MILITARY FACES LEADERSHIP GAP
Troops Don't Like Clinton, Don't Trust Pentagon
Date: 11/12/98
Author: Brian Mitchell
It isn't every day that military officers risk their pensions to declare
publicly that their commander in chief is a loser.
But two Marine Corps majors have dared to do just that.
In a recent issue of Navy Times, Maj. Shane Sellers called
President Clinton an ''adulterous liar,'' prompting the Defense
Department to remind all service members that they are forbidden
from using ''contemptuous words'' about the president.
That warning didn't stop Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Daniel Rabil,
however.
In a guest column in the Nov. 9 Washington Times, Rabil called
Clinton a ''lying draft dodger'' and ''hypocrite- in-chief.''
''I therefore risk my commission, as our generals will not, to urge''
Clinton's impeachment, he wrote.
Rabil's column is the tip of an iceberg of discontent. Many
more service members are fed up with the dishonesty
they see not just in their commander in chief, but also
in their civilian and military superiors in the Pentagon.
As U.S. military activity in Iraq and the Balkans picks up, this
discontent in the ranks is particularly worrisome.
The credibility of the top brass has taken several beatings in recent
months.
The worst occurred when the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally
admitted to the Senate on Sept. 29 what press reports had
indicated for months: The services are facing severe readiness
problems caused by overwork and underfunding.
In February, the Joint Chiefs had told Congress there was no cause
for alarm. The services were ''fundamentally healthy'' and ''fully
capable'' of accomplishing all their missions. They could even fight two
wars at once, as required by the National Military Strategy.
Seven months later, after the discovery of an unexpected budget
surplus, the chiefs' concern for readiness compelled them to asked the
president and Congress for more money.
The sudden turnaround irked Republican legislators who have
pushed for higher defense funding against administration resistance.
Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., pronounced the chiefs ''AWOL from the
debate.''
''We were always accused of giving more or providing more to the
Pentagon than the generals and admirals asked for,'' Smith said.
''That's tough to defend out there politically.''
Defense Secretary William Cohen later tried to take the heat off the
chiefs by claiming they were just following his orders.
That's just the problem, say the administration's critics. ''They're
following orders, and their orders are to come here and lie
to Congress,'' said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., at a recent
conference in Washington on the Pentagon's problems, sponsored
by the Center for Military Readiness.
In the ranks as well as in Congress, there is a growing perception
that the definition of duty at the top is toeing the administration's line on
readiness, missile defense, integration of women and the use of U.S.
troops abroad.
''Instead of seeing their senior leaders standing up to address
these problems, they are turning on the news to hear, 'Our readiness
has never been higher,' ''reported retired Rear Adm. John T. Natter in the
October issue of Proceedings, the journal of the U.S. Naval Institute.
Natter interviewed 688 junior naval officers and found that only one
out of 10 aspire to command.
He writes, ''Heartbreaking comments were made by (junior officers)
on board several forward-deployed ships: 'You come out here and talk
to us, as many other flag officers have, but we don't see any action.
You may care, but nobody in D.C. does.' ''
Natter's findings confirm a recent Navy Times survey, which cited
''lack of confidence'' in senior leadership as the leading or
second most important reason for leaving service by Navy
officers who planned to do so.
Lack of confidence in senior leaders is a problem the Pentagon still
refuses to acknowledge, and it can't be solved with more money,
says John Hillen, national security fellow of the Council on Foreign
Relations.
''The much greater problem is that senior leaders have convinced so
many people working in the military that they work in a disingenuous
institution,'' said Hillen, ''and I've started to find more and more evidence
that's one of the principal reasons people are getting out.''
Hillen considers distrust among the troops of senior leaders a
major problem, ''because it's more corrosive, it's more subtle and it's
harder to fix over time'' than other readiness problems, he said.
Consider the issue of U.S. troops abroad.
Family separation is a big reason troops leave the service.
Yet to avoid opposition to overseas missions, the Clinton
administration has repeatedly understated the demands
placed on families when U.S. forces are sent abroad.
In October '95, then-Defense Secretary William Perry and Gen.
John Shalikashvili, who then headed the Joint Chiefs, first told
Congress U.S. troops needed only 12 months to ''break the cycle
of violence in Bosnia.''
''We believe this will be more than adequate to accomplish the
needed tasks that will allow the peace to become self-sustaining,''
they claimed before Congress.
In fact, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who
negotiated the Bosnia peace plan, confessed later that he ''knew
that one year was not sufficient to succeed.''
In March '97, Defense Secretary Cohen told Congress U.S.
troops would not remain in Bosnia beyond June '98. ''I'm very
clear on this, and I know the president's clear that we will be
leaving,'' Cohen said.
In October '98, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., read Cohen's words
back to him and said, ''Secretary Cohen, at that time we knew that
we weren't leaving by June 1998. We all knew that. . . . I said so at
the hearing.''
The Joint Chiefs also have toed the White House line on ballistic
missile defense, refusing funds offered by Republicans for
speeding development and deployment.
A blue-ribbon commission headed by former Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld warned recently the U.S. would have ''little
or no warning'' of rogue nations acquiring intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon, however, disagreed. Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, said in a letter Aug. 24 to Sen. James Inhofe,
R-Okla., ''We view this as an unlikely development.''
Shelton also wrote, ''We remain confident that the intelligence
community can provide the necessary warning.''
Days after Shelton's letter, North Korea fired a long-range test
missile over Japan to the surprise of the U.S.
Whenever possible, the Pentagon has tried to shift blame for its
problems to Congress.
At the hearing Sept. 29, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., asked the
chiefs to ''prioritize the fixes'' for six major problems - frequency of
deployment, missions unrelated to national interest, low pay,
reduced retirement benefits, lack of housing and health care.
All five officers named the retirement system as the No. 1 problem.
It was a very political response. The cuts in the retirement system
were made by Congress in '86.
Sen. McCain was incredulous.
''Did you request a change in the retirement system in your
testimony before this Congress now or at any other time before
today?'' he demanded of Shelton. ''All of a sudden the retirement
issue is now - as opposed to seven months ago - is now a big issue?''
Congress is also partly to blame for the military's refusal to admit
problems with the integration of women into the services. For decades,
Congress pushed the military to accept more and more women and
expand their roles.
The services resisted until the Tailhook scandal made resistance to
integration a career-ender.
The services still insist they have not lowered standards, used
quotas or sacrificed readiness to accommodate women, but evidence
to the contrary has become hard to ignore.
''We've known for decades that women drop out of basic training at
twice the rate of men,'' Hillen said.
''An honest institution would just accept that, but no, they say, 'Fix
those numbers so it's not so glaringly different.' That's what an
Orwellian institution does.''
Some Navy officers even privately refer to their own superiors as
the ''Dark Side,'' a term taken from the movie ''Star Wars.''
Hillen said, ''They call them the Dark Side because they don't think
they're honest anymore.''
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Thursday, November 12, 1998
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