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Dec.
18, 2004 #01: Political
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author, Jim Wrenn.
Firing
Rumsfeld.
The long-knives are out for Donald Rumsfeld. He's angered too many former and would-be
generals for not fighting the "last" war, in which the fabled Powell Doctrine,
Overwhelming Force, made sense for many reasons: First, the goal was to evict Saddam Hussein's
half-million-man force from heavily fortified positions in Kuwait. Second, our use of
"overwhelming force" was unlikely to make the Kuwaitis or other allies in the region
suspect we had plans to perpetually occupy Kuwait or Iraq. (There are many other reasons, but
most of them are irrelevant to this issues on which this commentary focuses.)
In planning military operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, if Rumsfeld were to
have applied the Powell Doctrine, it would have required far longer to assemble an overwhelming
force and arrange the logistics, over-flight rights, land-transportation rights, etc. The
local warlords would have suspected our motives were really no different than those of the Russians
in the 1970's. It would have been far harder to persuade Pakistan and other neighboring
countries to cooperate. The strategy Tommy Franks designed and Rumsfeld approved in
Afghanistan was nothing less than brilliant. With under-whelming force, their plan dislodged
the Taliban and disabled al Qaeda from freely using Afghanistan as a bastion. I remember
hearing-- as we began Operation Enduring Freedom-- "expert" after "expert" after
"expert" predicting disaster and failure. Many of them arrogantly asked
rhetorically, "The Russians failed with a half-million-man army-- how can we succeed with only
a tiny fraction of the forces who necessarily must become dependent on "warlords"?
Yet I also remember that a mere three weeks into Operation Enduring Freedom, the media and
Rumsfeld's critics were still predicting disaster and wondering why we hadn't made more
progress. I remember that press conference-- Rumsfeld
had to remind the press that the rubble at our 9-11 Ground Zero was "still smoking."
I mean no disrespect to former Secretary William Cohen, but if 9-11 were to have happened on his
watch, Operation Enduring Freedom would not have occurred. Not because he cares less for his
country than does Rumsfeld-- he's an honorable man who cares just as much as does Rumsfeld-- but
because he would have lacked the audacity to approve such a bold plan, and knowing he lacked such
audacity would have dissuaded his best generals from formulating such a plan because they had come
to understand that none of the political leaders then in power would have approved a bold and right
but risky plan.
For Operation Iraqi Freedom, Franks proposed, and Rumsfeld approved, a similar concept but on a much
larger scale, yet everyone knew there to be significant risks in again applying "Overwhelming
Force" for at least two reasons: First, our military was approximately half the size of
the military with which we applied "overwhelming force" in the 1991 Persian Gulf War;
Second, unlike that war, a half-million troops force (rather than the quarter-million size force
Franks assembled to stage, support and project the force into Iraq) would have made Iraqis and
neighboring countries suspicious that our real goal was long-term occupation rather than toppling
Saddam Hussein and helping a non-barbaric regime replace him.
What is surprising is not that we encountered surprises but that critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom
are surprised that we encountered surprises. Once warfare commences, surprise almost becomes
the rule rather than the exception because adversaries bend their entire strategy, tactics and
resources to the narrow purpose of surprising their opponents. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld's and
Franks' strategies out-surprised their adversaries at every turn. Their plans prevented
destruction of the oil fields, the oil-shipping terminals, missiles being launched into Israel,
massive refugee problems, massive casualties, and the "thousand Mogadishu's" so
confidently predicted by critics as our troops neared Baghdad. Peter Arnett (here
and here) had then
only just recently finished explaining to the world how stupid the American military had been and
that the invasion was on the verge of collapse.
No sensible person wants to minimize the heroism and sacrifice of the more than a thousand
combat-related deaths, the thousands of seriously disabling injuries sustained, the pain of the
families of those killed or injured, or the raw courage regularly displayed by our troops.
Yet, before Baghdad fell, most of us were expecting the number of deaths to quickly rise into the
thousands. We had not yet seen what we recently saw-- the Fallujah example of brilliant
application of all lessons learned the hard way in Somalia.
