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Tue 1 Apr, 2003 09:35 am
April 1, 2003 - New York Times
Rumsfeld's Design for War Criticized on the Battlefield
By BERNARD WEINRAUB with THOM SHANKER
US CORPS HEADQUARTERS, near the Kuwait-Iraq border, March 31 ?- Long-simmering tensions between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army commanders have erupted in a series of complaints from officers on the Iraqi battlefield that the Pentagon has not sent enough troops to wage the war as they want to fight it.
Here today, raw nerves were obvious as officers compared Mr. Rumsfeld to Robert S. McNamara, an architect of the Vietnam War who failed to grasp the political and military realities of Vietnam.
One colonel, who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld, was among the officers criticizing decisions to limit initial deployments of troops to the region. "He wanted to fight this war on the cheap," the colonel said. "He got what he wanted."
The angry remarks from the battlefield opened with comments made last Thursday ?- and widely publicized Friday ?- by Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, the V Corps commander, who said the military faced the likelihood of a longer war than many strategists had anticipated.
The comments echo the tension in the bumpy relationship between Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff.
Underlying the strains between Mr. Rumsfeld and the Army, which began at the beginning of Mr. Rumsfeld's tenure, are questions that challenge not only the Rumsfeld design for this war but also his broader approach to transforming the military.
The first is why, in an era when American military dominance comes in both the quality of its technology and of its troops, the defense secretary prefers emphasizing long-range precision weapons to putting boots on the ground.
At present, there are about 100,000 coalition troops inside Iraq, part of more than 300,000 on land, at sea and in the air throughout the region for the war. Just under 100,000 more troops stand ready for possible deployment.
Even after the war, some experts argue that it could take several hundred thousand troops to hold and control a country the size of California, with about 24 million people.
Mr. Rumsfeld has argued that he adopted this approach for flowing forces to the region to prepare for war without upsetting the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts.
The idea was to raise pressure on Iraq until President Bush made a decision on whether or not to go to war, Mr. Rumsfeld has said.
Even some of Mr. Rumsfeld's advisers now acknowledge that they misjudged the scope and intensity of resistance from Iraqi paramilitaries in the south, and forced commanders to divert troops already stretched thin to protect supply convoys and root out Hussein loyalists in Basra, Nasiriya and Najaf. But they also point to the air campaign's successes in the past few days in significantly weakening the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad. As one senior official said of the process that produced the war plan, as well as the pace and sequencing of troops, "It was a painful process to match the political and military goals."
One Army officer said General Wallace's comments ?- particularly that "the enemy we're fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against" ?- were not meant to show defiance but merely express a view widely shared among American officers in Iraq, at headquarters units in neighboring Kuwait and back at the Pentagon. Some members of General Wallace's staff have expressed concerns for the professional future of their boss.
Mr. Rumsfeld arrived at the Pentagon vowing to transform the military, and senior aides promised to push aside what they described as hidebound volumes of doctrine in order to create an armed force emphasizing combat by long-range, precision strikes and expanding the most maneuverable military assets, mostly ships, jets, drones, satellites and Special Operations troops.
Many in the Army thought the defense secretary had declared war on them, which struck them as unfair, because the Army had invested as much brainpower as any other service in transforming itself ?- perhaps because it had to, since the Air Force, Navy and Marines were already more nimble.
In certain ways, the dissonance between Mr. Rumsfeld and General Shinseki is surprising, because the general was himself the leading advocate of reforming and modernizing the Army. In October 1999, General Shinseki pledged to reshape the service from waging war by slog and slash, calling for new theory and proposing new weapons to create a land force more agile and precise in bringing lethal force to the battlefield.
"On the substantive issues, Shinseki and Rumsfeld share a large agenda, about making the Army more deployable," said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Shinseki was one of the first guys out of the block with the concept, and it fit the world view Rumsfeld brought to the Pentagon when he came in later.
"But their chemistry was just not great," Mr. O'Hanlon said.
But after he became defense secretary with the new Bush administration in January 2001, Mr. Rumsfeld made the word transformation his own and his vision of a more flexible and agile military often seemed to come at the expense of General Shinseki's Army.
For example, in an effort to find money for an arsenal of new, high-technology weapons, some of Mr. Rumsfeld's senior advisers proposed cutting 2 of the Army's 10 active divisions; it is still not known how seriously Mr. Rumsfeld considered the case, but the divisions survived.
Today, the war plan for Iraq was viewed by many in the service as diminishing the Army role, because it placed a premium on speed and shock and called for fewer ground forces to be in place when the war began, planning to call in more only in case of battlefield surprises and setbacks. But that takes time.
The Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said today that Mr. Rumsfeld did not craft the war plan for Iraq with any intent to reward or punish an individual armed service, and instead sees "a mix of services and capabilities they offer." The war plan, she said, received "a careful review and approval by all the chiefs."
