When Generals speak, do people listen?

[Heavy Z]

If you're tired of opinionated peacenik handwringers, here's what 7 highly-experienced retired Generals have to say about Iraq:

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6593163?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1100666488500&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.872

 

 

Also, General Smedley Butler from back in 1933. An exerpt:

 

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

 

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

 

http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm

 

Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914,

and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917

Distinguished service medal, 1919

Retired Oct. 1, 1931

Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932

[johnc]

Rumsfeld and the senior civilians in the Pentagon seem to agree:

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110246829907493919-email,00.html

 

Shortly after the U.S. deposed Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, the Army kicked off its annual "war game," a mock battle in which U.S. forces set out to topple another Middle Eastern regime.

 

Set 10 years in the future, the game featured a force built around a light, fast, armored vehicle that the Army planned to start producing in 2010. The Army attacked from seven dizzying directions and, when the game ended, appeared on the verge of shattering the enemy force.

 

"We walked out and patted ourselves on the back and said 'marvelous job,' " says retired Lt. Gen. William Carter, who commanded U.S. forces in the game. "We didn't understand that what we were seeing in those games wasn't victory."

 

Today, the exercise stands as a stark example of how senior Army leaders and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the years leading up to the Iraq invasion were guided by a flawed understanding of how future enemies would fight.

 

Swift Strikes

 

The Iraq attack was built on the premise that speed and high-tech equipment could radically change the way war was fought. Short, swift attacks against key targets -- such as communications stations and headquarters -- could confuse enemy forces and isolate them from their commanders, according to both Army and Defense Department doctrine. If you chopped off the enemy's head, the theory went, the whole body would die. Getting to the fight faster became the focus of modernization plans for the Army and all other U.S. armed services.

 

Now, the escalating insurgency in Iraq is showing that lightning assaults can quickly topple a regime -- but also unleash problems for which small, fast, high-tech U.S. forces are ill-equipped.

 

"We're realizing strategic victory is about a lot more than annihilating the enemy," says one senior defense official in Mr. Rumsfeld's office. Victory also requires winning the support of locals and tracking down insurgents, who can easily elude advanced surveillance technology and precision strikes. In some cases, a slower, more methodical attack, one that allows U.S. troops to stabilize one area and hold it up as an example of what is possible for the rest of the country, could produce better results, according to emerging Army thinking.

 

Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledges that the military, which is still organized "to fight big armies, navies and air forces on a conventional basis," must change in order to deal with guerrilla fighters and terrorists. "The department simply has to be much more facile and agile," he says in an interview. "We have got to focus more on the post-combat phase."

[Heavy Z]

Yes he does, the darn flip-flopper. First he flips off the generals, then he flops in the occupation. Honestly, if you aren't going to listen to the best in your own military, at least pick a place to occupy other than where men are dorks if they don't have an AK-47 collection.

 

Did you like anything the brass had to say? I thought they had some interesting perspectives to share from a military angle.

[mjfawke]

Sounds like most people agree it was a dumb idea... so how does this relate to "opinionated peacenik handwringers"?

[Heavy Z]

Sounds like most people agree it was a dumb idea... so how does this relate to "opinionated peacenik handwringers"?

 

I was being sarcastic, it's harder for hawks to dismiss the opinions of generals.

[johnc]

I agreed with the statements of Zinni and Crowe, but what's funny, is that in Crowe's book "Every Man a Tiger" he promotes exactly the strategy that Franks and Rumsfeld went to war with. It was just a further evolution of RMA that started with the first Iraq. And it worked brilliantly. But after that initial success, everyone was left standing around asking, "What do we do now?"