CAC News Archives

"A cookie-cutter approach to helping Afghan forces take back control of their country is not what the people of Afghanistan need," said Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, addressing thousands of Soldiers Tuesday, at the 2009 Infantry Warfighting Conference in Columbus, Ga. Read more

At Fort Leavenworth, even though Army regulations technically still ban blogs that are launched without official approval, Caldwell requires officers going through training programs to write blog postings or participate in online forums, and, in some cases, to launch Facebook pages.

"Our thought was that there's an opportunity to communicate here and to share with the American public what we really are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan," Caldwell says. "We didn't want to make a chain-of-command-approved blog, but rather to teach our young men and women how to blog responsibly as professionals." Read More.

"We as an institution still haven't come to grips with how we want to use blogging" and other social media, said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the commander of the Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Read more.

Military blogs and other social media serve much the same purpose today, said Terry L. Beckenbaugh, who teaches history at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Read more.

"We're not enemies, but we're not exactly allies, either," two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns of The New York Times said Wednesday during one of the sessions hosted by the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan." Read More.

"Fifty-eight flags representing the 67 international students from those countries were placed alongside the United States colors during the Command and General Staff College's Intermediate Level Education course opening day ceremony Aug. 10 in the Lewis and Clark Center's Eisenhower Auditorium." Read more.

"In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life." Read more.

"Copies of the 123-page handbook, produced by the Center for Army Lessons Learned, are being distributed throughout the service and are available to NATO allies and other nations with troops in Afghanistan. A copy was provided in advance to The New York Times by an official involved in the distribution, who said consideration was being given to a broader public release." Read more.

"Two community members who are part of the history of the Buffalo Soldiers and the monument to the group at Fort Leavenworth were honored for their continuing contributions to the community July 28, at the Frontier Conference Center." Read More

"This week we presented some lessons learned in counterinsurgency," said Col. Daniel Roper, director of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center. "We used those lessons to stimulate conversation and took our previous experiences in Iraq and applied them to our current status. We exchanged our viewpoints on the challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia at large." Read more.

If it sounds to you like an overly verbose description of a very basic idea, you're not alone. "This is not a new way of doing things," Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, Commander of the Army's intellectual establishment at Ft. Leavenworth, told Danger Room. "All great leaders have always thought this way." The Army just wants to get it into writing. Caldwell is overseeing the writing of a new field manual, FM 5-0, that includes a chapter on Design.Details.