The Impact Of A Decade At War

**Albany Rifles** · 25 May 11,, 20:01

From the current issue of Armed Forces Journal, a thoughtful look at our Army today from a faculty member of the Army War College.

The Impact Of A Decade At War

BY COL. CHARLES D. ALLEN (RET.)

It would be easy to discount the conjecture that the Army is in trouble. After all, it is unmatched as a fighting force and successfully conducted military operations that achieved regime change in two countries in the space of 18 months. Total U.S. military spending averaged nearly $720 billion over the past four years and exceeded 46 percent of global defense spending in 2009. Moreover, the $6.73 trillion spent by the Defense Department in the 21st century dwarfed the annual gross national product of most other countries. Commensurate with the level of resourcing, the Army possesses the finest equipment incorporating the latest technology and the most extensive training program in the world.
Combined with the relatively high confidence placed in the Army (as part of the U.S. military) by the American people, it would be easy to feel invincible. Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership “National Leadership Index” for 2010 ranked the military as the U.S. institution with the most confidence in leadership (continuing the trend since 2005), and in a similar Gallup poll, the military has been ranked at the top since 1998. While Americans may have doubts about current wars, they are supportive of their warriors.
Even with such levels of fiscal support and confidence extended by American society, I am reminded of the retort to a comment made by Col. Harry Summers (later an Army War College professor). Summers is quoted in an interview saying, “‘You know, you never beat us on the battlefield,’ I told my North Vietnamese counterpart during negotiations in Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon. He pondered that remark a moment and then replied, ‘That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.’Ÿ” Public support and confidence may indeed be irrelevant if America’s Army does not adequately prepare for the future.
I have been affiliated with the Army since the summer of 1973 — first as an ROTC cadet, then a West Point cadet, and finally as a 30-year career officer. I have witnessed the Army transition from its focus on military operations in Vietnam, its triumph in the Cold War (which enabled successes in Southwest Asia in operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm) and then struggle through the 1990s with Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” — predicting the “universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” — and now in the 21st century arrive at its current station in history.
That journey was marked by successive chiefs of staff taking stock of the Army, establishing a vision and then charting a path to the future. Their methodology was to commission a series of white papers to identify the issues that would serve as the basis for key initiatives during their tenure. In 1978, at the end of the U.S. military’s involvement in Vietnam and presented with the challenges of the all-volunteer Army, Gen. Bernard Rogers published “Assessing the Army.” One year later, Gen. E.C. “Shy” Meyers declared the “hollow Army” and penned “A Framework for Molding the Army into a Disciplined, Well-Trained Force.”
It is easy to make the generalization that the Army was ill-disciplined and untrained and demanding actions by strategic leaders were required to address an unacceptable condition. In 1986, Gen. John Wickham wrote “Values, the Bedrock of the Profession” in an attempt to establish a moral touchstone for members of the Army. From these white papers, the chiefs initiated a number of annual campaigns to redress shortfalls and “professionalize” a force that struggled with its identity and was attempting to redefine itself.
It was that professional force that Gen. Gordon Sullivan pressed to preserve during the drawdown of the 1990s. The Army 1994 white paper “Decisive Victory: American’s Power Projection Army” conveyed the imperative to maintain an effective fighting force that would be able to respond when called to secure national interests. Sullivan, an avid student of history, evoked the lessons of the Korean conflict with the slogan “No More Task Force Smiths.” Task Force Smith was the first Army unit to engage in combat in the Korean War. As part of the constabulary force in Japan, it was woefully unprepared for combat with its minimal levels of equipment, manning and training. Sullivan feared external pressures to downsize the force would result in lack of focus and jeopardize the Army’s ability to accomplish its mission: to fight and win the nation’s wars.
SIGNALS ... WHERE THERE’S SMOKE
Army leaders took note of what was happening within the institution, actions and situations that were indicative of systemic weaknesses. Call them weak signals or signposts, there are several events that give cause for concern regarding the health of today’s Army. Ponder this short list: Abu Ghraib, Walter Reed, the Fort Hood shootings and service members’ suicides. The Schlesinger Report of investigation into detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib identified several contributing factors beyond what was initially called a leadership failure. Conditions in the now-infamous Building 18 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center revealed unacceptable omissions in care for our wounded warriors. The traumatic events at Fort Hood, which resulted in the deaths of 13 and wounding of 29 others, were linked to a network of failures in various systems such as intelligence sharing and personnel management. The disturbing rise in suicides among service members prompted an assessment of the Army health program and rediscovery of the “Lost Art of Leadership in Garrisons.” Over the past decade, as these signals appeared, the Army has addressed them as discrete events, and in many cases, prided itself on the actions taken to rectify them.
