Posted on 05/15/2005 8:04:44 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Thirty years ago Saigon fell. I was a company commander in the 2 nd Battalion, 508 th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82 nd Airborne Division. When our Vietnam veterans cursed the war, I remembered one of the greatest speeches I ever heard - the day the Vietnam peace was announced to my Winter Ranger class in ’73.
The senior Ranger Sergeant cursed everything about the Vietnam War and everyone involved, friend or foe, in a poetic rant of imaginative, sincere, foul-mouthed hatred. He swore most passionately about the waste of his buddies’ lives. He blamed everyone and everything he knew to blame for that long war. His comrades died for nothing.
Years later, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara acknowledged that he knew the U.S. could not, or would not, win the Vietnam War. Yet, he stayed in office for years to tinker with technology and management-based theories of guerilla war, while pursuing his fascination with operations research for ‘rationalizing’ our National Defense. The theories failed, not the soldiers. McNamara didn’t know what war to fight. He disputed the Generals on how to fight. He insisted on having his way no matter what.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made the same mistakes in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The threefold saving grace for Iraq is the absence of a rival Superpower, the geography and GEN. John Abizaid is the Regional Combatant Commander. Our several enemies in Iraq have no sponsor like the Soviet Union. The North Vietnamese could challenge U.S. Forces even if they couldn’t defeat them tactically. Iraqi cities and villages can be isolated physically with good fields of fire in the surrounding desert. There are no sanctuaries. Finally, John Abizaid in the Middle East is like Douglas MacArthur in the Far East. Right guy, right place, right time even if he has far less power.
Before 9-11, Secretary Rumsfeld viewed his return to the Department of Defense as an opportunity to get right, finally, what he learned from his first secretariat. But, he learned wrongly. His fixation with one armchair theory of war is based on a fascination with high technology air and space power. Platforms have targeting kill chains and network-centric warfare instead of fighting human will and commander-centric command and control. Rumsfeld had a dogmatic fixation to cut the Army by two divisions and more.
Consequently, the invasion of Iraq was shaped to his theology. GEN (RET) Tommy Franks will insist he had a free hand to plan the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a manhood issue. But, Rumsfeld’s final responsibility for accepting a plan that didn’t have enough troops as the Army Chief of Staff suggested and failed to have the 4 th Infantry Division on the ground from the ‘get go’ had consequences on the battlefield. The lines of communication weren’t secured. The Iraqi Nation wasn’t decisively engaged – psychologically with the appearance of allied troops everywhere – even though the Iraqi forces were decisively defeated when they fought.
Additionally, the big shock and awe bombing campaign was a bust. It didn’t collapse the regime. It killed civilians and destroyed records that would be very useful for the nationwide intelligence needed to restore security. Clearly, Rumsfeld thought the war meant defeat Hussein and get out. The plans called for a reduction from about 150,000 U.S. troops rapidly down to 30,000. How could the Sec Def not know there would be an Occupation?
The colonels at the Army War College knew it. The Army Chief of Staff, GEN. Eric Shinseki, who was let go, knew it. Just like they knew, and recommended, to keep the Iraqi Army on the payrolls, intact, and selectively weed out the Baathist bad guys.
Rumsfeld didn’t understand the fundamentals of the war, which war, OIF was. Our forces on the ground did well to overcome the failures of understanding and planning. But, it cost us.
Rumsfeld rightly pushes a transformation of the Defense Department from the Industrial to Information Age. He has military bureaucrats focus on process to find the right magic for a Blitzkrieg II. The Germans didn’t use magic. They experimented using ‘military empiricism’ to find the best fit of technology, organization and operational concepts. Like the Army has been seizing the intellectual high ground since 1990 to develop the Future Combat Systems. Rumsfeld doesn’t get it.
A Sec Def making fundamental errors of judgment on war, despite his skillful recovery, should be fired. He may not understand what war looms when China threatens Taiwan or North Korea threatens South Korea and Japan or elsewhere.
James Atticus Bowden has specialized in inter-disciplinary long range 'futures' studies for over a decade. He is employed by a Defense Department contractor. He is a retired United States Army Infantry Officer. He is a 1972 graduate of the United States Military Academy and earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. He holds two elected Republican Party offices in Virginia.
