The Opportunity of Failure

I liked him. Mostly because he was so unapologetically mean. We'll need lots of that in years to come.

(BTW, a family story about FDR... 1945... my father, then a teenager in Norfolk, VA, comes in from playing baseball with his friends, turns on the radio and hears, "We interrupt this broadcast with terrible news: President Roosevelt has died." He runs in the kitchen and tells his mother. She answers, "Thank God.")

The country, the MSM, and the Democrats don't have the stomach for the long war.

That's the crying shame.

I got the news that Rumsfeld had finally quit just as I was walking into my Vietnam War seminar, kind of ironic I suppose, but I ended up spending the first 15 minutes or so trying to figure out exactly what I thought about his resignation.

On the whole, I'm happy. I don't like Transformation (frankly, never had), and I think it represents a step back, or rather a lateral step. What annoys me about the sack Rumsfeld crowd is that his stepping down is viewed as an accomplishment, when it reality it should only be the first step in a series that will eventually lead (possibly) to an accomplishment.

What's needed in the American military today is a realignment away from reliance on technology. I was campaigning for Tom Kean Jr. in south Jersey last weekend when I struck up a conversation with a fellow who was also volunteering there, who happened to have a long and fairly distinguished history in the DoD and DoS. When I started talking to him about why I didn't like Transformation, he kept coming back to the point that technology was the key, and the example he kept using was that advanced communications would in the future allow commanders to control every movement of individual troops on the ground. I tried explaining to him that this was not a good thing, and was in fact a disastrous direction for us to be going in, but he wouldn't budge.

I think since 1917 the United States has with a few exceptions been a technological development-reliant military. When problems in war-fighting have presented themselves, we have resorted to developing better technology instead of better methodology. We and the British answered the machinegun with the tank, for example, instead of developing new infantry doctrine. In World War II, we defeated German armor by overwhelming it with massive numbers of tanks we could continue to churn out because of advances in mass production. We dealt with the problem posed by Japanese entrenchment on the Home Islands by developing the atomic bomb. When it became clear that Soviet tanks would be able to plough through Western Europe whenever they wanted, we developed the anti-tank helicopter, and we responded to Soviet SAM development with stealth.

At the end of the day though, despite all of these technological advancements, our military still relies on kinetic warfighting, the exact same underlying principle that defined the way we've been fighting since after the Civil War: bring firepower to bear until the problem no longer exists. The key maxim of Boyd -- people, ideas, then technology in that order -- has been abandoned by those seeking push-button, video game war. Initiative on the part of small units has been written out of our military primers, and replaced with centralized triple C. the soldier on the ground has become a guidance system for any number of weapon systems. This is all fine so long as we face enemies based on our own model.

We destroyed the Iraqi Army in 1991 because they were just like us, only far, far worse. The reason we're losing Iraq now is that we're fighting an enemy against whom our kinetic warfare is counter productive. Our predators can identify a suspect house, our soldiers can call in precision airstrikes destroying that house, and we can thus kill the enemy, but killing the enemy is not a goal in and of itself, and doesn't appear to be a deterrant stopping anyone from becoming an enemy. The fundamental mistake of Transformation is that it is a doctrine based around controlling a battlespace by eliminating the enemies within that battlespace, while the wars of the future will be fought in a relatively undefined battlespace uncontrollable by simple application of measured force. I don't entirely accept the 4GW idea that every instance of non-state applicaiton of force is necessarily warfare, but the premise that wars of the future will not look like wars of the past is sound.

Our military needs transformation with a lowercase t. We need an expanded special operations and civil affairs capability. We need dedicated light infantrymen not encumbered by 60 pounds of technological gizmos and overly-controlling senior officers. Most of all, we need commanders who realize that body counts don't equal victory, and that doctrinal change is needed to fight the wars we're going to have to fight in the future.

I'm happy that Rumsfeld is no longer in office, but staff changes are only relevant if policy changes go along with them. A lighter military is going to be needed, but not the lighter military Transformation proposes.

