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.
Posted on 06/14/2003 1:33:04 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
June 12, 2003
Retiring Army Chief of Staff Warns Against Arrogance
By THOM SHANKER
FORT MYER, Va., June 11 ?Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who pushed his tradition-bound service on a difficult path toward transformation, retired today, warning against arrogance in leadership.
General Shinseki's four-year term was marked by clashes with the Pentagon's civilian leadership over weapons systems and troop strength, and he did not mention Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in his parting remarks. The defense secretary did not attend the ceremony because he was traveling in Europe en route to a NATO meeting.
"You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader," he said. "You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance."
Gen. John M. Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff, will serve as acting chief. On Tuesday, Pentagon officials said Mr. Rumsfeld had recommended to President Bush that retired Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, a former head of the Special Operations Command, be nominated as the next Army chief of staff. The position requires Senate confirmation.
In a speech delivered at a lush parade ground on a steamy morning, General Shinseki reflected on military service and a personal history that he normally refuses to discuss.
"My name is Shinseki, and I am a soldier," he said, poking fun at his reputation for spartan public statements.
During his 38 years as a soldier, he became the highest-ranking Asian-American in United States military history. He received two Purple Hearts for life-threatening injuries in Vietnam, one in which he lost so much of his foot that the Army wanted to discharge him. While he rose through the ranks as a commander of armored units during the cold war era, he was the Army's expert on peacekeeping operations, leading the first forces that imposed an armistice in Bosnia.
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, and initiated the development of a Future Combat System of high-technology arms still on the drawing board, which an Army historian said would be the most drastic reformation of its forces since World War II.
General Shinseki's efforts at transformation used the same language and paralleled the goals of Mr. Rumsfeld's efforts to reshape the military, but the two never came to a meeting of the minds. Pentagon politics is like the battlefield in that advances by one force come at the loss of another's terrain.
Army officials angered the Pentagon's civilian leaders by their advocacy of the Crusader artillery system, even after it was canceled by Mr. Rumsfeld. General Shinseki also differed publicly with Mr. Rumsfeld and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, about the number of troops required to stabilize Iraq.
Still, General Shinseki only alluded to those tensions today.
"The Army has always understood the primacy of civilian control," he said. "In fact, we are the ones who reinforce that principle with those other armies with whom we train all around the world. So to muddy the waters when important issues are at stake ?issues of life and death ?is a disservice to all those in and out of uniform who serve and lead so well."
General Shinseki also stood resolutely with former Army Secretary Thomas E. White, who was forced into retirement earlier this year by Mr. Rumsfeld. "When they call the roll of principled, loyal, tough guys, you will be at the top of the list," he said of Mr. White.
Mr. Rumsfeld has recommended that Air Force Secretary James G. Roche be the new Army secretary, and Mr. Roche attended today's ceremony in an effort to mingle with current and retired Army officers.
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.
Retired Gen. Dennis Reimer, General Shinseki's predecessor as Army chief of staff, said that the last four years for the Army "have not been an easy road to travel."
General Reimer, now director of an institute for terrorism studies in Oklahoma City, said in an interview: "For everything the Army has done, Shinseki should get a lot of credit. He has reshaped the Army to give the president and the secretary of defense ?the national command authority ?the force required to deal with things as different as Afghanistan and Iraq."
Lest we forget, that transformation into an "Army of One", and it still makes me want to hurl. Blackbird.
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.
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!
Seems like they may bring back the draft at some point to provide troops geared for occupation and mop-up operation.
I guess he lack's your military experience.
I wonder if Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz attended in Rumsfeld's absence.
Perhaps three rifle volleys or a 19-gun salute but not a 21-gun salute.
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.
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.
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.
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