Retiring Army Chief of Staff Warns Against Arrogance

NYT ^ | 06/12/03 | THOM SHANKER

[TigerLikesRooster]

Thanks for Monica berets worn by all grunts now.

[BlackbirdSST]

Thanks for Monica berets worn by all grunts now.

Lest we forget, that transformation into an "Army of One", and it still makes me want to hurl. Blackbird.

[Lucy Lake]

Ping

[chicagolady]

This Army soldier deserves a 21 gun salute.
Thanks for all your hard work!

[KeyWest]

"You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader,"

Interesting comment. On the surface it sounds good, but I had several commands where I had to turn the organization around and there was not much love involved. A surgeon is not paid to love his patient. He is paid for his/her competence in getting the job done.

There is a bond between those in a unit in combat that is difficult to describe, but Shakespeare did it well in Henry V, a band of brothers. Together you are greater than the whole. But it is not love.

His comment is more PC and touchy-feeley than what would be expected from someone running the Army.

[HatSteel]

As the Pentagon continues to analyze long-term force requirements and consider changes in the way the Army organizes its troops, General Shinseki warned against cuts in the fighting force. "Our soldiers and families bear the risk and the hardship of carrying a mission load that exceeds what force capabilities we can sustain," he said.

You just don't get it. Berets or no berets is not the issue.

The issue is the promise to do something about the optempo faced by the Army. At present, the Army is in serious danger of being broken.

One promise made at the beginning of the Bush Administration is that something would be done about the number of deployments and the time that troops were away from their families. I don't wish to sugar-coat that. I'm a strong Bush supporter, but I believe that Rumsfeld has seriously mislead the President on this issue.

Granted that there have been tremendous events since 9/11 that have required the deployment of our troops to MORE locations. However, there has been NO INCREASE in the size of the force. That means that each soldier is now spending far more time away from home.

We have ONLY 10 divisions and we have 6 of them committed on the ground in isolated locations where there families cannot live or visit. 3 in Iraq. 1 in Korea. 1 in Kosovo/Bosnia. 1 in Afghanistan.

How would your wife/husband like you to tell them that every other year you would spend a year away from home?

Long term -- it won't work.

Shinseki is right on this one. The Army needs to be plussed up by about 4 divisions, but the leadership won't do it because of.....MONEY. The fastest way to cut expenses is to cut salaries.

Rumsfeld does not want a truthsayer near him on this issue. I'm terribly disappointed about his unwillingness to listen.

President Bush needs to wake up!

[Cacophonous]

the Strykers have some merit, but the future combat systems will not be a change for the good....has the potential to destroy what makes a successful army successful, specifically teamwork and unity.

[Cacophonous]

nicely said...people left the Service during the Clinton in droves in large part because of the excessive and excessively long deployments. The military under Bush saw an increase partly because Bush is not Clinton and promised changes, and partly because of 9-11. But it has to change.

[HatSteel]

I agree, Stryker is not the answer for the Army.

Stryker is a return to the old adage of "preparing for the next war." We should be preparing for the most lethal enemy. That is any POTENTIAL enemy that will deny to us air superiority. Without air superiority our ground superiority is illusory.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #6

Seems like they may bring back the draft at some point to provide troops geared for occupation and mop-up operation.

[bushfamfan]

I don't like the thought of them wanting to cut the fighting forces. I don't see how they think that is a good idea and I hope this is not the way they are going.

[Sci Fi Guy]

His comment is more PC and touchy-feeley than what would be expected from someone running the Army.

I guess he lack's your military experience.

[OldCorps]

I think it is a sign of poor character that Secretary Rumsfeld has tried to show his disagreements with the army as though they were personality clashes. Such behavior is unworthy of anyone who leads a large organization. The public squabbling with General Shinseki and Secretary White shows me that Secretary Rumsfeld is difficult to work with. All the more bizarre is Rumsfeld's and his lackey Wolfowitz's public denigration of General Shinseki's professional opinion that some 200,000 soldiers would be needed to stableize Iraq. Events seem to have proven General Shinseki correct.

You correctly observed the army is over tasked and thus, undermanned, considering the numerous missions it has to accomplish. When will this end? We need more soldiers.

Furthemore, Rumsfeld's hiring of General Shomaker as the next Army Chief of Staff makes me all the more suspicious of his intentions. Are we to see the funding of special ops at the expense of conventional forces now? What happens when things go up in smoke in Korea? Probably another Task Force Smith in the offing here.

I suspect Secretary Rumsfeld is an egomaniac who can't stand it when other people share the limelight. He is unsuitable as a Secretary of Defense.

[aristeides]

The defense secretary did not attend the ceremony because he was traveling in Europe en route to a NATO meeting.

I wonder if Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz attended in Rumsfeld's absence.

[TLBSHOW]

He sure does.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

This Army soldier deserves a 21 gun salute.

Perhaps three rifle volleys or a 19-gun salute but not a 21-gun salute.

[chicagolady]

CAN WE START A NEW TRADITION?

[Justa]

I agree. The Army is spread too thin. It's worse now then when I was in. I think Iraq will be a good comparison between the old school and this new FCS thing.

I think the new thinking is that a war can be won via air power and television (psy-ops) where the troops just suppress and disarm 'resistance'. That sounds great from 8,000 mi.s away but to a squaddie inside a Stryker facing a barrage of RPGs and ATGMs it won't work. It's a recipe for high casualties or even mission failure. Add to it the time away from home and who's gonna want to deploy to Bum-F-arabia to face AKs, RPGs, ATGMs and a hostile populace for 12 months inside an aluminum can? In essence the troops will be used as nothing more than armed occupation thugs. It's a mission nobody wants.

[archy]

The mark General Shinseki most hopes to leave on the oldest and largest of the armed services is the transformation of the Army into one that can deploy more quickly to the battle zone. He directed the creation of Stryker Brigade Combat Teams built around a new wheeled vehicle of the same name...

He won't be going to war in one and being burned alive in it. At least the Army was smart enough to not send any to Iraq, where the enemy might actually shoot at them.

[archy]

We should be preparing for the most lethal enemy. That is any POTENTIAL enemy that will deny to us air superiority.

Or against whom air superiority is unusable or ineffectual. We've done okay in the last few exercises in open desert where the targets had nowhere to run. But those were the last wars, which we're of course well-prepared to win again. We've done less well when the battlefield was in the streets of Mogadishu where gunships and tank support were denied to our forces, and at the Pentagon, when our enemies struck on our own soil without warning.