The View From Leavenworth

Speaking of figuring out who to blame, Elizabeth Bumiller has an interesting piece in the Times where she went to Fort Leavenworth, where the Army does its thinking, and spoke to some mid-career officers:

Discussions between a New York Times reporter and dozens of young majors in five Leavenworth classrooms over two days — all unusual for their frankness in an Army that has traditionally presented a facade of solidarity to the outside world — showed a divide in opinion. Officers were split over whether Mr. Rumsfeld, the military leaders or both deserved blame for what they said were the major errors in the war: sending in a small invasion force and failing to plan properly for the occupation.

It seems to me that the idea that the military's senior leadership didn't do enough to warn against this looming fiasco is mistaken. The top brass' opposition to Bush's war plans was, after all, sufficiently well-known to prompt this scathing editorial from the liberal New Republic magazine slamming Bush for leading the country headlong into a disaster that would kill hundreds of thousands of people undue hesitancy to fire dissenting officers.

If TNR what was happening, then so did Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. But this debate capped off an era in which it was widely believed by a bipartisan set of powers-that-be that America's professional military officers were unduly hesitant to commit troops to battle. With the hindsight of years, of course, we can see that they hesitate precisely because they're the ones -- not magazine writers -- who wind up bearing the costs when things go south.

Comments

Matt, because the link leads you to a subscribers only page, you might want to quote at least a paragraph from that editorial, for kicks. I always like uncovering what truly despicable stuff has been sieved through TNR, since it makes the Plank people so uncomfortable, like the teenage children of a throwback mafia capo. Except of course for Kirchik, who wants to be a throwback mafia capo when he grows up.

Posted by roger | October 13, 2007 5:37 PM

Might also want to link to the Bumiller article that's the ostensible subject of the post.

(Not to turn this into Anderson's Hatin' on Matt Day or anything.)

Posted by Anderson | October 13, 2007 5:46 PM

One paragraph from the TNR article:

But timidity is one thing; insubordination is another. The military establishment has crossed that line several times over the last decade--when a general named Colin Powell penned op-eds in 1992 cautioning policymakers against intervening in Bosnia; and in 1999, when the Army brazenly dragged its feet in delivering to Albania the Apache helicopters President Bill Clinton had ordered for the Kosovo campaign. And now it appears they are doing so once more. Of course, senior officers have every right to voice their concerns and reservations--at least until the president makes a final decision. But they don't have the right to use the media to create a political environment that forecloses the president's options. Doing so violates the very essence of American military professionalism, which is defined by the Constitution's strict subordination of the military to its civilian masters in the executive and legislative branches.

The New Republic can apologize as much as it wants but it will never be able to atone for its support of the carnage in Iraq.

Posted by ndm | October 13, 2007 6:00 PM

Military thinkers generally try to come up with a set of "lessons learned" from failure-- the danger here is that the lesson learned from the Iraq war will be "Don't trust the civilian leadership".

Posted by MattF | October 13, 2007 6:33 PM

Military thinkers have never trusted the civilian leadership, but realistically Iraq is a bad example. Prior to the war, there were 4 enthusiastic supporters of it in the officer corps for every 1 doubter. I suspect that the military's lesson will actually end up being, 'We need a f*ckload more money to research counterinsurgency.'

Posted by Bo | October 13, 2007 6:52 PM

MY is correct of course. Rumsfeld and friends were threatening to punish anyone who disagreed with them. If there is bad civilian leadership, nothing in the military leadership can stop team. That's why we have elections . This brings up the question how many of those people voted against Bush in the 2004 election. It's most likely almost all of them voted for Bush. If they couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Bush in 2004, their complaints against his administration now are hollow.

Posted by Dan the Man | October 13, 2007 6:54 PM

It's most likely almost all of them voted for Bush. If they couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Bush in 2004, their complaints against his administration now are hollow.
Posted by Dan the Man

Not really, the consensus in the military and Vet community is that Kerry dishonored his uniform and betrayed his comrades. He was thought by his peer officers to be duplicitous and lacking in integrity in both day-to-day duty and circumstances of obtaining several of his medals.
He slimed soldiers and denounced them in public and in Congress as "atrocity committing barbarians, Jhenghisss Kaaahhhhns! He met with enemy in Paris while still a Naval officer, on his own, to discuss policy.

Not voting for Kerry was a matter of personal honor for many past or present soldiers.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 13, 2007 7:19 PM

"Not really, the consensus in the military and Vet community is that Kerry"

I never mentioned Kerry even once.

Posted by Dan the Man | October 13, 2007 7:29 PM

honest to goodness, how do people get as stupid as chris ford?

as for the serious matter matthew addresses here, of course it would have made a difference if some generals had resigned; it probably wouldn't have stopped the war, but it might have made a difference to just enough voters in 2004 to have elected kerry (for example).

the fact that generals sotto voce whispered to select news reporters that they thought this was an insanely stupid venture is nowhere close to the equivalent of actually resigning.

i realize that people don't resign on principle very much - i'm the only person i know who has quite a job on principle, for example - but this isn't any old situation: this is war, and any general who knew, in his bones, that this war was a mistake and went along anyhow let his troops down completely.

Posted by howard | October 13, 2007 8:13 PM

Chris, you sound like you got snookered by the Swiftboat nonsense. Plenty of military people voted for Kerry. My father is a West Point grad Korean War and Vietnam War vet who still thinks we could have won there, and even so he didn't hesitate to vote for Kerry. His attitude was and is that Kerry served with great distinction and once he was out of uniform, he had a right to express his opinions just like everybody else. That "personal honor" stuff is just an easy excuse for not thinking seriously and for not owning up to how easy it was to see Bush's, Cheney's, and Rumsfeld's obvious ineptness by the fall of 2004.