"As we have made very clear, the secretary does share the vision of a 21st-century Army that faces the unconventional threats of today with new and transforming capabilities," Ms. Clarke said. "The secretary has worked hard with the Army to make those sorts of critical changes as quickly as possible."
But what pushed General Shinseki afoul of the civilian leadership before this war began were his comments on the levels of force that might be needed to stabilize Iraq after the battles were over.
Pressed by Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Shinseki, who commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, said several hundred thousand troops could be needed.
"Wildly off the mark," was how Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, dismissed the Army chief's comments. Mr. Rumsfeld was a bit more circumspect in his criticism, saying that the general had a right to his opinion, but that this one would be proven wrong. Their public comments were unusual and were widely interpreted in Washington as a rebuke to General Shinseki, who is scheduled to retire in mid-June.
William L. Nash, a retired Army major general and veteran of the first gulf war and the Bosnia mission, said of General Shinseki, "He is as fine a soldier as I've ever served with, and his key characteristics are loyalty, and professional competence."
General Nash, currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, added, "It is extremely unfortunate that he has not had more influence on the war planning and the allocation of forces."
Aug 8, 2001 Wall Street Journal:
WASHINGTON?-Aides to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are calling for deep personnel cuts to the Army, Navy, and Air Force in order to pay for new high-tech weaponry and missile defenses that are cornerstones of President Bush's plan to "transform the military."
The proposal to reduce manpower?-part of a congressionally mandated defense review due next month?-calls for the Army to trim as many as 2.8 of its 10 divisions, or about 56,000 troops. The Air Force would lose as many as 16 of its 61 fighter squadrons, according to the plan, and the Navy would drop one or two of its 12 carrier battle groups, defense officials said. Mr. Rumsfeld and top generals of each military service were briefed on the recommendations for the first time yesterday.
Any cuts are sure to provoke strong protests from both the military brass and Congress, which in recent weeks has insisted it won't allow reductions in force structure or weapons programs. Earlier this week 80 lawmakers sent a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld expressing "strong opposition" to possible cuts in the size of the Army.
Second Guessing the War
4/2/03 - New York Times editorial
Second-Guessing the War
As secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld has bruised a lot of egos. Right now, when soldiers' nerves are edgy and the public is concerned about the pace of the war, he can use all the support he can get among the military brass. But many officers ?- in Iraq and back home ?- have been stunningly critical. Mr. Rumsfeld tried to fight the war "on the cheap," they say. He amassed far fewer troops than the Army had wanted, leaving supply lines vulnerable to attack and providing fewer troops than needed for the coming confrontations outside Baghdad.
That is an amazing amount of rancor for a war that is less than two weeks old and appears to have gone fairly well so far on the ground. Statements from Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have ranged from irritated to nearly apoplectic when they have responded to the criticism.
In a free country at war, it is natural for the political conversation to focus on whether the military is using the right plan. But it does seem too early to make many judgments. While we disliked Mr. Rumsfeld's role as part of the chorus pushing for a military rather than a diplomatic solution for Iraq, his argument that the military needs to be quicker and leaner, with less reliance on heavy armored divisions, has always seemed reasonable. Part of the backbiting is certainly carried over from battles at the Pentagon over budget priorities ?- battles in which Mr. Rumsfeld's main error was his imperious style rather than his goals.
The supply line problems are serious, but there is no evidence that the military would have been able to move much more swiftly, or with far fewer casualties, if the Army had used a much larger force. The big failure has been in political assessment, and the expectation that southern Iraqis would welcome the American troops and offer minimal resistance. The Bush administration seems to have gotten mixed intelligence about how the Iraqis would respond to an invasion, and the fact that the Pentagon chose to believe the optimistic reports was probably a function of political preconceptions rather than hardheaded judgments.
The Iraqi response to the American and British troops may warm up when Baghdad is taken. But so far, resistance in the south has been spoiling much of the original war plan. Because of it, troops have been pulled away from the drive to Baghdad to secure the cities that the supply lines must pass on the way to the front. Perhaps worst of all, the fear of terrorists disguised as civilians has soured military relations with Iraqis, who naturally resent being searched, confined to their towns and sometimes caught in cross-fire with guerrilla fighters. The unexpected difficulties in bringing in food and water have left many in a far worse state than they were under Saddam Hussein, at least temporarily.
Under normal circumstances the military could afford to wait while airstrikes softened the defenses around Baghdad, but it must now feel some urgency about getting the war over with and ending the reports about water shortages and civilian war casualties, which are on display every day in newspapers in Europe and the Middle East.
