Posted on 07/09/2007 10:07:00 AM PDT by Retain Mike
Mike Mullen's Surprise Promotion By Tom Bowman
CNO will carry a reputation as a pragmatist and problem-solver to the JCS Chairman’s office.
When American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, Admiral Mike Mullen was talking budgets with then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark. Suddenly he felt something that reminded him of an earthquake in his native California.
His office down the hall was closer to the impact. It quickly filled with smoke. His staff said the plane, slicing into the Pentagon some four floors below, appeared to roll under their feet.
“It was a close call,” Mullen told his old friend and golf partner, Carl Tamulevich, a fellow 1968 Naval Academy graduate.
Soon after, Mullen would get a graduate-level course in the terrorism that nearly consumed him. He moved on to Naples, Italy, where he took command of all U.S. naval forces in Europe and the NATO Joint Force Command.
“He definitely realized we had to move beyond the traditional military, the Cold War military, to deal with the terrorist world,” said a Washington official who worked with Mullen at the time. Mullen saw first hand how al Qaeda was spreading its tentacles throughout northern Africa and Europe, especially into the Balkans.
During his tour in Italy he came to believe the military had to work much more closely with the FBI and the CIA to deal with the expanding unconventional threat.
One Team, One Fight
And from his perch in Naples, Mullen also saw the Pentagon through new eyes. It was too focused on budgets. Procurement. Inter-service rivalries. Petty turf battles. The military must come together. “They forget it’s one team and one fight,” Mullen told this official.
That sentiment impressed Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who last month recommended that Mullen become the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing ousted Marine General Peter Pace. Gates recalled when he made his announcement that an aide had recently asked Mullen what he was most concerned about.
“The Chief of Naval Operations said, ‘the Army,’” a bemused Gates reported.
When Mullen became the Navy chief in 2005, he sent thousands of Sailors to Iraq to help take the load off the Army, which by then was well on the way to tapping out its brigades on Iraq rotations. He sent Navy EA-6B Prowler flight officers to come up with electronic means to battle roadside bombs. Submariners were assigned to staff jobs outside the submarine community. He dispatched ordnance disposal teams to Iraq to de-fuse the explosives that litter the country.
Now Mullen is worried that his Sailors are also becoming overstretched.
“I’ve seen our leading edge explosive ordnance technicians over there who are very much leading the fight. And I am concerned. Their pace is very, very high,” Mullen said recently on the Navy’s Web site.
Jimmy Durante???
Admiral Mullen is a product of Hollywood. His father was a press agent for MGM Studios, his mother a secretary for legendary comic Jimmy Durante. A standout basketball player at his Los Angeles high school, Mullen was recruited by the Naval Academy.
His Academy yearbook, The Lucky Bag, describes him as a versatile athlete who also played soccer and lacrosse on the sports fields that stretch along the Severn River. The lanky “Mullo” was a midshipman with “a quick smile and amazing wit.”
But he never planned to make a career of the Navy. That changed when he made strong friendships at the Academy. He is now the “Old Salt,” the active-duty surface warfare officer holding the earliest officer-of-the-deck qualification, a distinction that passed to him when Vice Admiral Rodney Rempt retired as the Academy’s superintendent in June.
Today, his friends point to his common touch, at ease with enlisted personnel and admirals alike. He has two sons, both naval officers. One is a surface warfare officer working in the Pentagon, the other a P-3 flight officer who has done a tour in Iraq.
Mullen is widely seen as a problem solver, the type of pragmatist who now resides in the Pentagon’s E-Ring and includes Gates himself and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Gone are the theorists and crusaders, the likes of former policy chief Douglas Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, says Mullen and this new wave of officials share something in common.
“When they look at the war in Iraq, they don’t consider it a crusade for democracy,” said Thompson. “They think about how to fix a problem that clearly is not going very well.”
Did Not Support “Surge”
Friends say Mullen, like a number of other top brass at the Pentagon, never supported the so-called “surge” in American forces in Iraq. Too little, too late, he and others thought. And he is among those complaining that the State Department and other government agencies are not helping carry the load in Iraq. They say Mullen worries that the Iraqis are still not dealing with their deep-seated political and economic problems, without which he believes there can be no peace.
“He very much understands that this is as much, if not more, of a political problem as it is a military issue,” says retired Admiral Bob Natter, a friend since their days at the Naval Academy.
And Natter says that Mullen also has come to realize, as have other top officers like Army General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, that the Iraqi security forces must be larger if they are ever to take over from the Americans.
“He’s got to understand, I’m sure, that without a strong Iraq defense force, and security force, this can never succeed,” says Natter.
But there are those who wonder whether Mullen has the right credentials to be the nation’s top military officer. He has the least joint experience of any recent chairman, points out one retired officer.
That same officer adds, “His association with this war is virtually nil.”
That may be a plus. Mullen’s supporters say he is a forceful and questioning personality, with no ties to current policy. From his tour in Naples, Mullen realizes that the fight with Islamic extremists will take many years to bring under control. He has embraced the term that others have either dismissed or tiptoed around: “the Long War.”
The outgoing chairman, General Pace, a fellow Naval Academy graduate, was criticized as too compliant, reluctant to stand up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Those same charges dogged Pace’s predecessor, Air Force General Richard B. Myers.
“All these ‘yes’ guys are gone,” says one of Mullen’s friends.
Retired General Mike Hagee, a Mullen classmate who just stepped down as Marine commandant, says the admiral is not afraid to speak his mind.
“One time in particular, the staff had worked really hard to put together a brief for the President. It was brought to The Tank and considered. Mike spoke up and said, ‘I don’t think we have this right. I think we’re going in the wrong direction.’”
The wrong direction. That is a term likely to come up during Admiral Mullen’s confirmation hearing.
Tom Bowman covers the Pentagon for National Public Radio.
He has embraced the term that others have either dismissed or tiptoed around: “the Long War.”
Mullen's grounded in reality...
Mike Mullen cashiered Joe Sestak. That’s good enough for me to buy him a beer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.