Officers of intemperance

Mackubin Thomas Owens:

Criticism of Donald Rumsfeld by the uniformed military is nothing new. As I noted a year ago, most of Rumsfeld's critics are uniformed officers unhappy with the changes he has wrought during his tenure as secretary of defense.

But the rhetoric has notched up recently. Several retired generals have denounced Rumsfeld and called for his resignation over Iraq. Much of the language they have used is intemperate, and some is downright contemptuous. For instance, Marine general Anthony Zinni, Tommy Franks's predecessor as commander of Central Command — the organization responsible for implementing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — has described the actions of the Bush administration as ranging from "true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility" to "lying, incompetence, and corruption." He has called Rumsfeld "incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically." One has to go back to 1862 to find a senior military officer condemning a civilian superior so harshly.

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The open (and often intemperate) criticism leveled by these officers against Rumsfeld is not only feeding defeatism at home, but is also adversely affecting the military that these officers purport to love: Aside from demoralizing the soldiers and Marines who have sweated and bled on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, this behavior has weakened the cohesion of the active-duty officer corps by ultimately forcing them to take sides on the Rumsfeld affair.

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Some of the officers who criticize Rumsfeld fancy themselves as noble and self-sacrificing, even as they paint the secretary's defenders as sellouts who have succumbed to the allure of promotion, prestige, and personal aggrandizement. Ralph Peters leveled a similar charge in his piece for the New York Post last week. But this is a slander.

There are fine officers on both sides of this issue, and pitting one group against another does nothing to enhance the security of the United States.

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Many of Rumsfeld's critics have invoked the very important book by H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, the subject of which is how the Joint Chiefs failed to challenge Defense Secretary Robert McNamara adequately during the Vietnam War. Many serving officers believe the book effectively makes the case that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have more openly voiced their opposition to the Johnson administration's strategy of gradualism, and then resigned rather than carry out the policy.

But as Richard Kohn — an expert on U.S. civil-military relations and McMaster's academic adviser for the dissertation that became Dereliction of Duty — has observed, the book "neither says nor implies that the chiefs should have obstructed U.S. policy in Vietnam in any other way than by presenting their views frankly and forcefully to their civilian superiors, and speaking honestly to Congress when asked for their views. It neither states nor suggests that the chiefs should have opposed President Lyndon Johnson's orders and policies by leaks, public statements, or by resignation, unless an officer personally and professionally could not stand, morally and ethically, to carry out the chosen policy."

The misreading of Dereliction of Duty reinforces the increasingly widespread belief among officers that they should be advocates of particular policies rather than simply serving in their traditional advisory role....

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With all the ...'s there is obvious much more in this piece.

I agree with Mack Owens on the misreading of Dereliction of Duty. It is ironic that the author of the book has served with honor and distiction in Iraq and has been able to persuade his superiors to use some innovative approaches to attacking the enemy.

The chiefs in the 1960's actually were free in giving their opinions inside the Pentagon, they were reluctant to tell Congress of their disagreement with the strategy. In Rumsfeld's DOD all sides get to express their point of view and he makes a decision based on what he perceives if the better orgument or more likely what the commander in the field wants. Gen. Abizaid has been clear in his congressional testimony that he favors the small footprint strategy.

What the complaining generals have not been able to do is show where Rumsfeld ever rejected a troop request from the commander of Centcom, be he Tommy Franks or John Abizaid. Those two commanders have both favored a small footpring strategy and the complaining generals for the most part favor a large footprint strategy. Their argument is with Franks and Abizaid, not Rumsfeld, but it is easier to criticize a civilian than their fellow officers.