| It's hard to think about' Ken Black as an army brat or a career military person. We banter back and forth in his office overlooking the State Capitol and share more than the occasional laugh. Black also likes to have a good time on the golf course. However, he does always get down to business, on or off the course. Some of that intensity is still there since Black retired from the military in 2001 when he was a professor of military strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in charge of the ROTC programs at the UW's Madison and Whitewater campuses. One could say that Black was born into and raised by the military. He spent the first 40 plus years imbued with the military life. Indeed, it wasn't until he came to the UW-Madison and started his transition to civilian life that he wasn't living on or around a military base. Black shares the reticence of Colin Powell and other military leaders to commit troops to warfare -- even though going to war is what they have lived and trained for for decades -- because they know that some of the people they go into battle with won't be coming back. But once they have committed, they are committed 100 percent to achieving their objective. While Black will not express a political opinion on the Iraq War -- those opinions are left to politicians and the commander-in-chief -- his military experience does give him an informed lens with which to view the conflict without having any inside knowledge about what is occurring there. In fact, Black feels that the U.S. could have been missing some vital inside information before it committed to going to Iraq because it was missing HUMIN -- human intelligence on the ground. While the U.S. may have sophisticated technological sources of information, almost being able to listen in to any electronic conversation in the world, it can never be fully substituted for the observations and the conclusions of HUMIN. "I don't think we had as much of that as we really would have liked to have had or should have had," Black observed. "As a result, things didn't turn out quite the way we thought they would turn out. Potentially, we had to assume too many things. When we planned for Haiti, we had a lot of HUMIN on the ground. That's part of what we do is gather information so we can make some informed decisions. It's raw data. Everything out there is raw data and we spend our time using all of our assets to shore up our data so that it becomes informational. "We take it and put it all together and it tells us a story. And we kind of get a feel for the situation on the ground prior to us even going in anywhere." While the military goes through an extensive planning process leading up to its entry into a conflict, it cannot anticipate all of the variables that may arise during and after the conflict. In many ways, the military is geared for winning the war, but not for maintaining the peace. For instance, it appears that the military wasn't fully prepared to deal with the IEDs -- improvised explosive devices that have killed the majority of U.S. personnel -- because they weren't necessarily in Iraq before the conflict began. "When I was in the Army, I always felt we were prepared and had the best equipment," Black said. "Of course, like anything you do, really what you get is an 80 percent solution when you go. Then that 20 percent is the things that could go wrong. Once you move forward to execute any kind of plan, you probably go with an 80 percent solution and then you flex accordingly to the remaining 20 percent of variables out there. You deal with them. I think probably the military went in with the best that they had at the time. I'm sure they didn't anticipate some of the things that have occurred over there. As a result, they have had to do what we always do, which is make modifications to the equipment we have based on the situation. You figure out what went wrong and you see how you fix it and make it better for our soldiers." Although military generals answer to and take orders from the President of the United States, it doesn't stop them from forming opinions on how a conflict should be fought. "When you see a general officer resign, it's typically because they are out of grace with the administration," Black said. "100 percent of the time, the civilian wins out. We all work for the President. When he says 'Move right,' we say 'This is how we think we can best move right,' and we move right. That's how it goes. And if the President says 'Nope, I don't want to do that,' and if a general officer says 'Yep, we need to do that because that's going to bring us these certain results,' and if he pushes too much, then the administration says 'Nope, we don't need your services anymore. Just bring in somebody else.' What did you see go on in the last three weeks? General John Abizaid is out. There's a reason why he is out. It wasn't the normal rotation. Absolutely not." As a practical matter, Black feels that the military will be in Iraq for a long time to come -- no matter what the political debate is about -- because of the INSTATE projections. INSTATE is what will Iraq look like if the U.S. leaves. "The INSTATE is probably not favorable to us," Black said. "That's why the administration has elected to stay there and cause an outcome that would be favorable. I think we are going to be there for a while. Even if we were to go through and fighting kind of subsided and went back to some sort of democratic power to influence the people within the area or the people who have the power within the Iraq communities, still it would be 'How do we rebuild this place?' How do we make it a viable country again? I think we are going to be there for a while.'" And so, the military is between a rock and a hard place. "There's nothing clean about war," Black said. "A lot of people like to say "Go in, do what you have to do, and get out." But there is nothing clean about it. I don't care how war occurs. It is always messy." Apparently, it won't be good news no matter what is ultimately decided. |
| An interview with Ken Black A view on Iraq Part 2 of 2 By Jonathan Gramling |
| Ken Black worked served with some of the important military figures who have commanded American troops in Iraq. |
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