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
The Germans were under the control the Nazis for 10 years; the Iraqis were under the control of the Ba'athists for 30 years.
If the US had to keep hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany and Japan several years after the war what history was Rumsfeld referencing when he approved 150,000 for the war and 30,000 for the occupation?
What people dare not say is, (IMO) it was Powell who should be blamed for the insurgency, not Rumsfeld. It was Powell's job to get Turkey to allow us to base an attack from the north AND south. By losing Turkey in the final weeks leading up to the war by just a few votes, we allowed the Iraqi military to melt into the north as our troops rushed up from the south. Can you imagine what the war would have been like if we had two fronts closing in on Baghdad to entrap the Iraqis?
-PJ
I didn't say you would keep Saddam propped up. Or keep the old Army in charge. The old Army would be supervised and under control, not freelancing with an insurgency. The Occupation would still take years.
Actually the Marines whine the most - your observation about them doing most of the work in Iraq is classic. They are great at politics. I take it you are a former Marine. I enjoyed my year at your Marine Command and Staff College. Learned a lot about the second land Army.
The other services used the same lift (air and sea) as the Army -except a few amphib ships that did not carry all the Marine stuff. Rummy tinkered with the Centcom TPFDL to move other services first. Nice cheapshot, but wrong.
Thanks PZldr. I agree.
I think the Iraq war went bad when we didn't find stockpiles of WMD. That totally defanged Bush/Rumsfeld and from then on they wanted a way out.
However, I think the impression given that Rumsfeld was a "rock star" is just remembering only the good things. Back in the Afghanistan attack, the MSM constantly brought up Vietnam, the Soviets, and "quagmire". Remember?
Iraq was a gamble and we don't yet know if it will pay off. If a strong democracy emerged, it would be revolutionary.
"The other services used the same lift (air and sea) as the Army -except a few amphib ships that did not carry all the Marine stuff. Rummy tinkered with the Centcom TPFDL to move other services first. Nice cheapshot, but wrong."
I highly doubt he personally messed with TPFDL. You did not answer post #20. Maybe a staff officer.
What was in the ARMY's WRM from '90-91 back to '78 in the AOR? Anything useable? Was it being maintained? The Army had all the time from '91 on to stock up and get ready. It had almost 2 years post 9/11. Army senior leadership needs to buy a clue. This is 2005 not 1945.
Who messed with the TPFDL for Kosovo? It was WUs Clark the EU commander who bogged the airlift down moving Helicopters and munitions to Albania, that's who. How long did it take to get the Apaches to Kosovo for the big push there?
Months, not days. You can't airlift 100 ton M1 tanks with C5's and C17's in mass quantities. You have to sealift and preposition. That takes months. If you do you preempt all the other missions by using the Airlift.
The Army's lack of equipment and readiness was brought on solely by the lack of foresight of it's internal branch's senior leadership. There was a blank checkbook for them post 9/11. So you cant say they were underfunded.
Yes, that's the one. He of the Monica Beret, as Wolverine notes. He was best known for the beret, which seems to have been a deliberate attempt to trivialize Special Forces and reward clinton's Chinese donors, but as far as I can make out there was nothing else positive to be said about him.
FYI. I am a Texas Longhorn fan and I'm a dude.
I'm surprised it took this long.
Okie dokie! More power to you down there in Texas!
Thanks for the explanation. Sounds better now!
Char :)
Rummy made mistakes, you better believe. McNamara never did anything right, that you better believe.
The author appears with a rather thin presentation, one that seems to smite Rummy more than the spineless one. Perhaps the author is another disgruntled officer that could not make it.
About the Writer: James Atticus Bowden has specialized in inter-disciplinary long range "futures" studies for over a decade. Employed by a Defense Department contractor, he is a retired United States Army Infantry Officer, and a 1972 graduate of the United States Military Academy. He earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and holds three elected Republican Party offices in Virginia. Contact at jatticus@aol.com.
"...was the betrayal by our ally Turkey, which no one could reasonably have expected.
Turkey did not "betray" the U.S.
It was a major miscalculation on Rummy's part, if he thought the Turks would go along with the idea.
Hell, I could have told you that the Turks's wouldn't be able to afford, politically, an entire U.S., heavy armoured division,
with scores of tanks, hundreds of vehicles, and ten thousand+ U.S. soldiers
to transit their nation, on the way to attack a neighboring Islamic nation.
Any idea to the contray, is just flat-out IGNORANT!
(and yes, I'm freely insulting scores of freepers, and the pentagon brass, too. bronx cheers loudly offered to you all...)
I used the word "betray" advisedly. The Generals did not just refuse to let us through. First they held out for a large aid payment. Then they pretended that someone in parliament had acted unexpectedly. Then they dragged things out, while the whole division sat on ships offshore. Then after the war started, they finally said "no." As a result that whole division had to come all the way around to the gulf and was more than a week getting to the fighting.
They could have just refused from the start. Or they could have secretly advised Bush that they couldn't afford to do it. Instead, they made things just as bad as they could by their behavior. My personal theory is that Chirac got to them and bribed them with an offer to get them into the EU if they helped him out. No way to know that, of course, but their behavior couldn't have been more damaging.
Wether it was a concerted effort on the Turk's part, or more a relection of some real disagreement (which Turk political lever-pullers worked at, to attempt to take advantage of), I can only speculate. Perhaps what you offered here, is accurate. In regards to this entire deal--the fairly long-term troubles the Turk's had been dealing with, in regards to those whom had been agitating for a portion of Turkey, to be a Northeast quadrant of "Kurdistan", loomed...
'Nothing really sweet & simple, about the whole bloody complicated mess.
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