Comments: JAtticus@aol.com
What I don't think was feasible in post-invasion Iraq was to even locate Saddam's army. It is now well known that there were orders already in place for all of the forces to simply melt back into their neighborhoods, and to re-emerge as an "insurgency," which is what happened, so I'm not getting the method by which we could have kept them on, retrained them and then had them fighting with us - drop leaflets?
Char :)
" It is now well known that there were orders already in place for all of the forces to simply melt back into their neighborhoods, and to re-emerge as an "insurgency," which is what happened,"
And the evidence of this is, what?
Bump - 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 82nd Airborne Division from July 74 - Jan 77. Red Devils All The Way!
Evidence? Evidence is for other guys.
well you got one thing right
quote "Iraqi cities and villages can be isolated physically with good fields of fire in the surrounding desert. There are no sanctuaries"
and that is by design, we purposely picked Iraq to fight the war on terrorism for that exact reason.
The libs never seem to get this.
The one officer named as criticizing Rumsfeld, Shinseki, was a disaster. We are well rid of him.
The primary reason that so many Saddamite troops were able to melt back into the landscape was the betrayal by our ally Turkey, which no one could reasonably have expected. As a result, there was no northern front, and those are the troops who later turned up in the Sunni Triangle.
The writer also offers no alternatives to the way the war was fought. I just don't find this credible.
Leaving the Iraqi old guard in charge and having Saddam still out there would have been an even bigger disaster. I don't buy the thinking that you go to war with a country and than turn it over to the previous military within months.
Stop wasting our time.
Simply false - Shock & Awe tied up whole Iraqi divisions while our lead units positioned themselves strategically all across Iraq -
This whole article is BS - The fact is with Rumsfeld plan was an enormous success (The fact is Tommy Franks was 100% in support of this plan and has said so numerous times EVEN since he left the active military).
Iraq's main military folded in less than 3 weeks (while many of these current day critics were saying back then would take months to achieve victory and a min of 5,000 US KIA)
The other factor that is completely ignored here is that Iraq is part of the greater WOT - It is not separate from the war in Afghanistan or the WOT around the globe - It is part of it!!
And we are winning this war in amazing fashion. All of the Rumsfeld critics would have told you to pound sand if you would have told them in 2001 we would have won a war to remove the Taliban from Afghanistan and a war to remove Saddam from power in Iraq with less than 2000 American KIA.
They all would have laughed and said you were crazy - Yet, now they are complaining we "didn't win good enough".
With this in mind, any other comparison is irrelevant.
Also could be known as Eric "Black Beret" Shinseki, creator of the Army of Self-esteem.
Anyone who made the upper ranks of the military during the Clinton administration is suspect.
Just because this guy disagrees with Donald Rumsfeld doesn't mean Donald Rumsfeld is wrong.
This Author is a real peice of work.
Who The F*** makes war plans for the ARMY - Rummy? Folks like this Turd who fail to realize Rummy does not micromanage, but will ultimately get blame or kudos whatever happens. This dirtbag is a real armchair general with mastery of the obvious. Where was he in '99 or '01? In Eucom or Centcom OPLANS perhaps? If anyone deserves blame its the ARMY war planners, not the Theater CINC or Rummy. Screw the Army, the Marines are doing most of the work in Iraq.
Sure, the army needs 400 Divisions to pacify Iraq and I shure as heck would not want to be on the ground during any "shock & aWE" campaign.
The Army always bitches because it can't always have things it's way.
Thanks for the trip down "People Magazine" memory lane, but does it have any relevance whatsoever to a discussion of military strategy?
What do you think of his cologne?
Screw the Army, the Marines are doing most of the work in Iraq.
Today.
The only mistake that Rummy has made is not shooting MSM.
It would all be over.
The Army has to get smarter about it's operations. It has to be more flexible and leaner and lighter. The US does not have the airlift and sealift to put divisions on the ground in days. It took them 6 months to get ready. The other services were in the AOR within weeks, not months or years.
I can understand where Rummy is coming from. Hell - the Army has not gotten out of Germany, Kosovo, Korea,Japan, Egypt and Haiti is still a steaming pile.
As for China, there are plenty of strategic targets that will make life unbearable for the Chinese. I would not want to set foot in the country, wartime or not. And if something does happen; they will not be driving tanks across the Pacific or Airdropping Chairborne rangers during the first strikes.
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