Sorry for the absurdly long post.

I think Rumsfeld's resignation is good and bad. He was reviled by the military top brass because he told them what they didn't want to hear and actually exercised civilian control of the military (the military supervising itself scares me). He laid out the Bush Administrations vision for the military and implemented it with vigor, ruffling feathers and canceling precious Cold War-era programs (Crusader). I think the problem with Transformation was that ask 10 different people what it meant, you received 10 diffferent answers. My vision (Am I allowed to have a vision?) of Transformation was getting the military's head out of its' Cold War ass. I see nothing wrong with the integration of high-tech gizmos into the force; however, I do agree that some began to see technology as the path to victory instead of the path to victory being paved with dead muslims. I completely disagree with the armor thing. The personal body armor does not really save lives - snipers shoot around it; extremity wounds cause death, not upper body wounds. The armored vehicles do save lives but the number one method of defeating IEDs is finding them before they kill. We make better armor kits, they make better IEDs. The other way to defeat them is killing emplacers. Bottom line, Rumsfeld made shit happen, some good, some maybe not.

We would be in much worse shape now if Rumsfeld hadn't been the SecDef. The Army was broke and organized to fight the a battle not a sustained war. Rumsfeld recognized that and had to fight thru idiots like Shinseki to convince people it was true.

I love it how guys who have never met the man, don't know how he operates with the senior uniformed leadership, and can't name a single one of his decisions that went wrong...love to dis the man. My only response to them is grow-up and stop dreaming of the war you would rather be in but concentrate on the fight we are in.

The better off with or without Rumsfeld being appointed is a counter-factual argument, and one that assumes staticity had he not been appointed. Was a Rumsfeld-like browbeating figure needed? Maybe. I've heard active and retired officers come down on both sides of this one.

Transformation is, at its heart, belief in the use of force multiplying factors and network-centric warfighting to gain battlespace dominance over opposing forces. Force multipliers don't work in asymetrical warfare though, and they don't allow you to effectively fight counter-insurgency. At the end of the day, the relevant metric is soldiers on the ground, not deliverable firepower, which is something RMA has never come to terms with.

I know in terms of actual experience I rank just about last on this board. I'm an armchair general, a student of military history, rather that someone who's actually been there and done it. If you want me to shut up and sit quietly, just say the word.

Rumsfeld's resignation, good or bad? I remember the lectures I received on careerism as a cadet, and think that any change to an institution will be violently opposed by some members, regardless of benefit to the institution. The military needs some change. I wish we were more flexible and proactive with our doctrine and tactics. My point is that we needed some of what Rumsfeld wanted. Probably not all, but the issues have been effectively clouded, and now he is gone. The political situation that resulted in his resignation is grim. Instead of change for the better, we risk change for social experiment (draft), change to fund entitlements, and compromises on our stay in Iraq. It is a moot point whether we are better with him or without him. Meaningful direction by a replacement is vanishingly unlikely in this political climate. Territories and empires will be maintained in the lofty ranks, as always, but hard decisions won't be made.

The one point about Rumsfeld stepping down that makes me sad is the fact that he is/was one of only a few mature adult men in government today. Love him or hate him you have to recognize that he is one of a kind. He is an old fashioned stoic warrior. He took responsibility for his decisions, he was loyal to the President and he was a student of history. He had served in so many capacities in federal service that nothing surprised him and he knew the "game" inside and out.

With Rumsfeld gone, heaven help us if the Pentagon reverts to type--political generals running up to Capitol Hill every minute trying to score points behind the Sec Def's back, each service trying to outgame the other and poor manpower decisions in a time of war, including putting Special Operations back in their box.

I'm also not sanguine that Mr. Gates, an intel analyst and a man with ties to the Iraq Survey Group is going to be interested in the long term welfare of the military.

