Another retired general speaks out
Posted by: McQ on Sunday, April 16, 2006
This time, in support of Rumsfeld. LTG Michael DeLong, a USMC general who was the number 2 man in CENTCOM has his say in the NY Times. It hits me as a pretty level headed assessment of Rumsfeld, warts and all, by a guy who worked with him almost daily. He was tuned into the whole operation from 9/11 through the Iraq war as the "answer man" for Rumsfeld - the guy who had to brief him twice a day during the ramp-up and execution of the war plan.
Key points:
When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Secretary Rumsfeld got it, and he carefully listened to our arguments. That is not to say that he is not tough in terms of his convictions (he is) or that he will make it easy on you (he will not). If you approach him unprepared, or if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day.
Sounds like every boss I ever had in the military. Be fully prepared and also be prepared to vigorously and thoroughly defend your ideas.
Mr. Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either, and he will always force you to argue your point thoroughly. This can be tough for some people to deal with. I witnessed many heated but professional conversations between my immediate commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, and Mr. Rumsfeld — but the secretary always deferred to the general on war-fighting issues.
I'm not sure what else a military commander would want. The result?
Ultimately, I believe that a tough defense secretary makes commanders tougher in their convictions.
I agree.
DeLong says Rumsfeld was (is) a micromanager and wanted to be involved in all the decisions made. But once made, the SecDef left it up to the people in the field to execute the operation. While I may not like micromanagement (and frankly think it can be detrimental at times) it's Rumsfeld's perogative to operate in that manner. And the fact that he knew when to back off of that aspect of his managment style (when it became a purely military matter in terms of execution) ameliorates the situation somewhat.
From people I've talked with, Rumsfeld went through the ossified Pentagon like a dose of salts when he showed up and that rankled many senior ranking officers. He had definite ideas of where he wanted to take the future force (again, as is his perogative). DeLong gives us an example:
Mr. Rumsfeld did not like waste, which caused some grumbling among the military leadership even before 9/11. He knew that many of the operational plans we had on the books dated back to the 1990's (some even to the late 80's), and he wanted them updated for an era of a more streamlined, technological force. He asked us all: "Can we do it better, and can we do it with fewer people?"
Sometimes General Franks and I answered yes, other times we answered no. When we said no, there was a discussion; but when we told him what we truly needed, we got it.
Couple that with killing some weapons programs which were highly desired by certain branches of the military (and on which some careers were built) and you can imagine the resistance (and enemies) that would make.
But on the key point of the conduct of the war and the ability to wage it as the commanders felt was necessary, DeLong is unequivocal:
I never saw him endangering troops by insisting on replacing manpower with technology. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we always got what we, the commanders, thought we needed.
This is why the much-repeated claims that Mr. Rumsfeld didn't "give us enough troops" in Iraq ring hollow. First, such criticisms ignore that the agreed-upon plan was for a lightning operation into Baghdad. In addition, logistically it would have been well nigh impossible to bring many more soldiers through the bottleneck in Kuwait. And doing so would have carried its own risk: you cannot sustain a fighting force of 300,000 or 500,000 men for long, and it would have left us with few reserves, putting our troops at risk in other parts of the world. Given our plan, we thought we had the right number of troops to accomplish our mission.
They ring hollow for me as well. When you consider the logistics involved in supporting the force that some of the arm-chair brigade felt were absolutely necessary, you can see the risk, outlined by DeLong, that fielding such a force for this operation would have entailed.
The failure? As we've all learned, the failure in this operation was not anticipating the absolutely worst case scenario and planning for it. DeLong describes that:
The outcome and ramifications of a war, however, are impossible to predict. Saddam Hussein had twice opened his jails, flooding the streets with criminals. The Iraqi police walked out of their uniforms in the face of the invasion, compounding domestic chaos. We did not expect these developments.
We also — collectively — made some decisions in the wake of the war that could have been better. We banned the entire Baath Party, which ended up slowing reconstruction (we should probably have banned only high-level officials); we dissolved the entire Iraqi Army (we probably should have retained a small cadre help to rebuild it more quickly). We relied too much on the supposed expertise of the Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi who assured us that once Saddam Hussein was gone, Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds would unite in harmony.
There, in a nut shell, is why the Iraq that exists today exists as it does. Poor assumptions (or perhaps assumptions that were too optomistic) which led to poor planning. But again DeLong takes exception to the conventional wisdom that says we had no plan at all:
But that doesn't mean that a "What's next?" plan didn't exist. It did; it was known as Phase IV of the overall operation. General Franks drafted it and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department and all members of the Cabinet had input. It was thoroughly "war-gamed" by the Joint Chiefs.
And who were a part of all of that? Most of the very same generals who now want Rumsfeld's head. LTG DeLong points out that it is because of the above he isn't real supportive of the 6 generals who've now spoken out for Rumsfeld's removal. They had their chance then to speak out ... and they didn't. LTG DeLong doesn't mince words when he says they're "wrong":
Thus, for distinguished officers to step forward and, in retrospect, pin blame on one person is wrong. And when they do so in a time of war, the rest of the world watches.
Yup. If they want to point fingers, they should be spending a lot of time in front of the mirror.
nytimes.com |