It is prudent to look at this collection of signals and question what senior leaders should garner from these incidents, especially as they relate to the health of the Army in an era of persistent conflict. As early as July 2003, Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon warned about “Breaking the Army.” Throughout current conflicts, we heard senior Army leaders acknowledge such a possibility — primarily the focus was on extended deployments — “boots on the ground” and the “dwell time” for soldiers between deployments. In 2006, then-Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker testified to a congressional committee that the pace of repeated deployments with limited respite between operations would “break the active component” and pose significant challenges to the Army Reserve and National Guard. The charter to prevent the Army from breaking was passed to Gen. George Casey when he became chief of staff in 2007. The principal concern was the effect that such actions would have on the retention of company-grade officers and midgrade noncommissioned officers. But the impact of a decade of continuous war is more insidious; one needs only to look at the series of reports, internal and external, to be concerned about the health of our Army.
LOSING THE BEST
The health of America’s Army can be gauged by analyzing a sample of its people — in this case, I chose leaders in the officer corps. The Atlantic journalist Tim Kane conducted a series of interviews with a number of active-duty and former midgrade officers and asserted that the best of the Army are leaving. Some of these officers may have been of the type that concerned three brigade combat team (BCT) commanders enough to cause them to write a white paper to Casey detailing the field artillery specialty as a “dead branch walking.” These BCT commanders made the argument that young officers were not receiving the basic core competencies, an assertion that can easily extend to any number of other branches.
It is now the norm in the Army to focus almost exclusively on the tactical counterinsurgency mission sets, while at the same time deferring attendance for professional military education. Not enforcing requirements to complete intermediate-level education and senior-level college results in officers being placed in key assignments without the requisite experience and education to facilitate professional and organizational success.
An informal polling of division commanders found that effective mentorship of lieutenant colonels is impossible given the numbers (more than 130 in a typical senior rating chain while deployed). From their viewpoint, according to Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling’s January 2010 memorandum to Casey, “Division Commander Comments on Modularity Issues,” the Army is “not spending as much time training and mentoring these officers [battalion commanders] for the inherent responsibilities associate[d] with the leap to this critical position [of brigade commander].” The issues of education and mentorship may also be a factor in the reliefs from command of more than a dozen battalion and brigade commanders in the past year. We should also take note of the continuing interest in the topic of “toxic leadership,” on which retired Col. George Reed, associate professor of leadership studies at the University of San Diego, spoke to a packed auditorium in the Pentagon in December.
It is informative to consider how officers judge their senior leaders as in Lt. Col. Paul Yingling’s “A failure of generalship” (AFJ, May 2007). This concern regarding the professional competence and performance of senior leaders cuts across the services at every level. Lest we forget, since 2006, the U.S. military has witnessed the firing or resignation of the chief of staff of the Air Force, the secretaries of the Army and the Air Force, plus several general officers, including the commander of U.S. Central Command and two successive senior American commanders in Afghanistan.
The heart of the matter lies in whether these actions are indicative of major fault lines within the Army, generated by an era of persistent conflict. Is the Army strong and resilient enough to endure the stresses placed on its most valuable resource — its people — or will it succumb, like metal, to fatigue and fracture? In either case, senior leaders need to assess the threats and risks, and then develop mitigation strategies.
NOT ONLY AN ARMY CONCERN
It is clear that a period of transition is ahead for the U.S. military resulting from the reduction of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the impact of the American economic recovery. These acts portend that the changes ahead will affect all services whether as a result of frozen and reduced Defense Department or Army budgets, the downsizing and reduction of forces, or concern over the implementation of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” These transitions serve to reaffirm the characterization of today’s strategic environment as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, in need of senior leaders who are strategic assets capable of ensuring relevance of our Army to the nation. Not unlike the 1990s, where a peace dividend was expected after two triumphs against the USSR and Iraq, the fiscal environment of today requires a realistic look at defense expenditures. Accordingly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has directed “efficiencies” in DoD operations from which the savings will be reinvested into specific defense capabilities and where the total defense budget will be significantly reduced over the next five years.
Following the methodology of past chiefs of staff when faced with times of change and turbulence, Casey and Army Secretary John McHugh directed the Profession of Arms campaign. The campaign and its accompanying study are the vehicles that will allow senior leaders to assess the health of the Army after nearly a decade of conflict and in the face of change and transitions. One of the products of the Profession of Arms campaign will be a white paper, which will become the first chapter in Field Manual 1, “The Army.” That chapter will present the Army as a profession of arms and outline the attributes and values expected of its members. For those in the Army who choose to participate in this effort, the words of Gates to West Point cadets in April apply: “You have an extraordinary opportunity — not just to protect the lives of your fellow soldiers, but for missions and decisions that may change the course of history.”
By asking questions, the Army will be able to examine the environmental context with insight from our constituents, determine critical areas of concern that will help in reframing the problem and chart the way ahead. Through this critical and potentially uncomfortable self-reflection, the Army can gain what it seeks: “the strength to overcome and the strength to endure.”

