A group of retired Gerneral Officers have launched a PR offensive against Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the Bush administration.

Many of the complaining Generals are now playing Monday-morning-quarterback, when they voluntarily pulled themselves out of the game.

In the Washington Post, Thomas Ricks transcribes their talking points before tacking on this paragraph at the end:

“Also, the generals themselves may be partly to blame for the situation in Iraq, along with Rumsfeld and the White House, said Michael Vickers, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.

“It’s just absurd to lay the blame on Don Rumsfeld alone,” he said.

Who is Mr. Vickers?

According to his bio:

From 1973 to 1986, Mr. Vickers served as an Army Special Forces Officer and CIA Operations Officer, with extensive operational and combat experience in Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Central Asia. During the mid-1980s, he was the principal strategist for the largest covert action program in the CIA’s history: the paramilitary operation that drove the Soviet army out of Afghanistan and played a major role in ending the Cold War. His Afghanistan experience is described in the New York Times bestseller and soon-to-be-released major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, “Charlie Wilson’s War.

So, the only counter voice gets buried at the end of the article and, oddly enough, appears to have as much, if not more, real world operational experience than the retired generals.

The mileage the retired generals are getting is from a media that demands the military not just win the game, but score on every offensive possesion and four-and-out every time while on defense.

Of course, if the military used the level of force required to score on every possession and force a punt on every fourth down, the media would complain about the military running up the score–or in this case, the massive destruction involved.

The media, the ultimate Monday-morning-quarterback, has been willing to transcribe the General’s talking points, but none have asked this question:

“What should been done differently?”

In his TIME magazine article, General Newbold offers this concret advice:

“So what is to be done? We need fresh ideas and fresh faces. That means, as a first step, replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach.”

In a New York Times article titled “A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon” General Paul Eaton writes:

“Mr. Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his cold warrior’s view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result, the Army finds itself severely undermanned — cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.”

(TimesSelect Archive)

Memo to General Eaton:

The reduction of Army Divisions from 14 to 10 came under the Clinton administration’s ‘Bottom-Up Review.’

In the ‘Bottom-Up Review’ “the [Clinton] Administration determined the conventional forces it believes the United States would have to deploy to win two nearly simultaneous regional conflicts.”

Eaton’s suggestion:

“First, President Bush should accept the offer to resign that Mr. Rumsfeld says he has tendered more than once, and hire a man who will listen to and support the magnificent soldiers on the ground. Perhaps a proven Democrat like Senator Joseph Lieberman could repair fissures that have arisen both between parties and between uniformed men and the Pentagon big shots.”

Lieberman currently commands a staff of ~35 Senate staffers and once held the rank of Connecticut Attorney General.  (Oh, that’s not a military rank.)

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, the latest to call for Rumsfeld to retire, offers this concrete suggestion, “We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork.”

Getting more specific, he said, “I think we need a fresh start.”

Any specific advice going forward?

How about a plan?

Anything?

Nothing?

Hello?

The only line addressing what to do going forward comes from Newbold:

“And while I don’t accept the stated rationale for invading Iraq, my view–at the moment–is that a precipitous withdrawal would be a mistake. It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists’ message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts.”

Newbold thinks “precipitous withdrawal would be a mistake”
but the PR campaign he is part of builds more media ratings points that could lead to a “precipitous withdrawal.”

Surely these astute strategists understand the effects of their words go beyond the beltway.

What are we to make of this PR campaign?

We have a group of Generals complaining about their former boss, but offering no forward looking proposals for change.

But we do get this analysis from retired Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson who, as the WaPo’s Rick’s writes, “thinks the continuing criticism from military professionals will fuel that anger as the November elections approach.”

We eagerly await the media asking these Generals tough questions like:

Do you support Senator Kerry’s recent plan to withdraw next year?

Do you support Rep. Murtha’s plan to withdraw now?

Can you give us a 5 paragraph order of what should be done in Iraq?

We suspect we’ll be waiting a long time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 4:18 pm and is filed under MSM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.