I was pleased to see that H.R. McMaster, who wrote the book on failures at the top of the Vietnam-era military command structure (Dereliction of Duty), was given his first star a couple weeks ago. He and Sean McFarland, who was also promoted, are called by the reliably informative Nancy Youssef

…legends of the Iraq War for what many in the military consider their masterful counterinsurgency skills. McMaster, who wrote a revered book called Dereliction of Duty, lead a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Tal Afar in 2005. And through that effort, he became a member of Gen. David Petraeus’ famed brain trust. He helped craft the surge strategy. And has monitored its progress throughout.

He was passed over for a promotion the last time he went for a star, which caused an uproar through the ranks. McMaster speaks out, and in Iraq, made adjustments on the ground far outside his rank. Some of the senior officers didn’t like it; they saw such unilateralism as a threat to the Army’s structure. Others defended him, saying that is exactly the kind of soldier counterinsurgency requires. So when he didn’t get promoted, his career suddenly came to personify the Army’s struggle between its old way of fighting (and promoting leaders) and the new wars it faces.

Col. Sean McFarland was based in Anbar in 2006 when he crafted a system that eventually became a key part of surge. He built outposts in Ramadi, a onetime deadly city for U.S. troops. He reached out to Iraqis who had declared his soldiers the enemy and started negotiating. The violence fell, and suddenly the Army dropped its weapons and started considering other tactics to quell the situation there. That is, McFarland spurred a service-wide discussion about how the Army should approach Iraq differently.

So I think most will look at the list (which I have included below) and conclude that the Army is slowly adjusting what it looks at when putting a star on a soldier. Starting today, it is no longer as simple as following orders.

In general, the more hierarchical an organization is, the slower change tends to happen in it. So it’s heartening to see that US military folks are at least looking (being allowed to look) at what’s worked and what hasn’t, and updating doctrines accordingly.

Of course it’s what they’re supposed to do, but Congress is supposed to impeach law-breaking Presidents and Vice Presidents too, and Pelosi et.al. are preventing that. Here’s the stage our decline has reached: San Francisco Democrats are war- and torture-enablers, leading the rest of the party in ignoring the worst crimes a US administration has ever committed.

The July Harper’s includes a conversation (subscription req’d) titled “High noon for the Republican Party: Why the G.O.P. must die”. The following exchange is between Scott McConnell, editor of The American Conservative, and Kevin Baker, a novelist, historian, and Harper’s contributing editor. Luke Mitchell moderated the conversation.

MCCONNELL: If the next president orders the military to invade or bomb Iran or some other country, I would probably welcome it if some key generals said, “No Mr. (or Madam) President, not this time,” and went over the head of the president for congressional and popular support. At this point I’d put as much trust in the judgment and patriotism of a high-ranking military officer as in that of a politician who has spent decades catering to the fabulously rich men who finance both major parties. That’s one way the current stasis could be broken — our version of a Gaullist coup.

BAKER: I have to admit that I wrote in Harper’s five years ago, “In the end, we’ll beg for the coup.”

MITCHELL: Do you still believe that?

BAKER: I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to wonder if America today isn’t more like Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “wonderful one-hoss shay” — a contraption so finely constructed that it will never break down but will just wear out. The things we are doing are so unsustainable — occupying an enormous chunk of the most fractious piece of Asia until it learns democracy, driving the working wage relentlessly downward, draining our natural resources as fast as we can — that we simply won’t be able to do them any longer. If that is the case, then there will be immense opportunities for whichever party can get us to revert to what Americans used to do best, which was making brilliant improvisations to deal with seemingly insurmountable problems.