He was too hard core for this administration. He wanted to actually fight a real war and wasn’t the average political careerist. Now we have a Navy ADMIRAL in charge of a dominately ground war. Makes a whole lot of sense. We have lost this one folks.
I was a non-academy fast-tracker in the late 60’s — 0-6 early and Personal aide to CNO after an arduous SEA tour.
Adm. Hyland (CincPacFlt) brought me to Pearl in ‘70 to to do some sensitive project work for him (as 35), but Hyland was soon fired (as an Admiral Tom Moorer man) by the new CNO (Zumwalt) as soon as Moorer was kicked upstairs to CJCS.
Zumwalt fired Johnny Hyland as CincPacFlt — and replaced him — a highly decorated WW-2 Naval Aviator — with Adm. Chick Clarey — a submariner.
So, we had a submariner managing Navy assets in an intensely challenging Air War in SouthEast Asia (Tonkin Gulf). Ludicrous in the extreme!
I looked around at the havoc — put in my papers and tossed three stars out the window — retiring at first opportunity in ‘74. (Incidentally, the pay scales were so low in those days, I quadrupled my income the minute I retired and took a private sector job.)
The good news for General Pace is that he will be sitting on three or four corporate boards in a year or two — and this period will seem nothing more than a bad dream!
Luckily, the JCS is not incharge of fighting wars. That is left to the Combatant Commanders. what it means is that the pace of Rummy’s transformation will slow or even be reversed.
Incorrect. The Chair of the JCS only has command over his staff. His role is that of an advisor to the President and the SecDef only. He has no command authority over combatant forces.