For those who know our senior leadership, is Peters onto something?
Have we created a Frankenstein of leadership with impeccable physical courage, but without the moral courage to do the right thing, fall on your sword, and let the consequences follow?
I have asked GOs before, if you disagree privately with the decision strongly enough, why don't you publicly resign? They all said pretty much the same thing. That other than the good soldier not questioning orders from superiors, they thought they had more influence on the issue by staying on board and trying to right the course.
Shinseki did not resign, but did get sacked for speaking the truth.
IMHO, Franks should have told Rumsfeld that entering Iraq with inadequate force, planning, and stabilization capability made it mission impossible. But he didn't.
http://rapidttp.com/milhist/vol024fw.html
"Preserving the Army in the Depression years was his constant battle. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt succeeded Hoover as President. With the advent of the new Administration, two new measures surfaced. Firstly, Congress proposed a drastic cut in the officer corps of the Regular Army MacArthur fought this tooth and nail and the bill was ultimately tabled. Then came the second onslaught in the form of an Executive Order from the President’s Bureau of the Budget. The Regular Army appropriation was to be cut by 51 per cent. MacArthur, along with the Secretary of War, requested a conference with the President. From his Reminiscences:
“I felt it my duty to take up the cudgels. The country’s safety was at stake and I said so bluntly. The President turned the full vials of his sarcasm upon me. The tension began to boil over. In my emotional exhaustion, I spoke recklessly and said something to the general effect that when we lost the next war, and an American boy, lying in the mud with an enemy bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat, spat out his last curse I wanted that name not to be MacArthur but Roosevelt. The President grew livid. ‘You must not talk that way to the President’, he roared. I said that I was sorry and apologized. I told him he had my resignation as Chief of Staff. As I reached the door his voice came with that cool detachment which so reflected his extraordinary self control: ‘Don’t be foolish, Douglas; you and the budget must get together on this’.”
As they left the White House, the Secretary of War told him: “You’ve saved the Army”, and with that MacArthur vomited on the White House steps."
Where are our leaders today with moral courage, as well as physical?
TR
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/...l-failure.html
General Failure
Some of our finest military combat leaders have commanded our troops in Iraq. Although they do not control the war's purse strings, Baghdad' political leadership or sway Congress'support, Yet they must share the blame for the mess in the Middle East — in large part for their lack of candor.
By Ralph Peters
There is only one test for a generation of generals: Did the men with stars on their shoulders win or lose their war? No matter the mitigating circumstances and political restrictions military leaders face, there is no "gentleman's C" in warfare. The course is pass-fail.
Despite including many fine combat commanders, our military leadership could fail in Iraq, defeated by terrorists, rough-hewn insurgents and shabby militiamen who understood America's limitations better than the generals did.
The generals point out that they don't control the strategic decisions, that all they can do is to follow orders, that then-secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't listen to anyone, that Congress undercut the military, that the media's behavior has been pernicious, and that Iraq's political leaders have failed their country.
Each claim is true. Even so, as the Army taught me, "The maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters." Our generals must shoulder their share of the blame for the mess in Iraq.
An ability to disagree
Our current system of selecting generals produces George Pattons in bulk. But it hasn't produced another George Marshall, the general who had the ethical force to disagree — respectfully — with his president when victory was at stake.
Decades of observation of our generals taught me that battlefield lions turn to jellyfish in Washington. Our elected leaders, ever fewer of whom have served in uniform, do not get frank, direct and routine military advice.
Sixty years of misguided "reforms" emplaced multiple buffers between the president and his top generals. Given the number of White House gatekeepers today, the relationship that Gen. Marshall had with FDR would be impossible — unless the president wanted it, which today's presidents don't.
For their part, the generals are happy when left to their sandbox. In February 2003, when then-Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, an honorable soldier, told the truth when asked how many troops an occupation of Iraq would require (hundreds of thousands), Rumsfeld sidelined him. (Thereafter, Rumsfeld took care to appoint weaker men to the Joint Chiefs.)
Retired from the Army and writing newspaper columns, I received no end of personal messages from officers who shared Shinseki's views. But not one of those who believed that Shinseki was right stood up to be counted.
When Gen. Tommy Franks failed to stand up to Rumsfeld and his ideology-driven deputies over professional issues as we prepared for war, I again heard endless complaints. Yet, even when Franks appeared to lose all interest in his mission, no fellow general called for his removal.
When Gen. Ricardo Sanchez — a deer caught in the headlights of history — made one fateful blunder after another as our senior commander in Baghdad, no generals insisted on his removal. Even now, when you ask another general about Sanchez, you get the Manchurian-candidate answer: "Rick Sanchez is one of the finest officers I've ever known."
We expected generals who would not police their own ranks to police Iraq.
A bold Army lieutenant colonel, Paul Yingling, recently published an article in Armed Forces Journal pointing out that a soldier who loses a rifle suffers a greater penalty than a general who loses a war. Yingling also suggests that many mid-level officers have lost confidence in their senior leaders.
The generals dismissed him, claiming that the Iraq veteran lacked their perspective.
Yet, who is more apt to have an accurate view of a conflict, the midlevel officer out in the streets, or the general in his air-conditioned office? That lieutenant colonel's article — admittedly couched in extremes — reflected what I've heard from hands-on officers for years. Insulated by staff sycophants, the generals are in denial (a humble general is as rare as a bashful porn star).
Our generals are members of a private club whose cardinal rule is that one general never criticizes another publicly. (Incest is OK, though. It always irked my peers and me that the general's aide was inevitably another general's son.) When a half-dozen retired generals belatedly criticized Rumsfeld's ghastly management of the war in 2006, the mass of generals closed ranks against them. It was fine for retired generals to do PR for defense contractors, but when a few spoke out against a disastrous policy, they were ostracized.
Country before career
The generals' greatest shortcoming, though, is that they failed in their duty to inform decision-makers as to what war means and requires, to give honest advice — and to keep on giving it, even at the cost of their careers.
A recent experience brought this point home painfully. In the course of a private discussion with a general who had performed brilliantly in combat, he blurted out that "Iraq is over. I'm worried about the Army after Iraq."
I was so startled that I failed to ask him the obvious questions: If he believes Iraq is lost, how can he remain silent as our soldiers continue to die? And why doesn't he share his conclusion with civilian decision-makers?
The tragedy — and travesty — is that we finally have a competent chain of command in Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus is doing the tough but necessary things that should've been done in 2003 and 2004. His immediate subordinates, Lt. Gens. Martin Dempsey and Ray Odierno, are remarkably effective officers and men of integrity. We have the best lineup of division commanders — the two-stars — we've ever had. Our troops are making meaningful progress on the ground.
War finally sorted the good generals from the bad.
But it could be too late. Congress might find the votes to pull the plug. And this generation of generals will face the verdict of history.
Linear Mode
