separate warring Sunnis and Shiites. They fought to re-open banks and clinics in the face of an often indifferent central government. Most important, they sought out local power brokers, courted them with reconstruction contracts, and helped them build neighborhood security forces. In short: they improvised.

Military leaders credit those efforts with helping bring about a dramatic decline in bloodshed in recent months. While Iraq is still wracked by violence, the trends are encouraging: civilian deaths have fallen to levels not seen since early 2006. There have been 20 American fatalities so far this month, down sharply from 126 in May.

What remains to be seen is whether the delicate web of local deals spun by these midlevel officers will hold as American troops begin to pull out of Iraqi neighborhoods in 2008.

"What we created is very fragile," says Lt. Col. Steve Miska, who just completed his second tour as the second in command of an Army brigade in western Baghdad. For it to hold, "the Iraqis have got to develop systems that allow them to sustain themselves and are appropriate to their culture," Col. Miska adds.

Jaffe also tells the story of Army Capt. Travis Patriquin, an officer serving in Ramadi in Fall 2006 (when Ramadi was basically being written off by the entire U.S. military). Patriquin developed a simple but brilliant brief on the need to befriend and secure the Iraqi population in Anbar which rocketed around the military. Unfortunately, Patriquin didn't survive to see the fruits of his efforts; he was killed by an IED in December 2006. However, his story lives on as one of the brightest moments in the history of the U.S. Army in Iraq.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Army and Marines really internalized and institutionalized Patriquin's lessons, and whether they can implement them. More importantly -- if you believe that the surge has implemented Patriquin's brief on enlightened counterinsurgency, and you think it's worked, then it remains to be seen whether these gains can be sustained as we draw down. I'm hopeful, but hope ain't a method.

When you're studying for the bar exam, everything looks like a bar exam hypothetical. As part of my recent move to New York City, I'm now studying for the Feb '08 New York bar exam. So now, as I walk around Brooklyn and Manhattan, I see lots of scenarios that could be hypotheticals on my exam... and I find myself breaking them down into their component issues and outlining bar exam answers in my head. Weird, to be sure, but a useful study technique nontheless.

So there I was, coffee in hand, walking my dog Peet down 5th Ave in Brooklyn this morning, just after dawn. A Ford F350 diesel pickup truck driven by Dan and Ed sped past me going north on 5th Ave, towing a cement mixer. Dan is Ed's boss; last night, Dan took Ed out to celebrate his 1-year anniversary with the company, and they stayed out drinking until dawn. About 20 feet past me, the left wheel of the cement mixer comes off the axle. The truck continues to drag the cement mixer on one wheel and one axle for approximately 100 feet. The wheel continues past the truck on a slightly different trajectory. It narrowly misses Al, who is driving south on 5th Ave in a minivan with his two kids. Bruce, walking on the street, jumps to avoid the tire, turning his ankle in the process. Charlie, Bruce's labrador, gets very worried by the passing wheel and starts whining and howling, clearly in extreme emotional distress. As I walk by the parked truck, I see Ed walking towards the wheel to retrive it. I hear Dan yell to Ed: "When you bring back the wheel, I'll take some nuts off the good wheel to hold it on."

What are Al, Bruce and Charlie's potential causes of action against Dan and Ed? What defenses can Dan and Ed raise?

Discuss.

Today's New York Times magazine features a number of eloquent obituaries for those who passed away in 2007. Two struck me as particularly noteworthy.

Dexter Filkins, the Times' best combat correspondent, writes about Army Staff Sgt. Yance Tell Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora — two infantrymen in the 82nd Airborne Division. Along with five other paratroopers, Gray and Mora penned a powerful op-ed in the New York Times titled "The War As We Saw It" which conveyed the ground truth as perceived by seven combat soldiers on the ground in Iraq. Filkins writes of the op-ed's impact, and of the last mission for Yance and Mora:

The article created a sensation in the United States and a stir in the ranks of the 82nd Airborne Division. Gray, Mora and the other soldiers had not asked permission to write the article, and they did not submit it to their higher-ups before they sent it in. The soldiers found their superiors almost uniformly supportive, with the exception of a senior noncommissioned officer who came down hard. “Damned if you don’t, damned if you do!” Gray wrote in his diary. “For speaking our minds we became the target of people who really think we are following the right path as well as the hundreds of soldiers who really don’t care anything about this war and just count the days until they go home.”