Col. Charles D. Allen (Ret.) is professor of cultural science at the Army War College’s Department of Command, Leadership and Management. His previous assignment in a 30-year Army career was as director, leader development. The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Army or the War College.

**Red Seven** · 26 May 11,, 18:51

As far as suicides go, I'm coming up with 268 total in 2010--that includes US Army active duty, reserve and national guard, out of a approximate total strength of 1,125,600. The US national suicide rate was something like 19 suicides for every 100,000 citizens. My math sucks so don't hold me to this but as near as I can figure the Army in 2010 was looking at roughly 23 suicides per 100,000. So it's higher than the national average but given the nature of military life, the danger, the long periods of deployment, multiple deployments, changing rotation dates, stop-loss, the proximity of firearms and factors that make military life different and more difficult than civilian life, the figures--if correct--aren't really surprising.

I had a pretty good view of what happened to the US military in the decade after Vietnam and the situation now would have to really go to hell for it to get anywhere near that kind of crisis. I just can't see much reason for alarm now. Some of this sounds like normal post-conflict force-reduction ebb and flow.

When we cut back we lose good people. Not all deserving Lieutenants will be on the promotion list for Captain.

S2 · 27 May 11,, 02:27

"Not all deserving Lieutenants will be on the promotion list for Captain."

Unfortunately, right now too many undeserving captains and majors are being bumped up according to something I recently read.

**astralis** · 11 Apr 12,, 17:09

WPR Article | Abu Muqawama: After a Decade of War, U.S. Army Emerges Unbroken

love to hear some comments from our resident big green machine folks.

**TopHatter** · 11 Apr 12,, 21:16

Originally Posted by Red Seven

I had a pretty good view of what happened to the US military in the decade after Vietnam.

Can you give us some details, anecdotes etc? I've always had this morbid fascination with the "Hollow Army"

**TopHatter** · 11 Apr 12,, 21:17

Originally Posted by astralis

WPR Article | Abu Muqawama: After a Decade of War, U.S. Army Emerges Unbroken

love to hear some comments from our resident big green machine folks.

Can't be read without a subscription :(

**astralis** · 13 Apr 12,, 15:59

the article.
---
A few months ago, I penned an essay for a WPR feature issue on counterinsurgency arguing that the U.S. Army was adrift as it transitioned out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of the Army’s direction, that remains the case: While the U.S. Navy and Air Force have already crafted a narrative for how they can help the United States meet the security challenges of the 21st century, the Army is still pining for the days when the Soviet Union and its armies, poised to storm across the Fulda Gap, presented an intellectually simpler problem to solve.

If the Army is unmoored strategically, however, there is good news to report with respect to the way in which it has survived a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans, U.S. allies and U.S. adversaries should all take note.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, of course, the U.S. Army was a shadow of its former self. Drug abuse was widespread within the ranks, and discipline was low among the conscripted soldiers who made up the force. An external evaluation cited by James Kitfield in his book “Prodigal Soldiers” at the time warned Army leaders that the Army was “close to losing its pride, heart and soul and therefore its [combat effectiveness].”

This past week, by contrast, the U.S. Army released the results of an internal survey it conducted on the health of the force (.pdf), and the findings are encouraging. For the survey, 41,000 soldiers and Army civilians responded to an initial questionnaire, while another 500 soldiers and civilians responded to questions posed during focus group sessions.

The survey makes explicit what has been implied in defense policy conversations for the past several years: The all-volunteer force, which was never intended to fight a decade of continuous conflict, has nonetheless succeeded beyond all expectations in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of maintaining its health and professionalism. High-profile stories such as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ massacre of civilians in Afghanistan have convinced many Americans and others that a decade of war has broken the Army and Marine Corps. But military officers are quick to point out that Bales is the exception, not the rule, in an Army in which 51,270 other soldiers have seen four or more combat deployments, and in which an additional 81,000 soldiers on active duty have seen at least three.

Six out of seven soldiers and Army civilians, the study reveals, trust their senior leaders to make the right decisions for the Army, and 90 percent of those surveyed remain willing to put the Army’s needs above their own. Whereas the soldiers who fought in Vietnam considered themselves amateurs and conscripts, 98 percent of the soldiers in the Army today consider themselves professional fighting men and women. As such, those who serve in the U.S. Army today are in no danger of losing their pride, heart or soul. And based on personal observations from the field, I can report the U.S. Army is today more combat effective than it was when I myself first led a light infantry platoon in Afghanistan in 2002.

There is still cause for concern, though. Among them is the common complaint that, due to the focus on the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan, combat units are losing some of their traditional core skills. And indeed, I spent some time a year ago with an armor unit that, having been retrained as light infantry, had not touched its tanks in a year. But also worrisome is the fact that, according to the survey, the Army as an institution is not enforcing high standards in its initial training. New soldiers, commanders have told me, often report to their first units with low levels of physical fitness, which would be less of a concern if many of those units were not walking up and down the hills of eastern Afghanistan each day. Anecdotally, two friends who recently completed Army basic training at Fort Benning -- traditionally, the more difficult Army post for such training -- described the program as easy and reported that their levels of physical fitness had actually declined during the training. I have a tough time believing folks at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island are saying similar things.

In terms of their leaders, meanwhile, soldiers report that their commanding officers are tactically and technically sound in combat, but that they have lost some of their willingness to teach, train and mentor those beneath them -- all critical to preparing the next generation of leaders.

Another cause for concern is the quality of professional military education available to noncommissioned officers, who after multiple deployments to combat now consider their professional military education to be a joke, often justifiably. As much as the U.S. Army claims to invest in its noncommissioned officers, the schools to which it sends those sergeants rarely if ever test them to the degree that Army professional military education tests commissioned officers.

Finally, the study worries that the Army, unlike the Marine Corps, has no easily identifiable culture or ethos. But this is nothing new. The Marines have a service culture, whereas the much larger Army has always had unit cultures. The U.S. Army airborne infantry and Ranger units, for instance, have tremendous pride in their units and peers -- as well as similarly high levels of contempt for those soldiers serving in “lesser” units. A Marine is a Marine no matter what unit he or she serves in, whereas a Green Beret has about as much in common with a young soldier driving trucks at Fort Drum as someone from Sale Creek, Tennessee, has with a native of the Bronx.

Overall, the United States can take pride in its professional army, and U.S. allies around the world can be similarly encouraged by the robust health of an institution serving in more than 100 countries worldwide.

But the American people should be asking other questions about the costs of having asked so few to bear such a heavy burden for so long. For example, will the way in which the Army has weathered a decade of war make U.S. policymakers more likely to deploy ground forces to combat elsewhere? Do the American people have a moral responsibility to share the costs of wars in which a relatively tiny percentage of the public has served?