This page urged the Bush administration not to invade Iraq without broad international support, but now that the war has begun, we pray for a quick and successful conclusion. So far, the military strategy worries us far less than what comes next. The United States badly misjudged the Iraqis going into the war, and there seems little reason to hope that we will be much smarter when it comes to nation-building. The hundreds of thousands of extra troops the Army wanted may turn out not to be necessary for the battles. But the judgment by the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, that hundreds of thousands may be needed for the occupation is looking more prescient, and troubling.
From the beginning, the great challenge of Iraq has seemed to be less about winning the war than about securing the peace, and everything that has happened in the last two weeks reinforces that assessment. While the administration works overtime to swat down complaints about military planning, we hope there is at least as much attention being given to what the U.S. will do in this large, dangerous, hard-to-read country after it wins.
Why Aren't There Enough Troops in Iraq?
New York Times OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR 4/2/03
Why Aren't There Enough Troops in Iraq?
By JOSEPH P. HOAR, a retired Marine general, was commander in chief, United States Central Command, 1991 to 1994.
DEL MAR, Calif. ?- All of a sudden there is less talk of shock and awe, of lightning moves and a swift decision in the war in Iraq. Our leaders are preparing us for a long struggle. At the same time, the determined Iraqi resistance has led to more heated talk about whether there are sufficient ground troops in Iraq to do the job.
The fact is that more ground troops are needed. And more ground troops are on the way. The relevant questions are these: Will this second infusion be sufficient, and why weren't these troops there when the war started?
In 1991, the Central Command, which has responsibility for the Persian Gulf region, had seven-plus Army divisions, two Marine divisions, one French division and one British division, in addition to sizable Arab forces. All this to liberate Kuwait, a country about the size of New Jersey. Today in Iraq, there are two Army divisions plus two separate brigades, a Marine division and a United Kingdom division, to conquer a country the size of California.
This disparity of forces is attributed to the advances in technology over the past 12 years. Yet despite our improved intelligence and smarter bombs, prudent planning still requires that sufficient ground forces be assigned to deal with all reasonable contingencies: poor weather; long, vulnerable supply lines; an enemy that decides to fight; an undecided, if not downright hostile, civilian populace; and the use of guerrilla tactics.
The officials in the chain of command responsible for making decisions on troop strength are the president, the secretary of defense and the head of the Central Command. Each has a considerable staff to help him develop and review plans. In 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, using his staff and the Joint Chiefs, scrubbed the Central Command's initial plan, then reshaped it into the strategy that was subsequently executed with great success.
In that process, the rest of the military and the public knew that the stated needs of the commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, were always given significant weight. Today, however, nobody outside a small circle of players knows exactly who developed the plan for this invasion or what the prevailing views were.
There was an opportunity last summer to let senior military officials talk when the Senate held hearings on giving the president authority to act in Iraq. Unfortunately, the Defense Department's civilian leadership turned down a request from the Senate that officers like Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of Central Command, or any of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testify. Instead, the Senate committees got most of their input from a disparate group of retired generals and civilians with wide-ranging views of the requirements for the campaign.
On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the invasion plan was "essentially" put together by General Franks, and yesterday he said that it had the unanimous approval of the Joint Chiefs. I'm sure that is true. However, it is not clear, in the give and take of developing the plan, who the key players were, who in the process gave ground, who among the National Security Council, the Pentagon officials and the Central Command staff had their way. This is important because, while the central tenet of the military establishment is civilian control, the concepts of accountability and responsibility are a close second and third.
Over the past several months, many military officials have reported to the community of retired officers that there were serious disagreements between the uniformed military and the civilian leadership. Some have told me that those in uniform who called for using three additional divisions in Iraq were ridiculed for their "old thinking." One retired four-star general warned that this debate was about more than just invading Iraq ?- that civilians wanted the war done in a new, leaner way to justify their vision of the "transformation force" expected to be in place by 2010.
Last winter, Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, and Gen. James L. Jones, a former commandant of the Marine Corps, both veterans of ground combat, expressed reservations about the paucity of Army and Marine divisions in the plan. And on the battlefield last week Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the V Corps, said that the foe he is facing is very different "from the one we'd war-gamed against."
In the White House, as in the Clinton administration, there is a belief among civilians that military technology has advanced to the point where wars can be won with relatively few ground forces. There will probably be a time in the future when this is so. Until then, soldiers and marines, in large numbers, will still be required to seize and hold terrain.
That we do not now have enough troops on the ground is not important in terms of the outcome ?- we will win and depose the regime in Iraq. However, the concept of risk in a military operation is not solely about winning and losing, it is also about the cost. In this case, the cost will be measured in American lives.
When we are victorious and when we begin the more daunting challenge of the reconstruction of Iraq, I hope the Senate will again hold hearings. This time, perhaps, the senior military commanders and the civilian defense officials can testify as to exactly how the plan was conceived and developed. Then the American people will know, if belatedly, why we didn't send enough troops to begin with.
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