A General Misunderstanding

AS the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years. In light of the recent calls for his resignation by several retired generals, I would like to set the record straight on what he was really like to work with.

When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Secretary Rumsfeld got it, and he carefully listened to our arguments. That is not to say that he is not tough in terms of his convictions (he is) or that he will make it easy on you (he will not). If you approach him unprepared, or if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day.

Mr. Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either, and he will always force you to argue your point thoroughly. This can be tough for some people to deal with. I witnessed many heated but professional conversations between my immediate commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, and Mr. Rumsfeld — but the secretary always deferred to the general on war-fighting issues.

But that doesn't mean that a "What's next?" plan didn't exist. It did; it was known as Phase IV of the overall operation. General Franks drafted it and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department ...

Thus, for distinguished officers to step forward and, in retrospect, pin blame on one person is wrong. And when they do so in a time of war, the rest of the world watches.

If Rumsfeld's so bad, why didn't generals resign?

April 17, 2006

BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB
http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref17.html#

There is a great furor over whether the opinions of a number of retired high-ranking officers should tip the balance in the ongoing debate over the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

But the question really isn't whether Rumsfeld should resign. He has already resigned several times and had President Bush tear up his letters of resignation. He clearly is taking responsibility for his actions on a continuing basis.

But now that a galaxy of flag officers are raining down on Rumsfeld demanding his resignation, no one seems to have bothered to ask which, if any, of these generals had ever submitted his own resignation in protest against the conduct of the Iraq war, or the bumpy transition we are locked in now. The demands for Rumsfeld's resignation began with Gen. Anthony Zinni.

Differences in policy between the Pentagon brass and its civilian leadership are nothing new. At the end of the Clinton administration there was a dinner at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in honor of the Joint Chiefs off Staff that illustrates this well. Over the years the Council has morphed from a small but influential voice in international policy issues to a glorified Rotary Club for Park Avenue investment bankers and lawyers. The once acerbic off-the-record questioning that rattled many of its guests of honor has degenerated into a love fest hosted largely for star-struck millionaires.

After listening to subtle and not so subtle digs at national defense policy by the guests of honor and appreciative sniggers from the audience, I jotted a question down on the back of a card and passed it to former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who was at my table. ''If you have so many significant disagreements with national defense policy, what have you done about it?'' Lehman wrote back that if I asked that question, he'd buy me lunch, and passed it back to me with a smile. So I asked it.

''What do you expect us to do?'' a senior Marine general replied. ''Resign,'' I said. ''Cyrus Vance did. And he was [President Jimmy] Carter's secretary of state.'' ''You are questioning my cojones, and I am a Marine!'' the general shot back as the millionaire fan club gasped at my disrespect.

He was right. I was. I still am, his and any general officers who apparently decided discretion was the better part of a nice retirement parade with a medal or two and a couple of offers of board positions. At least Wesley Clark got himself fired and summarily retired as NATO commander in comparative disgrace for submarining the Balkans policies of his Oxford classmate President Bill Clinton and his defense secretary, William Cohen. Gen. Billy Mitchell is regarded by many as having saved American military aviation by accepting a court-martial and resigning from the service he loved because of his differences in policy with the federal government.

Retired military and civil servants are receiving ongoing retirement pay from American taxpayers. If they want to give the public the benefit of their experience in consideration of current policies, we are fortunate to get it. But policy differences are one matter and calls for a specific resignation are quite something else. As a book publishing executive for many years, I have always welcomed the opportunity to make a buck by publishing ''now it can be told revelations'' from those formerly in power. And timing those ''revelations'' to promote a forthcoming book is one of the oldest tricks in the trade.

But if Generals Gregory Newbold, John Batiste, Zinni and others have believed Rumsfeld's policies have been so dire that they are calling for his resignation, their opinions would have carried far more weight if they had stated them at some personal cost to themselves while on active service by resigning in protest. That action might have also carried some evidence of the courage Americans expect of the highest ranking officers of its uniformed services.

Thomas Lipscomb is senior fellow of the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. He founded Times Books. tom@digitalfuture.org

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