The soldiers carried on. On Sept. 10, following the capture of three suspected insurgents, the men of Charlie Troop piled into a bulky vehicle known as a Hunter Box and crept onto an elevated road north of the neighborhood of Khadamiya. That stretch was especially dangerous: because it could be observed from a distance, insurgents had laid dozens of bombs, which had blown away most of the guard rail. As a precaution against attack, the driver switched his lights off; night-vision goggles would guide them back to their base in Taji, a few miles away.

As the Hunter Box moved down the elevated road, the driver steered past a concrete traffic barrier, catching a piece under the truck’s back wheels. A terrible sound rose from the undercarriage, and the vehicle lurched, finally slipping over the edge. The truck dropped 30 feet, into a garbage dump below. Mora was dead inside. Gray died on a Blackhawk helicopter en route to the hospital. Five other Americans died in the accident. Two of the insurgent prisoners died as well.

Five months earlier, Jessica Gray had given birth to a daughter, Ava. Tell Gray was so thrilled that he listened on a telephone from Iraq during the delivery. He saw his daughter once, on a brief leave from Iraq, shortly after she was born. When Gray died, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Mora was buried in Webster, Tex., near his hometown. At the funeral, a federal clerk showed up holding the papers that made Mora an American citizen.

Also in today's Sunday NYT Magazine, Neil Sheehan eulogizes his peer and friend, David Halberstam. It's difficult to overstate the difficulty both men faced as they reported the war in Vietnam, and it's also difficult to overstate the impact both men's work had on the course of the war. Sheehan writes:

Vietnam in 1963 was something unimaginable to most Americans, still basking in the triumphant glow of the Second World War. The conflict was being lost, but the commanding general, Paul Harkins, and the ambassador in Saigon, Frederick Nolting, insisted that victory was around the corner. Harkins and Nolting accused us and the other American reporters of spreading falsehoods. We were politically suspect. We ought to be fired. Many of our editors doubted us. David was just 28 when we teamed up, and I was 26. How could these kids be right when a four-star general and a senior diplomat said they were absolutely wrong?

David thrived on the conflict. He was a proud man who did not take slights easily. In 1963, it still rankled him that as a scholarship student at Harvard in the class of 1955, he was required to clean the rooms of rich preppies. The confrontation with Harkins and Nolting brought out the combativeness in him. To David, they were not just fools and liars. They were criminal fools and liars. They were bringing defeat on the nation, throwing away the lives of American and Vietnamese soldiers and slaughtering old men, women and children with air and artillery bombardments, all for nothing. At the annual Fourth of July celebration at the ambassador’s residence that year, Harkins was stunned when David, scorning the hypocritical civility most of us were still willing to indulge in, refused to shake the general’s hand.

In contrast to the attitude at the Saigon headquarters, the military advisers in the field took a particular liking to David. His physical courage in action matched his moral courage, and professional soldiers respect that. The advisers in the southern Mekong Delta initiated him into the exclusive “Blackfoot Club.” Membership was confined to those who spent enough time in the rice paddies so that the mud soaked through their boots and turned their feet black. The officers in the field in Vietnam, unlike some who were to command in Iraq, were a generation of military men who did not believe in waiting until they retired to tell us what was wrong. David was a good student. His dispatches on the fighting in the Mekong Delta, then the cockpit of the war, grew remarkably sophisticated. Had President Kennedy relied on David’s reports, and not on those he was receiving from the Pentagon and the C.I.A., he would have been a well-informed man.