Posted by DCBob | October 14, 2007 12:25 AM

"how do people get as stupid as chris ford?"

They grow up in the US, get the US educational system, the US religious system, the US commercial system, the US media system, and the US political system.

What more do you need?

In Chris's case, perhaps a certain level of genetic deficiency on the part of both parents, but still...they can do it to almost anybody.

Remember, some thirty to forty percent of the US population are as dumb as Chris is.

I mean, you can criticize the book "The Bell Curve" for being racist all you want, but the book's primary point was that human intelligence is on a Bell Curve - and that means fifty percent of the population is dumber than the other fifty percent - and that has policy implications.

It also has social and political implications.

In other words, chimpanzees vote for chimpanzees.

And chimpanzees are the only sort of people who are dumb enough and macho enough to run for political office - or join the military.

They didn't call SEAL Dick Marcinko a "knuckle-dragger" for nothing.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 14, 2007 5:49 AM

"Officers were split over whether Mr. Rumsfeld, the military leaders or both deserved blame for what they said were the major errors in the war: sending in a small invasion force and failing to plan properly for the occupation."

The fact that these morons can't even NOW see that the "errors" were NOT using too small a force and failing to plan for the occupation, but that the error was in invading in the first place tells you all you need to know about the US military.

They are utterly and totally clueless.

All these nitwits know how to do is follow orders and follow an outmoded military doctrine that was worthless in the 1960's - if not the 1560's...

They don't even comprehend what the basic mission of the US military should be - to defend the continental United States and any CRITICAL and ACTUAL overseas US assets (if any). Period.

Invading other countries who are not directly and immediately threatening the US population is not their fucking job. Their job is to respond to - and preferably prevent - an attack on the United States. That this prevention can occur years before said attack is perfectly logical - but HOW that is done is equally important. Invasions are not the way to do it.

If Hussein had actually HAD nuclear weapons, it might have made sense to attack the nuke sites, take them out, maybe even take him out, then immediately do a U-turn and leave. And that could have been done with a few hundred Special Forces troops, if that. Anything else was just stupid.

But of course it wasn't stupid. The intent all along was to seize control of the oil, and destabilize the country for the benefit of the US and Israel.

And these nitwits at Leavenworth apparently still don't get that.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 14, 2007 5:59 AM

The problem with this debate is that the disaster in Iraq was overdetermined. There were at least 3 and probably more mistakes that doomed the effort.

First, there's the strong possibility that even if planned and executed as well as possible,the invasion still would have been a muck-up.

Then, there's the decision by Rumsfeld to invade with a small force, leading to lack of control in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's fall.

Then, there was the military's inept occupation strategy and utter failure to take a counterinsurgency approach for 3-4 years. See Fiasco.

Then, there was the horrible job done by the CPA--from the lack of attention at the top to the poor decisions and autocratic nature of Bremer, down to the placing of ideology ahead of experience in hiring decisions. See Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

So that's at least 2 and possibly 3 reasons the occupation was guaranteed to fail. And that doesn't even get into the corrupt and inept contracting, giving money to US companies with no oversight rather than trying to rebuild using Iraqis to fight unmployment.Or Abu Ghraib. Or the good cop/bad cop handling of Sadr, which seemed designed to increase his influence and his dislike for the US. Or the lack of planning done for the postwar period.

I'm sure Im forgetting another dozen critical mistakes as well.

Posted by DougT | October 14, 2007 8:40 AM

Military leaders hesitate not because they'll be blamed but because they actually have to face the families whose loved ones are killed when things go wrong.

At least the ones I know feel that way.

Posted by KathyF | October 14, 2007 9:58 AM

Infinitely amusing to have a screed-writing Federal jail convict assessing the schooling, intelligence levels, and genetic capacities of others. Nice try, Hack. You are human wreckage, but too pathetic to realize it.

DCBob - Yes, some Vets voted for Kerry. But the personal, the individual anecdotes do not obscure that their overall vote was 77% for Bush, 23% for Kerry. The most devestating thing the Swifties had going for them was the number of Kerry's peer officers who thought he was dishonorable and unfit to serve, followed by Kerry meeting with the VC and North Vietnamese in Paris while he still had an officer's commission, then the matter of the validity of two of his 3 Purple Hearts.
On the other hand, the Far Left Democrat activist's effort to slime all Vietnam era soldiers who served in the Guard and Reserves as cowardly shirkers never stuck to Bush and triggered a backlash among the millions that have served honorably in those 2 institutions.

I never mentioned Kerry even once.
Posted by Dan the Man

Umm. Ummm, then what did this statement reference:

If they couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Bush in 2004, their complaints against his administration now are hollow.
Posted by Dan the Man

Were you referring to Kerry, or the Gay Vegan Party?

Posted by Chris Ford | October 14, 2007 11:51 AM

Let's see how many Vets vote for the Republicans in the next election after Bush got over three thousand killed and thousands more crippled for NOTHING, Ford.

Sure, most military types are too stupid to understand that what they're doing is both incompetent and dedicated to enriching war profiteers and oil companies. But Iraq will help to bring that home to a few more of them than Vietnam did.

And, yes, anybody who argues like you do has a genetic defect in the brain - which most likely manifests as no brain at all. How you manage to work a browser is a source of wonder to me. Must be like those people who get diagnosed with a small amount of brain matter in the brain pan with a lot of cerebrospinal fluid making up the rest...they can still function but nobody knows how...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 14, 2007 11:50 PM