The Iraq Survey group is being led by James Baker who, along with Brent Scowcroft, have made disasterous political decisions in the Middle East in the past including not backing the Shiite uprising in the 90's after suggesting the uprising in the first place and reinstalling Araft on the West Bank.

Considering the fact that Pres Bush is now listening to his father's old advisors and the Dems are fully onboard with this group I, frankly, have grave concerns about the ability of Pres Bush to stem the tide of unpleasant changes happening to the military going forward including a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq.

I hope I'm wrong.

The idea that technology can't, alone, win on the battlefield is exactly the point. And it reminds me of the debate about "technical means of verification" and high tech overhead systems vs. HUMINT in the intelligence collection wars in the early 80s. The same debate resurfaces every time something bad happens. The real problem is that we didn't, and never seem to, learn the lesson well enough to prevent another failure. Why is that true?

I think it's true because we, as a nation, keep making the same mistakes because winning is ugly and hard. HUMINT is hard. Ground-pounding is ugly and harder. But, nothing else will do in either case. The fact is the U.S. as a nation doesn't have the stomach for a long hard fight (or HUMINT for that matter). The same conflicting interests that prevent victory in Iraq (taking the time and committing the resources necessary to do it right the first time vs. the need for immediate, even overnight, results and short term memory loss about signing up for the job in the first place) will prevent success in every failed-state rescue operation in the future. And there will be more of these operations --nothing motivates extremists like success.

North Korea has put off the international community for more than half a century and used the time to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is following the same course. The conflict in Isreal --same deal.

I wonder how long the readers of this particular forum would allow an armed enemy to sit across the street from their house and shoot at them every morning as they left for work (and left their families behind to face the same)... before eliminating that particular threat. It's actually worse than that, but I'm sure readers get the point. Nothing sickens me more than seeing the UN and the rest of the international community make demands on Isreal to allow this kind of atrocity to continue all day, every day, year after year. I don't have any particular love of Isreal, I just cannot imagine anyone thinking it's O.K. to force any country and its people, anywhere in the world, to live under constant threat of violent death from their neighbors.

In Battle Ready, General Zinni describes in detail just how useless it is to negotiate with the Palestinians. The problem is they don't want to be peaceful neighbors. They want to destroy Isreal. Now, before anyone starts going on about moderates and peacemakers, the truth is they don't want peace enough to stop the violence themselves. The same is true in Iraq and Iran. The moderates don't want peace and progress enough to confront the extremists and win because doing so would be ugly and hard. And I think the truth is that if they did manage to defeat the extremists without our intervention, or that of the UN or anybody else for that matter, the peace would mean a lot more to them (ownership) than it would if someone just handed peace to them --and they would be a lot more likely to do whatever is necessary to keep the extremists from taking over again.

As long as the extremists can employ violence to maintain their grip on power in these countries and succeed, the carnage will continue and spread.

Bush and Rumsfeld have been saying winning is going to be hard from the beginning --maybe they should have better defined hard... Rumsfeld will be missed.

The $64 question is how do we get out of the never-ending loop of learning hard lessons and then forgetting them.

My answer would shock most civilized people and I doubt anyone is interested in hearing it. But I didn't arrive at the answer overnight, I been around long enough to understand "hard," and at least recognize that we're in a loop and need to get out.

I'm glad Rumsfeld is gone. His idea of transformation always bothered me because I think it went to far. In my mind, the military, at least the Army, we fieled in the late 1980s is exactly what we still need.
The mix of mech, armor and light infantry was well balanced. I would imagine our military leadership in Iraq would not mind having the 6th or 7th LID around to help today.

Granted that force was designed to fight massive battles against a armor/artillery heavy enemy, but we still face the same situation. Even if the enemy is a far cry from the Soviet Army. In 2003 Iraq used a Soviet style army as does North Korea.

Rumsfeld's ideas on integrating systems and creating an army that can take on and defeat a larger force was correct, but that did not mean getting rid of your heavy forces. He tried to create a force that was all things to all wars, and that is not pracical.

I often hear how the US spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined. What are we getting for our investment? An army with a division strength of barely 10. Insufficient strategic airlift assets. A Navy with fewer and fewer ships.
In the words of a Soviet general, "Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own." F-22s are great, but is it worth being able to have a third of the fighters we do presently?
There are four potential enemies we face in the future, Islamic terrorists, Iran, China and North Korea. A technologically advanced standoff force can only defeat Nrth Korea, and that because the ROKs will provide the troops. fighting the other three will require many more soldiers than we have currently. Rumsfelds failure was that he never remembered that the enemy gets a vote too.

On the F22, I'm left wondering if up-teched F15s could do an equivalent job for far less. I mean, are there operational fighters in potential opfor airforces that can beat -15s and -16s with AWACS?

Transform for what purpose. As far as I can tell most of our leaders are afraid to properly identify the enemy. You transform the military and all government forces to meet the threat. But what is the threat? Until we realize the threat is mostly an Islamic-Arabic culture that has at its core Sharia Law. And that “law” is diametrically opposed to our culture. So much so that it is a threat to our western way of life.

Whether it is 5 more F-22s or 100 more strikers is not the question. The question is how to defeat a culture that has developed over the last 1,400 years. The answer is that it can be done. You only need to look how the west defeated Japan in WWII. We did it with extreme prejudice, Curtis Lemay, Robert Openhiemer, and the political will to be conquers. Douglas Macarthur basically wrote their constitution and with an iron hand enforced a western mindset on the Japanese. The Japanese seem to be one of our best allies today.

Our strategic mistake is failing to muster the political will to conquer Iraq and start the process of educating the Iraqis in western culture and the real story of western civilization. Not the drivel that comes out of the Madras’s.

We nuked two Japanese cities, and had millions of men under arms in theater waiting to take down the Home Islands if necessary. That sort of total defeat is entirely different from the war of liberation we were trying to fight in Iraq. You're right that you have to take one of the two poles and go with it, either Malay-like hearts and minds, or Roman fields of salt, no middle ground.

Three of Rumsfields mistakes: 1) no strategy whatsoever after US forces destroyed the Iraquiis; 2) no artillery in Afghanistan 3) making the Marines wait at the beginning of Fallujah and not taking down al-sadr when al-sadr was located.
That's three off of the top of my head. Rumsfield is an honorable man and serve with a great love of our country, but he wasn't without his flaws and he did make mistakes.

William, excellent points about our over-reliance on firepower. That has been a complaint of some of our allies for a while now. Our industrial might has led us to believe we can engineer a solution for anything.

Over the past summer, the Iraqi battalion I was supporting started getting hammered with IEDs on a paved road that we patrolled frequently. We employed aviation to try to find these guys, and we relied on our armor and countermeasures to defend against them. In the end, what was most effective? When an Iraqi soldier recognized one of the leaders of the local IED cell, and detained him.

Terrific post, John.
-Austen

Excuse me for mentioning this, but Rummy, good or bad is only one man in a monster machine that eats the weak and spits out the brave.

Look to the congress that only funds projects that make money for the legislators that have the pull or push to get them funded in their state. Look to them for the lack of money for things that won't make their state money.

Then look to the eight sided building for those that rather tell the truth, push for the unwelcome, or unpopular, go with the flow because they want that next star.

Look to the President who listens not enough to his advisors who actually know something, and too much to his friends who don't.

Rummy made mistakes, but being a politician or someone who didn't really care about the troops was not among them.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Mr. Rumsfeld is a deeply good family man with a genuine concern for our country. He not only made the tough decisions but stuck to the plan and LOVED our troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. His mindset was to transform and quickly change the course of military devastation that President Clinton began. His technological concept of change is/was right on and showed us that we need not sacrifice tens of thousands of our good military troops to win. In fact in the Vietnam War, we lost over 55,000 killed and tens of thousands in casulties in a war that lasted from 1954 to 1973. Yet in this War we thus far have barely lost 3,000 killed because of Rumsfeld dream of using our technology to win. We should also admire this man for the way he handled dumb questions from the press who perhaps are at least 50% the cause of his resignation.

Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld is a genuine American hero who deserves much better treatment than he has gotten. All in responsible positions involved, both under and over this genuis of a human being should applaud his efforts on our country's behalf and salute him for a job WELL DONE.

GOD BLESS YOU MR. RUMSFELD....

Roland Amnott
Summerfield, Florida

Lance, lets hear your answer. We should be able to handle a shock.

Roland, let's go through this bit-by-bit.

The fact that Mr. Rumsfeld is a good family man, while comendable, does not speak to his ability as Secretary of Defense. Carter was a great family man, but a lousy president.

Sacrificing large numbers of troops is different than utilizing large numbers of troops. Force multiplier logic has been proven faulty when applied to counter-insurgency. Firepower is not a replacement for manpower in LIC.

You cite Vietnam, and correctly say that we lost close to 60,000 troops in a little under two decades. This has no bearing on the current war though. In Vietnam, we had half a million or more troops in country. Now, we have, depending on the numbers you use, 200,000 as a hard maximum. If you multiply the 3,000 we've lost by 2.5, to account for this gap, you get 7,500 which is a figure remarkably close to the standard figure used for the years 1961-1966 (a little under 8,000). I don't view this sort of arithmetic as an accurate metric of relative success in these two respective wars, but since you made the comparison I thought I should address it.

I concede to you that Rumsfeld was good at rebuffing stupid questions from the press.

Rumsfeld is a genuine American, I think to call him a hero devalues that term. The heroes are the boys over in Iraq bleeding and dying for the cause of freedom, not some Pentagon REMF. The treatment Rumsfeld got was absurdly good. Bush kept him even while the whole country was calling for his head, which probably cost us the senate. If that's not good treatment in DC, I don't know what is.

The effectiveness of our high-tech, wiz-bang Army has been demonstrated by a couple of Arabs armed with IED's and sniper rifles.

All the technology in the world doesn't do you a lick of good against an insurgent who is media-savvy and flexible. An insurgent changes tactics on the fly. "Big Army" adapts at the speed of pond water.

MacNamara failed to learn this. Rumsfeld has too.

It's our grunts that pay the price. 58,000 men whose names are on a wall must be screaming from their graves, "why didn't you learn?!"

I don't hold much hope in Bob Gates. I'd rather the new SECDEF had "Operations sergeant on a Special Forces ODA with combat experience" on his resume instead of "Intel Analyst". But, what do I know? And what do the grunts who face the insurgents know?

I also saw a previous post take a swipe at GEN Shinseki. Yeah, I thought the black berets were a stupid idea too, but guess what. GEN Shinseki was railroaded for trying to tell Congress that we'd need 400,000-500,000 men to carry out the operation succesfully. Instead of publishing his "I told you so" book (as he has every right to do), he has enough class to live his retirement in dignity. He didn't remain silent on active-duty and then take swipes from the safety of retirement. I applaud the man.

Permit me to disagree with Joel.

Gen Shinseki was actively working against Rumsfeld and his initiatives with the help of Sen Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and other Democratic senators.

Gen Shinseki's father and Sen Inouye are personal friends and fought together in WWII with the Nisei Div. Some time in the future, Gen Shinseki may run for Congress from Hawaii when Sen Inouye retires.

Insubordination can't be tolerated on any level and it is unfortunate that the Chief of Staff of the Army set such a poor example as a leader.

Gen Shinseki may have been right on many points he made about the makeup of the Army, but he went about making his case in a very poor unprofessional manner.

In the end, Gen Shinseki came across as a go along to get along political general and he lost any credibility he had to lead the troops.

If he had issues with Sec Def Rumsfeld, he should have dealt with them within the confines of the Command structure. Running to Congress behind Rumsfeld's back was tacky.

Doug · November 9, 2006 09:01 AM
Joel · November 10, 2006 07:28 AM

You both want to fight the last war. The 80's Army would have done even worse in Iraq. As for Shinseki, he was part of the problem that Rumsfeld was trying to fix. The wrong headed, last war mindset, that thinks the 80's Army or Shinseki's plan was right for Iraq doesn't take into account the war we are fighting.

Lets take a stroll through that vaunted 80's Army....Heavy forces (how applicable is that to our current fight?) and garrison mindset (that required a 6 month deployment to get ready for Desert Storm). MASS is not the way to win a war like Iraq.

As for Shinseki's plan, send in 300,000+ for the occupation in April of 2003. The insurgency didn't really kick in until a year later, where would the relief have come from. We would have been out of Schlitz or forced to keep the guys over there indefinitely.

And it wasn't just Rumsfeld who thought there was another way....there were A LOT of stars in the room advising him that we could do it with fewer troops.

Yes, there were mistakes made. Name me a war where there haven't been? Its just disingenious to be monday morning quarterbacks and blame it all on the SecDef or are we all part of the "Bush lied, War for Oil" brigade who use todays facts to pooh pooh decisions made with yesterdays assumptions?

All paying attention know that COIN wars take years to sort out. 8-12 easily. Yet here we are 3plus into one that has had many successes with low casualties and we wring our hands and undermine our national leadership every chance we get. We say "I haven't seen a plan for victory." Well, it ain't about you.

I hear frequent cries that we aren't the nation of WW II anymore. Apparently not. We have a President that's got the resolve. But the public - especially conservatives, Republicans actual or potential. They have folded up like a napkin. Oh woe is me/us.
But the part of us doing the fighting keep re-upping. We all read the Wash Post piece from the troops saying of all things, "stay the course" right? The American public is failing this mission. Not the President and certainly not our commanders and troops.

Shinseki was slated for retirement before he made his Congressional statement about needing 250K to secure Iraq. Good on him. But the only shot Rummy took was announcing his retirement shortly thereafter when it was more traditional to wait until closer to the date. That's how I recall it.

On technology, I recall many of our most successful weapons systems had critics making the same anti-technology pitches we hear today but they turned out working well and are now considered staples we shouldn't part with. M1 Abrams, the Bradley, the Patriot.

Old Senator Proxmire and others in and out of the military tried to run down all those weapons systems. Too complex. Won't run in the dust. Death traps. Didn't turn out that way.

Overwhelmingly, the tech has paid off.

The best thing we (non-warfighters) can do is suppress the urge "to BE right" and just back the cause we know is right and let the pro's get this done. American's political ego's are too strong for that approach however. Or so I fear.

Some Euro leader described us as a Superpower with ADD. At the very least.

Sad days. Will require strong leadership.

I've linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/11/re-opportunity-of-failure.html

Sluggo,

I presented the 80s army not to refight the last war, but to point out how well balanced it was between heavy and light forces. Today we have only of what can be described as light divisions the 82nd and 10th Mtn. When you are walking the mountains of Iraq or needs lots of boots on the ground these are the units an Army needs. Lots of Strykers and Bradleys are nice, but those units are light on troops.

Worst SecDef I've seen in my 25+ years of service.
He had a mandate after 9/11 to ask for the Cold War-sized military we will need to sustain decades of war.
Instead, magical RMA firepower (wonderful for destroying modern forces) was supposed to solve the well-known problems of unconventional war.
We entered Iraq without an overall, integrated political/military strategy, and as SecDef he had failed to insist there be one.
While our troops were busy re-learning the lessons of Viet Nam and Somalia because he sent them in light unarmored trucks, we got the "Army you have" excuse.
As we continue to gut the services to fund the mistakes of the Procurement Death Spiral, we can reflect how we are heading for the next Hollow Force when he could have spoken up and demanded the money to do the job.
Thanks for nothing and good riddance.

Agreed, worst SecDef since McNamara. Definitely will not be missed by active duty personnel.