A Question of Leadership
By Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer and the author,
most recently, of the novel "The Devil's Garden" (Avon, 1998). His
nonfiction book "Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?"
will be published in March by Stackpole.
Letters to the Wall Street Journal
As I write, bombs are beginning to fall on Baghdad. Given the order to
launch a strike against Saddam Hussein's tools of tyranny, our men and
women in uniform are performing with valor and skill. And they are being
misused. Their lives are being put at risk to do slight, indecisive damage that
will provide impressive film clips but no strategic change. President Clinton's
motives are suspect, his timing dubious, and his strategic intent vague. He is
a coward, and when a coward commands, the soldier suffers.
More than two decades of military service taught me at least one thing:
When the U.S. enters combat, it must do so wholeheartedly and decisively.
We must be prepared to finish what we start. We failed to finish Saddam in
1991. We are paying for that failure now, with interest.
A military attack is the only possible response
against a tyrant of Saddam's measure. Sanctions
harm only the weak, and outlaw status hardens his
resolve. Dictators do not respond to diplomatic
démarches. But a military strike cannot be a mere
tantrum, designed to "fulfill the threat to use military
force." A limited attack that is over in a day or two
may prevent Congress from impeaching Mr. Clinton
this week, but, barring a very lucky strike, it will not
remove Saddam or reduce his intransigence. The
Iraqis can withstand limited attacks--and, dramatic
though our actions will appear in the media, the
forces the U.S. has deployed to the Persian Gulf
are relatively minor. During Desert Storm, we employed 10 times as many
aircraft for six weeks without toppling Saddam. Our current force posture
allows us to slap his wrist, no more.
The problem is our president. Convinced that military service was beneath
him, he dodged the draft in his generation's war, writing that he "loathed" the
military. His high school classmates went to Vietnam. Bill Clinton went to
Oxford, taking time off to visit the Soviet Union. During the years of his
political rise, he saw no reason to study the military or strategy, and military
men and women never counted among his elite friends.
When he became president, his administration shunned veterans and
appointed to positions of power--even within the Pentagon--men and
women who found the idea of military service beneath contempt. He
slashed our forces, although he carefully protected pork-barrel
weapons-acquisition systems that carried political advantage. Under the
Clinton administration, the greatest military in history, with the world's most
expensive weapons, has had insufficient fuel to train, basic ammunition
shortages, and soldiers on food stamps. We gave more money to Russia
than we spent on housing for junior enlisted families.
Yet the president and his kind quickly found the military useful and
indispensable. First, the military provides great photo-ops, and the
president--often wearing a leather pilot's jacket he never earned--has
consistently taken advantage of them. Second, the inchoate and abrupt
initiatives that substitute for a foreign policy in this administration demanded
enforcers. Mr. Clinton certainly did not want our military to fight--his
pollsters warned that casualties are politically disadvantageous. But the
military was the only tool in the box that could deliver "peace." So our
soldiers literally took out the garbage in Haiti, died for want of a few tanks
in Somalia, and deployed for a brief mission to Bosnia that may tie our
Army down for a generation.
Mr. Clinton is a famously intelligent man, and a quick study. He soon
learned how to exploit our military. But he never bothered to learn how to
use it properly. As recently as last month's near-thing nonattack in the
Persian Gulf, Mr. Clinton dismissed the advice of his military advisers--as
well as the recommendations of his foreign policy advisers--and heeded his
pollsters and lawyers. For once, America had international support for a
serious, sustained attack on Iraq. But the president grasped at the first straw
that came his way and canceled a combat mission that was already under
way.
I support a military strike against Iraq. But it must be extensive and
sustained. If it cannot remove Saddam, it must punish him severely and
profoundly reduce his capability to kill, now and in the future. I do not
believe President Clinton has the guts for the job.
Further, the timing of this attack is suspect. Mr. Clinton would not give our
forces the green light when the world was behind us and the horizon clear.
Now he appears ready to tumble into combat just a few days before the
beginning of Ramadan, Islam's holy month, and a week before Christmas.
This presents multiple dilemmas. First, an attack on the eve of Ramadan will
alienate many Muslims around the world--and an attack sustained into
Ramadan would have even fiercer repercussions. It would be the equivalent
of attacking the U.S. on Christmas Eve. Nor do I believe the president's
pollsters will allow him to continue attacks through Christmas--it wouldn't
play right on CNN. So, at most, we will have a brief flurry of attacks, with
Mr. Clinton's chair-bound inner circle crossing their fingers and hoping that
a blessed bomb will find Saddam and cover Mr. Clinton with an aura of
strategic wisdom. But hope is no substitute for a sound strategy and a clear
military policy.
Only a sustained attack on Iraq can make a strategic difference. Mr. Clinton
and his advisers know this by now. So even those of us who wish to have
faith in the president in times of danger, and who despise conspiracy
theories and their apostles, must wonder about the prospect of a
precipitate, weak-limbed attack whose primary accomplishment will be to
detour a vote on impeachment. Even now, I want to believe that the
president is making his decisions based upon our nation's needs. But it is
very difficult to maintain that belief.
Still, Mr. Clinton is not the sole villain in this long-running strategic scandal.
The leadership of our armed forces share in the travesty of our military's
repeated misuse. In private conversation, the generals and admirals despise
Mr. Clinton as fully as he despises them. Yet not one spoke out as
readiness faltered--until the damage was done and the president told them
they could. None resigned in protest as our forces withered. Few even
fought within the system for wiser decisions.
As he has done with so many of our fellow citizens, the president co-opted
the top brass, and he did it brilliantly and ruthlessly. The generals and
admirals grumbled bitterly, but went along cravenly. Certainly, I believe that
our military must always remain firmly subordinate to civilian control, and I
would never counsel defiance of the president while in uniform. But I am
appalled that promotion and position have consistently been more important
to our military leaders than truth and honor. Not one of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff hung up his uniform and spoke out as a veteran and citizen. When they
took off their uniforms, they took jobs in the defense industry and let our
forces rot.
And that leaves the men and women on duty in the Persian Gulf, in Bosnia,
in dozens of other countries around the globe, and here on our home soil.
Despised by decision makers whose own children would never "waste their
lives" in uniform, neglected by their own self-serving leadership, and
repeatedly misused by a president who continues to disdain them even as he
puts them in harm's way, those soldiers and marines, airmen and sailors will
do their duty thoroughly, courageously and proudly for an ungrateful nation.
Overwhelmingly, they do not respect Mr. Clinton--but they are ready to die
for their president. I wonder if Mr. Clinton has any sense at all of their
human reality, apart from polling data on casualties.
I wish our men and women in uniform Godspeed and a safe return. And I
hope that Mr. Clinton, as he sends those who are truly our nation's finest
into combat, has a strategic plan and the guts to see that plan through.
When our nation employs its military power, it must do so resolutely, with
clarity of intent and perseverance. Tantrums do not constitute a military
policy. Do it right, or don't do it. |
