Why America's generals are out for revenge

Why America's generals are out for revenge
Dean Godson

The US top brass are ducking their responsibilities - and beleaguered Donald Rumsfeld is just doing his job


WHO WILL be the Admiral Byng of the Iraq conflict — the symbolic victim executed for the alleged failures of the war? That is what the current “revolt of the generals” against Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is about. It is the ruthless Washingtonian version of “pass the parcel”.
Much of the military brass feels that it carried the can for the civilian leadership’s errors in Vietnam and is determined never to do so again. General Anthony Zinni — the former US commander in the Middle East and perhaps the most voluble of Mr Rumsfeld’s critics — was particularly taken with a study written by a youngish Army officer, H.R. McMaster, criticising the US Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Robert McNamara era for not speaking up more loudly against a war they knew could not be won.



The generals’ criticisms will certainly strike a chord among critics of the war in Iraq, who contend that neoconservative ideologues at the Pentagon rode roughshod over professional military advice. They particularly alight on the supposed insufficiency of troop numbers sent to Iraq for post-conflict operations and the failure to plan for the insurgency.

What of these charges? Mr Rumsfeld was right in believing that the war itself could be won with a much smaller force than was used in the first Gulf War of 1991, not least because the Iraqi army had halved in size. He was right effectively to send Tommy Franks away with a flea in his ear when the then US commander presented the original war plans, as General Franks has conceded. Pace George Galloway, there was no Stalingrad by the Tigris.

This was no McNamara-style micromanagement of targeting when Pentagon “whiz-kids” constantly encroached upon professional military prerogatives. Rather, Mr Rumsfeld’s big picture approach is exactly what civilian control of the military is supposed to be all about: in other words, asking what would be the price in blood and treasure of a particular plan? Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, did much the same as Defence Secretary in 1990 when he asked Norman Schwarzkopf to revise his plans for a costly frontal assault on the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.

What about the postwar period? General Jack Keane, the Army Vice-Chief of Staff during this critical period, told me that it was just as much the military’s responsibility to anticipate the insurgency, if not more so. “We had no plans for that”, he said. “It was our fault, not Donald Rumsfeld’s.”

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Yes we did win in Iraq, but at the Duke of Wellington said after the Battle of Waterloo, "I was a near run thing." We barely had enough troops and material to overcome the Iraqi Military, we in no way had enough troops to garrison the whole of Iraq. The 2003 Iraq War was run on the cheap and we're still running operations on the cheap.

As for the so called insurgency that developed after the regular Iraqi forces surrendered that should have been anticipated by American political leadership far in advance of commencing military operations in Iraq. It is the job of the military to do the fighting, the political people are suppose to be in charge of who they fight and how they fight.

For the POTUS right on down the line no one gave a thought to post war Iraq. Apparently US political leadership thought that Iraq would be like a liberated country in Europe in 1944 and were living in that fools paradise.

In my view US political leadership is always a bit behind the curve as they never seem to look beyond the present. The fact that the USSR was allowed to gobble up Eastern Europe after WWII is a classic example of not looking ahead further than the end of your nose.

Bush, Rumsfeld, & Co all should shoulder part of the blame for the ongoing problems in Iraq. The military has performed they tasks in exemplary fashion and I refuse to blame those who are real professionals for the mistakes of bumbling politicians.