When the war began, no one seriously expected the HumVee to be needed to be a lightly armored
vehicle rather than what it had originally been designed to be-- a far more sturdy and versatile
version of the World War II Jeep. More than a year ago, when it became apparent we were
beginning to face hit-ant-run urban warfare, the military arranged for the design and production of
lightly-armored HumVees and for kits to provide light armor to as many HumVees as possible during
the interim. Given the scale of the problem, the response has been dramatic. That it has
been less than perfect is no grounds for demanding resignation of one of the best Secretaries of
Defense we've ever had.
--JimWrenn,
Editor at PoliSat.Com.
Dec. 17,
2004-- No Update today.
Dec. 16,
2004-- No Update today-- Proud Parents today-- Away for Ceremony-- Son inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Dec. 15,
2004-- No Update today.
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author, Jim Wrenn.
George
W. Bush awards Medals of Freedom to Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer and George Tenet for service in war on
terror, in Afghanistan and in Iraq; He who dunks slams, slam-dunks.
Some political observers seemed perplexed that today George W. Bush awarded Medals of Freedom to
Ret. General Tommy Franks, Ambassador Paul Bremer and retired CIA Director George Tenet at a special
White House ceremony. However, Bush was quite eloquent in explaining his actions:
"This Medal of Freedom I'm hanging with thanks on Tommy for service as General Franks, whose
troopers and tanks dispatched Saddam's ranks with speed that was swifter and faster than
'flank.'º¹ This Medal of Freedom I'm hanging on Bremer, for leaving employment where danger was
slimmer to serve in Iraq where risks of attacks by killers made odds for his safety much
slimmer. To honor my Tenet, my chum, a Medal of Freedom I've hung on you 'cause you stood with
me, so I should dunk slams of your promised slam-dunks. Though critics perceive me as dumb,
they're claiming I've tried by my dunk of slams against Tenet to make it his tenet that I not by him
be debunked. Like oxymoronic Orwellians, they claim I'm a
"dumb" Machiavellian advancing with verve
a Tenet I serve so memoirs of me are Boswellian."
Not
only was Bush's statement eloquent, it was also quite poetic, which may be discerned by parsing the
language into rhythm and rhyme:
Slam
Dunk Dunks Slams.
This
Medal of Freedom I'm hanging with thanks
on Tommy for service as General Franks,
whose troopers and tanks
dispatched Saddam's ranks
with speed that was swifter and faster than "flank."º¹
This
Medal of Freedom I'm hanging on Bremer,
for leaving employment where danger was slimmer
to serve in Iraq
where risks of attacks
by killers made odds for his safety much slimmer.
To
honor my Tenet, my chum,
a Medal of Freedom I've hung
on you 'cause you stood
with me, so I should
dunk slams of your promised slam-dunks.
Though
critics perceive me as dumb,
they're claiming I've tried by my dunk
of slams against Tenet
to make it his tenet
that I not by him be debunked.
Like
oxymoronic Orwellians,
they claim I'm a "dumb" Machiavellian
advancing with verve
a Tenet I serve
so memoirs of me are Boswellian.
Could
the "dumb" George Bush be so Machiavellian rather than merely intensely loyal to those he
believes to have had the best interests of the country at heart? His critics oxymoronically
believe the former rather than the latter. Remember Occam's
Razor? If so, then you probably know the latter is more likely correct. What
would Tenet say? What should Tenet say?
I
need not Boswellian be
to rightly and truly concede
we honestly thunk
'twould be a slam-dunk
to find all those WMD's.
Nevertheless,
one suspects that in Washington, where it is said that a "good friend stabs you in the
chest," Tenet's memoirs may seek to characterize "slam dunk" as a full-court shot.
--Jim
Wrenn, Editor at PoliSat.Com.
º¹.According
to Naval
terminology, "flank speed" is "faster than full speed."
Dec. 13,
2004-- No installment today.
Dec.
12, 2004-- No installment today.
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Dec.
11, 2004 #01: Political
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author, Jim Wrenn.
Ted
Kennedy blasts Donald Rumsfeld for delays in replacing or upgrading unarmored HumVees-- Gold-Plated
Rhetoric, Gold-Plated Equipment, Gold-Plated Courage, Gold-Plated Leadership.
