A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon
In the five years Mr. Rumsfeld has presided over the Pentagon, I have seen a climate of groupthink become dominant and a growing reluctance by experienced military men and civilians to challenge the notions of the senior leadership…. Mr. Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his cold warrior’s view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result, the Army finds itself severely undermanned ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.
Only at the highest level of government can a politcian display a degree of ineptitude and inefficiency that sentences hundreds and thousands of young Americans to early deaths- and be regarded by his boss, the President, as “doing a heck of a job”.
Donald Rumsfeld, a veteran political infighter, clearly knows what it takes to rule a political empire. It’s equally clear that he doesn’t have a clue as to how to manage, much less win, a war. What he HAS done successfully is ineptly micromanage a poorly conceived and ill-considered plan filled with half-assed assumptions and mistaken judgements based on ignorance, prejudice, and just plain wishful thinking. This clusterf—k has resulted in the deaths of more than 2300 Americans (and counting)…and yet not a peep has been raised to question the planning and/or the execution of the war. We simply keep sending people into the meatgrinder as if it will eventually make a difference and the insurgents will see the error of their ways.
The problem here is that this is the wrong war at the wrong time, fought for the wrong reasons and planned by the wrong people. Other than that, we’re in good shape, no?
Only Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff when President Bush was elected, had the courage to challenge the downsizing plans. So Mr. Rumsfeld retaliated by naming General Shinseki’s successor more than a year before his scheduled retirement, effectively undercutting his authority. The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.
Now the Pentagon’s new Quadrennial Defense Review shows that Mr. Rumsfeld also fails to understand the nature of protracted counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and the demands it places on ground forces. The document, amazingly, does not call for enlarging the Army; rather, it increases only our Special Operations forces, by a token 15 percent, maybe 1,500 troops.
Mr. Rumsfeld has also failed in terms of operations in Iraq. He rejected the so-called Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force and sent just enough tech-enhanced troops to complete what we called Phase III of the war - ground combat against the uniformed Iraqis. He ignored competent advisers like Gen. Anthony Zinni and others who predicted that the Iraqi Army and security forces might melt away after the state apparatus self-destructed, leading to chaos.
It is all too clear that General Shinseki was right: several hundred thousand men would have made a big difference then, as we began Phase IV, or country reconstruction. There was never a question that we would make quick work of the Iraqi Army.
The true professional always looks to the “What’s next?” phase. Unfortunately, the supreme commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, either didn’t heed that rule or succumbed to Secretary Rumsfeld’s bullying. We won’t know which until some bright historian writes the true story of Mr. Rumsfeld and the generals he took to war, an Iraq version of the Vietnam War classic “Dereliction of Duty” by H. R. McMaster.
The sad thing seems to be the fact that reality in the Bush Administration is whatever can be successfully spun to make them look good. Dealing with the facts as they exist on the ground takes a back seat to massaging the message that the insurgents are on the run and freedom is on the march. Truth? The truth is whatever keeps the uncomfortable questions to a manageable minimum.
I grew up being taught that the truth is not a fungible concept. It either is or isn’t, and no amount of “want to” can change that reality. Of course, my parents never met Donald Rumsfeld, who never met a clusterf—k he couldn’t spin into something positive.
It’s time to go, Don…and take Dubya with you, willya? WE DESERVE BETTER….