These questions have more to do with the social contract that exists between the Army and the people it serves. And the answers to those questions will affect the way in which the United States engages with the world as U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draws to a close.

Andrew Exum is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and teaches a course in low-intensity conflict at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He blogs at Abu Muqawama. His WPR column, Abu Muqawama, appears every Wednesday.

**TopHatter** · 13 Apr 12,, 18:46

Thanks! Great article, it's realistic and credible: neither doom and gloom nor sunny and cheery.

I've got that book Prodigal Soldiers on my Amazon Wish List

S2 · 29 May 12,, 00:26

The doctrinal debate surrounding the efficacy of our counter-insurgency strategy has surfaced into the mainstream, if coverage by the NYT's Elisabeth Bumiller is any indication-

West Point Is Divided On A War Doctrine's Fate-May 27, 2012 NYT Bumiller

The usual actors are aligned- Nagl, Exum, Meese, likely Petraeus on one side. For those who've followed this debate closely at SWJ, they'll recognize the critics' leading voice- Gian P. Gentile on the other. The larger question shall likely be whether this debate is quarantined within academia as a historical component of our military's immediate past or whether it shall continue to govern our doctrinal approach to warfighting in the 21st century.

Cost versus benefit may be the tool employed to measure success. Why not? Even Gentile seems prepared to admit as much-

"Colonel Gentile’s argument is that the United States pursued a narrow policy goal in Afghanistan — defeating Al Qaeda there and keeping it from using the country as a base — with what he called “a maximalist operational” approach. “Strategy should employ resources of a state to achieve policy aims with the least amount of blood and treasure spent,” he said.

Counterinsurgency could ultimately work in Afghanistan, he said, if the United States were willing to stay there for generations. “I’m talking 70, 80, 90 years,” he said.

Semantics and academic pedanticism might ultimately rule. Afterall, do we REALLY understand what the mission of the U.S. Army/Marine Corps was in either Iraq or Afghanistan? Those missions were naturally shaped by the political parameters imposed from the beginning of each and the economic exigencies which subsequently evolved. That debate, alone, may consume military historians and policy analysts for decades.

I'd personally suggest that both the Bonn Accords and the Coalition Provisional Authority shaped the operational theatres in Afghanistan and Iraq for the worse. Neither nation was internally conditioned for the transitions demanded by these actions. However demanded by governments world-wide to legitimize war-making upon both countries, the promise of a rapid transition to self-government led, instead, to a facade ill-prepared for what followed. Compounded by the ineptness of well-meaning global institutions and outside interested governments our armed forces were left with the responsibility to implement a hodge-podge mishmash of oft-competing operational objectives. FM 3-24 was our mid-stream stop-gap solution-an after-the-fact compilation of strategems, techniques and psych-op tactics designed to corral the raging mysticism surrounding counter-insurgency warfare.

What will follow in the coming years won't be left to academia's military historians at West Point and elsewhere. Nor the doctrinal savants deep in the bowels of the Pentagon. It'll be, instead, publically fought in the budgetary battles in Congress.

Oh well. Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant!

**Albany Rifles** · 29 May 12,, 13:40

I normally agree with Andrew Exum on most things but I am not sure he is reading the tea leaves properly, though he alludes to my point.

We have totally remade the Army during a time of war very successfully...that is true. But we also had some very large gaps in our capabilities because commanders didn't/wouldn't apply the doctrine properly (see the discussion on the issues with lack of C2 for artillery in A'stan we had about a month ago) or that doctrine itself is flawed (going to 2 levels of maintenance (field and depot) without the corresponding training, skills or equipment to do the jobs properly).

I won't speak for the other services but the Army now has huge fleet of vehicles it does not need for future conflicts (see the entire MRAP story) and a tank, artillery and track fleet that has a lot of miles on it. We built a structure for our combat forces which made it more deployable (BCTs) but lacked the ability to sustain the fight in conventional operations. Our division and corps headquarters ceased to have a habitual relationship with brigades they previously "owned". Commanders lost teh abolioty to mix and match forces across brigades since BCTs were organic organizations.

But there appears to be a way ahead. Yes, we are downsizing the AC side....but we will still see a larger Army than pre-9/11. We are disbanding several BCTs....what this really means we are getting rid of the headquarters and beefing upo those remaining....3 maneuver battalions instead of 2, 3 firing batteries in the artillery battalion instead of 2, reducing the number of support battalions but beefing up the remaining...and saving a lot of money by getting rid of 13 warehouses full of spare parts at a cost of $30 million per year each (remember, an M1 tank engine assembly costs $500,000!)

All of that said, I think we are on the right track.

We are not the Army of 1974....nor 1947. We are the Army of 2012 which has lived a hard 11 years but has taken those lessons to heart. We are not trying to deal with adopting an all volunteer force on top of manning an outmoded force i nthe face of a huge adversary (i.e., the USSR). We are ratcheting up the standards (good luck getting into the Army today with ANY waivers....kids with ROTC scholarships at VMI are being told no thanks, you aren't going to Advanced Camp let alone getting commissioned!) and focusing on our needs.

This generation of leaders, both uniformed and civilian, lived through the Army of 1970s and 1980s. We watched what the value of good, realistic training produced. We understood the value of scholarship tempered with realism.

So to Exum's point we are in better shape than we could have ever hoped...but it was a near run thing.

**astralis** · 29 May 12,, 14:22

S2,

"Colonel Gentile’s argument is that the United States pursued a narrow policy goal in Afghanistan — defeating Al Qaeda there and keeping it from using the country as a base — with what he called “a maximalist operational” approach. “Strategy should employ resources of a state to achieve policy aims with the least amount of blood and treasure spent,” he said.

Counterinsurgency could ultimately work in Afghanistan, he said, if the United States were willing to stay there for generations. “I’m talking 70, 80, 90 years,” he said.

this ultimately seems like an operational vs strategic argument.

IE, counterinsurgency will work if your strategic goal is: "let's re-make society/government/the military". this was how the bush administration identified US strategic goals in 2003, after all.

if your strategic goal is more narrow, then conversely counterinsurgency should not be the tool you're using. note how the US is transitioning more and more out of counterinsurgency into counterterrorism in afghanistan. the only problem is that afghanistan is even more of a mishmash than iraq ever was, because we kept on moving beteween counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, and as a result nothing has been particularly effective.

S2 · 29 May 12,, 15:02

"...IE, counterinsurgency will work if your strategic goal is: "let's re-make society/government/the military". this was how the bush administration identified US strategic goals in 2003, after all...."

I'm unsure. I don't believe the strategic focus has ever changed. The one constant bridging administrations has been our determination to destroy Al Qaeda as an operational entity-wherever it may be found. The ways and means of pursuing such appears to have varied by time and place and, even, within certain geographic boundaries. We abandoned a strict regimen of counter-terror operations within Afghanistan very early on

Societal transformation was, I suspect, a strategic objective WRT Iraq. There was a firm messianic bent to the neo-con vision of delivering a true democracy to the muslim world. I'm less certain WRT Afghanistan. Aside from our pursuit of Al Qaeda, I'm uncertain that we were ever clear on our strategic objectives there. Even with Al Qaeda I believe we sensed a transition to the "pursuit phase" of battle. Instead, I suspect an early easy victory over the taliban gave the naive impression that all things were possible. As such, we suffered mission creep born of an arrogant sense that we'd already won a strategic victory.

We hadn't.

I also sense our allies demanded such a nation-building regimen to justify their presence. If correct, their demands dovetailed nicely with our overweening optimism. Canada, the Netherlands and Great Britain all sold as much to their parliaments in 2006-early 2007 despite increased warnings to the contrary from the field.

Those are only my impressions unsubstantiated by policy decisions made during that time which confirm or deny my views.

**snapper** · 29 May 12,, 18:02

To be fair I think the mission creep in Afghanistan was part of the neo-con 'vision' thing. The UK military that I know NEVER wanted Afghan 'nation building' mission project. The objective was Al Qaida and OBL, the training camps etc, and to hell with the rest. The 'nation building' of Afghanistan in Europe was very much a left wing excuse for being there; their women don't have equal rights etc etc. The mission creep was neo-con in the US and 'liberalist' here.