In all armies in all wars, troops at the bottom of the chain of command experience the frustration
of an inherent flaw in every chain of command-- complaints don't go up the chain with the same
efficiency as orders go down it. By scheduling a "town hall" meeting in Kuwait with
troops at the bottom of the chain without imposing chain-of-command restrictions on questions,
Rumsfeld afforded a real-- and public-- opportunity for complaints to reach the top even more
efficiently than orders normally reach the bottom from the top. He deserves commendation for
doing so.
So what if the soldier who asked the question expressing discontent over the rate at which the
Department of Defense is adapting HumVee's (and other transport vehicles) to meet the unexpected
scope of the need for lightly armored versions of such vehicles in Iraq? That Rumsfeld was
willing to entertain such question without reprisal against the one propounding it boosts rather
than lowers the morale of our troops, who respect a leader willing to confront unpleasant, as well
as pleasant, realities.
While the media focus almost exclusively on two aspects of Rumsfeld's answer (that "[y]ou go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want, or wish to have, at a later
time" and that the Defense Department is procuring armored replacements and/or armor-upgrade
kits for unarmored HumVees (and other transport vehicles) at the maximum practicable rate), the
troops heard and understood the rest of his answer: That with rare exceptions troops
assigned to units with unarmored HumVees will be transported to their duty location in other
vehicles, their unarmored HumVees will be transported to such locations on other vehicles, and that
at duty locations, unarmored HumVees will be used to transport troops within areas less vulnerable
to roadside bombs and small-arms attack. [See additional sources in Footnote
01.] In one of those rare exceptions, members of a unit refused to transport needed
supplies to other units via unarmored transport vehicles.
Did Rumsfeld's answer define such arrangements as "satisfactory"? Of course
not. Instead, his answer describes such arrangements as the best that can be done until
replacement and/or upgrading of unarmored vehicles is complete. It's likely the overwhelming
majority of troops understand the latter despite being understandably frustrated by amount of time
likely to be required for completion of the task.
Has further inquiry cast doubt on the accuracy of Rumsfeld's assertion that the
replacement/reconfiguration process is proceeding as fast as possible? Of course. Some
private companies have asserted that they could produce more replacements and/or armor-upgrade kits
at a significantly (but not dramatically) higher rate. Is it likely that this incident will
produce some improvement in the process? Of course. The question that obviously arises,
therefore, is whether this incident is a manifestation of Rumsfeld's lack of, or exercise of,
leadership skills? It's equally obvious that the answer is the latter rather than the
former. Most troops appreciate and respect a leader at or near the top of the chain of command
affording them an opportunity to bring bottom-of-the-chain-of-command perceptions of serious
problems directly to the top of the chain of command. This is one of the factors that
distinguishes the best leaders from good leaders.
What about the sanctimonious finger-pointing by those critics of Rumsfeld who during peacetime would
have characterized Pentagon specifications for a vehicle designed to replace the World War II jeep
to be a vastly more costly armored vehicle rather than merely a vastly superior jeep?
Of course, the Pentagon did not propose an armored HumVee because they did not perceive it's primary
use to be in military contexts presenting risks equivalent to those of urban combat. Does
anyone seriously doubt that if the Pentagon were to have proposed (years ago) that all military
transport vehicles be armored, most, if not all, the same critics would have characterized such
proposal as an example of the Pentagon's desire for "gold-plated" equipment? Long
before the current conflict, opponents of continual modernization and strengthening of the military
made such "gold-plated" phrase their political battle cry. My ears are deaf to their
current Gold-Plated Rhetoric.
Although those now serving with Gold-Plated Valor may welcome
the belated support of such critics, I doubt they feel resonance with the Gold-Plated Sanctimony
with which such Gold-Plate Rhetoric is expressed by the likes of Sen.
Ted Kennedy, who described the circumstances as "cruel and callous,"-- the same
Ted Kennedy who viciously equated the harsh treatment of prisoners by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib
prison with the barbaric treatment of political prisoners at Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein.
--Jim
Wrenn, Editor at PoliSat.Com
º¹.Additional
sources: DOD-Dec.
8, 2004; DOD-Dec.
8, 2004 (more); DOD-Dec.
9, 2004.
More
Daily
Update immediately preceding the one above: Go here or find it in the chronological Index
of Archives here.
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Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assigns self to sign condolence letters and re-sign those undersigned by
machine; Bush declines design to assign Rumsfeld to resign.
