The following six pages provide an example of higher order thinking in the context of a military operation by the 450th Movement Control Battalion in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
As heard in Facione's video on the previous page, "Critical thinking is the human process of forming reflective well-reasoned judgments about what to believe or what to do. As such, it relies on our skills of analysis, interpretation, inference, evaluation, explanation, and, most importantly, self-reflection."The experts also said that a true critical thinker has a critical spirit. This is not to say that they are by any means negative or mean. It does mean that they have:
"a probing inquisitiveness, keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information."
The following six pages provide an example of higher order thinking in the context of a military operation by the 450th Movement Control Battalion in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Know the difference between a fairy tale and a war story? A fairy tale starts with “Once upon a time.” A war story starts with “And this is no kidding.” Let’s use a war story from Operation Iraqi Freedom. If you want the long version you can read US Army Transportation School Historian Gregg Adam’s version here: 450th Transportation Battalion (USAR) | U.S. Army Transportation Corps and Transportation School | Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia [3].
The battalion commander (BC) of the 450th Movement Control Battalion (MCB) arrived at Talil Airbase Iraq two weeks into Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. He was greeted by BG Jack Stultz with a sneer and the query “where the hell have you been?” BG Stultz explained that theater transportation (especially the movement of critical meals ready to eat —MREs—also known by the troops as meals refusing to exit, and bottled water to support the warfighters) was not working. The general’s actual language was much more colorful. The general wanted the problem fixed yesterday.
Having just arrived, the BC had little situational understanding. In other words, he didn’t know what was going on. He thought he had better gain that situational understanding or he would be at best out of a job, and at worst—dead.
The first of the cognitive skills is interpretation. Interpretation means to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules procedures, or criteria. So, step one was to understand the mission and the commander’s desired effect. This was easy. Do not let US Vth Corps starve or die of thirst. The next step towards situational awareness was how to navigate the battlefield without getting killed. If you can’t move around the battlefield safely then you can’t gain information. The solution in unarmored HUMVEEs was to drive fast and bristle with weapons so no one dared mess with you. The next step was to get out on the road, to talk to everyone involved, observe the current operation and operating procedures, and develop that situational awareness of the process from the origin depots in Kuwait up to the destination at Balad Airbase (later Logistics Support Area Anaconda and later Joint Base Balad) 40km north of Baghdad. Gaining situational understanding was the interpretation phase.
The three sub-skills of interpretation are categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning.
The second cognitive skill is analysis. Analysis is to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions. In normal English it means to take things apart to understand how they work.
Having gained situational understanding via extensive visits to every transportation node, base, and unit, the BC and his staff were able to start deconstructing and charting many moving pieces of the theater distribution effort. Some parts of the operation seemed very clear cut. Other parts of the operation were hampered by differing perceptions, variable willingness, and in some cases outright lies, fraud, theft, and waste. Not everything was black and white—that was for sure. Oh—and don’t forget the enemy had a vote and they showed their displeasure with the US presence.
The three sub-skills of analysis are examining ideas, detecting arguments, and analyzing arguments.
The BC and his movement controllers—having utilized interpretation and analysis —now turned to evaluation. Evaluation is to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person's perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.
The BC and his movement controllers' evaluation determined that theater distribution did not suffer from one problem, but from a series of problems starting at the origin and perpetuating all the way through delivery at the destination. These problems fed into one another creating a cascading effect. There were no simple answers. To solve this challenge would require a fairly complex plan with buy-in from numerous stakeholders (some of whom were hostile to each other, and many of whom had their own agendas and priorities).
The next cognitive skill is inference. Inference is to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to deduce the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation. Some might say inference is the ability to read between the lines.
The BC, his staff, and his unit commanders learned to read between the lines very quickly. As former President Ronald Reagan said when talking about arms control, “Trust but verify.” It was not that people often lied (although some did), but that people had bad information due to the fog of war, or their situational understanding was poor. Thus, while movement controllers analyzed the theater distribution system, they also had to probe deeper to read between the lines. This often meant observing operations from start to finish to get the real story, making friends with people to gain their trust and get their candid insights (versus the party line), and auditing and crunching data to see if the reports matched the actual performance. When people are tired, dirty, hungry and in danger you ought not be surprised that they make mistakes, sometimes cut corners, or even do unethical things to get by. Inference helps you get past that to see the real picture.
The three sub-skills of inference are querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions.
All the previous cognitive skills are useless if you can not explain yourself in a way that will achieve your desired effect and complete your mission. Explanation is to state the results of one's reasoning; to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one's results were based; and to present one's reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.
The BC’s challenge was to clearly explain all the problems in the system in a clear and concise matter, and then to present a plan that would satisfy all the competing stakeholders. Obviously, the movement controllers had to develop a plan before they could present it. To do so they worked with their staff counterparts of the stakeholder units so the plan was feasible and acceptable to them. The BC worked with his counterparts to socialize the plan and ensure no one was going to look (too) bad. By the time it was time to explain the situation and the plan to the brass, the key players were on board. The plan was not perfect and the colonels and generals made a few changes, but you have to give a little to get a lot.
The sub-skills under explanation are stating results, justifying procedures, and presenting arguments.
The highest level of critical thinking is recursive self-regulation. Recursive is a math term meaning to infinitely divide into itself. Self-Regulation is to self-consciously monitor one's cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis and evaluation to one's own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validation, or correcting either one's reasoning or one's results.
Emergency medical personnel use critical thinking and a series of protocols to determine what is wrong with the patient and how to treat them. The final step in their approach is to re-assess the patient to see if their condition, signs, and symptoms have changed thus requiring a change in treatment.
The BC and the movement controllers sold their plan to the brass and implemented it in conjunction with all their partners and stakeholders. No matter how well you think you did, self-regulation is essential so you do not succumb to arrogance and hubris. Situations change, personnel and units change, the enemy has a vote, and sometimes stuff just happens. You must constantly reassess the situation and your understanding and when the situation and your understanding change—change your approach with it.
When the 450th MCB relocated to Kuwait to conduct theater movement control operations from Camp Arifjan, the BC saw an opportunity to have his very own railroad—and not a scale model one. The Iraqi Republican Railroad (IRR) was reestablishing scheduled operations and the BC wanted to run the Army’s part of it. You don’t get to be a BC by not being an empire builder and maybe having a little arrogant streak. At first, the IRR worked fairly well. Then the war transitioned to the insurgency phase and the situation changed. But despite the staff’s evaluation, analysis, and inference that the IRR was extremely vulnerable to insurgent attack, the BC was blinded by previous success. Fortunately for the BC, a major general with great wisdom took him aside and told him that while he was highly aggressive, he was also being a numbskull. The general forbade any further involvement with the IRR. Within a few weeks, the IRR ceased operating due to constant insurgent attacks. The BC dodged a bullet on that one and the mentorship of senior officers may have saved some of his soldiers' lives. You can figure out the moral of this story.
In conclusion, remember that if you can’t do it with style—then don’t do it.
The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction.