Rumsfeld, and the generals [edited]

[pecunium]

Rummy was never all that popular in the Pentagon.

His high-handed way of making changes ruffled more than a few feathers. The way Shinseki was treated didn't help. Lots of people said the war in Iraq gave him the upper hand (finally) because his ideas had been tested on the field of battle and been found dandy.

These days some might say they'd been found wanting. Me, I'll say the ideas for the fight were OK, but the aftermath was botched (see Shinseki, ignoring of).

So how is the brass looking at him today?

How has the slew of policy changes he's made, decisions he's forced down the throats of men who are used to getting their way (that's part of what happens when they pin a star on you and make you a demi-god, you get used to people deferring to you, esp. in your area of expertise) been taken lately?

Looking at the press conference he had with Gen. Pace, USMC, not so well. It was subtle, the sort of thing the press (like the WaPo, which has this article on it) sees, but doesn't really comprehend.

There's a way in which a subordinate can be maliciously obedient. He can, for example, work to standard, or play hard and fast with regulations.

He can also be slow on th uptake, in ways which aren't officially sanctionable.

Gen Pace did that.

Rumsfeld (inventor of, if it can be believed, a clunkier, and less felicitous phrase than, "the Global War On Terror", with "the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism", which while ugly is better, in terms of accuracy) decided calling the Iraqi resistance, "insurgents," was making them too credible proposed, "Enemies of the Ligitimate Iraqi Government."

Gen Pace (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) refused to play along. When Rumsfeld tried to correct him, he blew him off, But Rumsfeld's new description -- ELIG, if you prefer an acronym -- didn't stick with the general. Smiling, he uttered the forbidden word again while discussing explosive devices.

The secretary recoiled in mock horror. "Sorry, sir," Pace explained. "I'm not trainable today."

Whoof. That was the sound of unsanctionable insubordination, and in public.

It didn't end there.

Gen. Pace also said it was the duty of soldiers who saw abuse, committed by anyone to stop it.

Runsfeld tried to smack down that pernicious idea, When UPI's Pam Hess asked about torture by Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld replied that "obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility" other than to voice disapproval.

But Pace had a different view. "It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it," the general said.

Rumsfeld interjected: "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."

Now that's new direction, based on what I was taught, in Basic, and at AIT, when I was studying interrogation. We were told we were to stop it. Esp. if we were the detaining power, because the detaining power is responsible for whatever happens to the prisoners they've arrested, no matter who does it.

Pace responded to this, "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," he said, firmly.

The WaPo reporter cast this as Pace meaning what he said. He missed the important part, and Rumsfeld [who's time in the active military was brief] probably missed it too. It was the, "sir." That little formality sounds, to a soldier (and I'll bet it's at least as loud to a Marine) like someone telling a superior they just fucked up.

It's saying that because the reminder of the rank disparity wasn't needful. The regulations are plain, and Gen. Pace could have merely said no, the regs say the responsibility is to stop it, but he didn't, he made the pointed effort to tell Rumsfeld that he was wrong, and he did it in public, in a place where the phrasing was going to be quoted. From the interpretational commment of the reporter, I'd say he was also pretty firm in his reiteration.

I'd like to think that Pace would like to put people higher in the food chain than a few Specialists and Sergeants in the dock.

Comments

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

The secretary recoiled in mock horror. "Sorry, sir," Pace explained. "I'm not trainable today."

Oh MY.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I'd like to give the general a big OO-RAH!, despite not being a Marine myself.

Being led by people like that is one of the reasons I joined.

DV

[pindar.livejournal.com]

Our last SoS for Defence was a politician called Geoff Hoon. He was referred to iaround HMF as "TCH" or "That Cnut Hoon". The previous Chief od the Defence Staff was Admiral Sir Mike Boyce, and in a press conference did much the same thing. When TCH was yabbering on that there was no such thing as overstrecth in the armed forces and that HMF was generally in an all-round love-fest for the Gov't and actively wanted to go to Iraq. Boyce openly and blatently contradicted him in the press conference and told it how it was while TCH stood there looking on in undisguised contempt for Boyce. TCH then tried to spin the conference by saying that actually, both men were in agreement with each other. Not for the first time the press rounded on, and mocked TCH for being out of touch with his own forces. 6 months later Boyce stood down as CDS in anger at the way the forces were being decimated by cuts and expected to do mkore and more by way of expeditionary ventures for our Glorious Leader.

While I was at Staff College (being edumacated as a newly prmoted Major) Boyce payed the mess at Kitchener Hall a visit. When he walked in at lunchtime the student body all stood up and applauded him and cheered. The army's 90 newest majors, the RAF's 50 newest Squadron Leaders, and the R Navy's 50 newest Lt Cdrs all showed their appreciation of Boyce's decisive leadership, essentially standing up for what is right rather than what is politically expedient.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Boyce will remember that ovation for the rest of his life.

[pindar.livejournal.com]

Damn typos!

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the rendition of the press conference that went out over the AP wire. In addition to repeating that lovely exchange - and maybe I've watched too many military shows, but that "sir" came across as subtly sarcastic to me even in print - the story included the following charming bit :

"'I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe,'" [Rumsfeld] said. 'These people don't have a legitimate gripe.' Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of `insurgent.' He promised to look it up.

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the term "insurgent" as 'rising up against established authority.'"

The news reporters are no stranger to their own brand of discreet but clear sarcasm. :)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Bush's new term, "rejectionist" isn't much better, in some ways it's worse; since it says; flat out, they are rejecting us, and what we promised to bring them.

I'm not surprised the term insurgent isn't popular, but imagine the flap had the press chosen the term, "resistance," which is what the Arabic press uses. (and a reporter for Al Hayat just released a book about the resistance. The bit I heard on NPR today was, sadly, confirmatory of things I've long thought).

My understanding is that it has much the same connotations, in Arabic, as it did in France and Holland.

TK

[lietya.livejournal.com]

"Rejectionist" is oddly accurate, though, since they ARE rejecting us - the difference is that I/we think perhaps rightfully so, while Bush clearly thinks it's an insult.

"Resistance" also seems equally fair. (I have yet to hear of an established government that *did* think the resistance had a "legitimate gripe"!)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's accurate. But I don't think it carries the connotaion of illigitmacy he would like attached to all who oppose us.

Me, I don't blame them, I think many (if not most) short sighted, because, for all we screwed the pooch, I don't see much in the way of better options at the moment (since we aren't going to hand things over to the UN, or NATO, and the way things are now, there isn't anyone who willing to take over who could pull it off).

I think, given similar circumstances here, it's not unlikely I'd be manning the barricades.

TK

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Go Pete! Semper Fi, sir!

thx!

[atomicsappertom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I rather like Gen. Pace. I met him, last year, at the Army birthday ball in DC. He's also said, publicly, "Hope is not a plan."

Not an original quote, unfortunately, but nice to see someone at his level who's aware of it.

[antiquated-tory.livejournal.com]

I'd read the quote but my thanks to TK for hammering home what Pace was really saying, and who he was saying it to--and for.

I have a friend in the intel community who once sent me a long article on how many unsecured weapon dumps there were in Iraq, with the comment that we were doing as well as we could, given that situation.
My question was, if it wasn't possible to deploy enough men to secure those dumps, why did we invade? But then I'm just a civilian.

Well, 'legitimate' or not, 'insurgents' or 'ELIGS' or fuzzy-wuzzies or whatever you want to call them, we seem to be talking with them more, recently, at least if the WaPo is to be believed (apologies, cannot find bloody article). Subject: conditions for us to redeploy out of their strongholds.

What do you think? Taking any bets on how soon we deploy out of urban centers in the Sunni Triangle?

[ckd]

First Murtha, now Pace...Semper Fi, guys. Even coming from a mostly-Army family as I do, I gotta say that some Marines are really cheering me up these days.

(Admittedly, we do have a couple Marines in the family, and we even let them come to family gatherings :-)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

(Admittedly, we do have a couple Marines in the family, and we even let them come to family gatherings :-)

But you lock up the dogs. Right?

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Rummy was in the military--he was a Navy pilot instructor in the 1950s. Briefly.
This does a lot to explain his fascination with $$$$$weapons systems and disinterest in the people using them--as well as his complete failure to grasp the basics of land tactics and strategy.

Pace is going to be a whole new breed of critter for Rumsfeld to deal with. Meyers was somewhat preoccupied with the scandals at the Air Force Academy, and was anxious enough to sort those out quietly that he wasn't up to fighting the good fight against Feith, Wolfowitz and the other genius neocons.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The differing cultures of the services isn't much of an issue for the Administration (as regards the Joint Chiefs). The time in which it can matter is time of strain between the administration's desires, and the inertia/values of the services.

If you want (speaking as a soldier) to have a go-along, get along, relationship, the Air Force is the way to get it. The Army is likely to be quietly subordinate, and ignore all that can be ignored. The Navy will cling to tradition (which can be more intractable than grudging acquiesence and attempts to subvert. The Navy was far later in integrating than the Army was).

If you want to meet straigt up, in your face, resistance to things seen as bad for the souls of the Service... a Marine at the top is the most likely to stand, bearlike, in the way.

They are used to being the red-headed stepchild. Asked to do as much, and with far less; dependant on others to get them to the fight, and living as strangers among those others; away from not only home, for months at a time; in peace, but spending those months away from the confraternity of Marines. A small band of the pure, amidst the great unwashed which is the Navy.

They are used to telling superiors that it can't be done that way.

Pace is probably the closest thing to exactly what I want sitting in the hot seat right now.

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

They are used to being the red-headed stepchild. Asked to do as much, and with far less; dependant on others to get them to the fight, and living as strangers among those others; away from not only home, for months at a time; in peace, but spending those months away from the confraternity of Marines. A small band of the pure, amidst the great unwashed which is the Navy.

That's beautiful Terry. Utterly beautiful. It captures the essence of what we are quite nicely.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I think Pace is about the best that chance could have thrown in our way these days. You know more than I about the personalities, as it were, of the various services, but even without that it was obvious going in that Meyers had the Air Force's problems on his mind, and a strong desire to settle them without any more of the bad publicity the Air Force was getting. People in that situation are not going to be about rocking the boat.
I suspect, though, that by now the Army is about as willing to rock the boat as the Marines.

I have a friend who was one of the first 50 women commissioned into the field artillery in the days of Jimmy Carter, She was recollecting the extent and content of the ethics training, post-My Lai and post-Nixon, as well as the training in consitutional law, that she went through from ROTC on. I suspect that the officers corps is probably (make that certainly) better-versed in constitutional law that most of this administration is. Including, alas, the AG.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

In Heinlein's Space Cadet, it's stated as a fact that [space] Marines have lower IQ's than members of the [space] Navy. Which is probably what was taken for granted in the Navy when Heinlein was an active Naval officer.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It may be what he was told at the in the gentle embrace of the Acadamy, but I don't think he ever bought into it.

Starship Troopers calls the doggies Infantry, but they aren't. They are Marines. Shock troops, tossed on the beach, asked to take and hold it (for a time) and then back to the boat.

The whole culture of the MI in that book is one of Marines.

Want to be a pilot in the Corps? Gotta be a grunt first.

Same reasons. The guys on the ground want two things, the air to drop things as close as they get them, and no closer. Make the flyboy know what it's like on the ground, he'll be more sympathetic.

I have a lot of respect for Marines. I've had the change to play with them, to train them up for MEUs, refresh the interrogators (and that's one place the Corps has fallen down... we started to do that [after twenty years of holding it off] and the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq stem, in part, from that attempt to apply local circumstance in Bosnia to the entire HumInt community. What the Marines got was rusty interogators, what we got was worse).

In a lot of ways they remind me of the Guard (the red-headed stepchild of the Army... my unit still has M-16A1s), misson first, buddies always, everyone else when possible.

TK

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

This has been a long standing conceit of the Navy, but I know it's not true now. The US Marine Corps enjoys an extremely intelligent enlisted complement. Our officer corps is still, on average, not quite as intelligent as Navy officers. But at the flag rank level the brilliance is vivid. General Pace is certainly a genius, as is now retired Marine General Zinni. General Jones, the current Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, is also a Marine General.

The tradition of brilliant Marine general officers goes back to John A. LeJeune, our 13th Commandant. He was the honor graduate of his class at Annapolis, and he had the foresight to recognize that the nation would need his brilliance more in the Marine Corps than in the Navy. He was the father of modern amphibious warfare.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

>>If you want (speaking as a soldier) to have a go-along, get along, relationship, the Air Force is the way to get it. The Army is likely to be quietly subordinate, and ignore all that can be ignored. The Navy will cling to tradition (which can be more intractable than grudging acquiesence and attempts to subvert. The Navy was far later in integrating than the Army was).

If you want to meet straigt up, in your face, resistance to things seen as bad for the souls of the Service... a Marine at the top is the most likely to stand, bearlike, in the way.<<

Probably not a coincedence, but in talking to soldiers in and veterans of the Iraq War, their feelings about it often run along these lines. Marines, for instance, will support the war wholeheartedly overall, in or out of the service. Whereas, for example, many soldiers in the Army will support it or say they support it while they're there, but once they're out (either of Iraq or the service) they tell you what they really think of the war, which is usually not much.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Semper Fi General Pace. He has always been an exemplary Marine officer, and he continues to be one.

For the record, Don Rumsfeld served for four years as a Naval aviator in the late 50's. So he has been a commissioned Navy officer, though he's never commanded troops.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

For a while now, members of the military have been rather more Republican than the US as a whole. I wonder if that might be changing.

And I also wonder if the next batch of combat veterans to run for office as Republicans might be less deferential to Party leaders than has been usual in the past.

I assume "work to standard" means the same as "work to rule" and "work by the book"?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

For a while the members of the military have been rather more working class, as a whole, and this colors a lot of things, from views on unions (largely for them) to views on abortion (mostly against) to views on liberties (confused).

The officer class, however, tends to be more republican. I'm not sure why this is... it may have to do with the general disdain most middle class college students have for the service, it may be a function of the myth of the liberal media, and the "left-wing college professor", but it takes a few years for an officer to mellow out, and they still tend to be, at their most left, conservative democrats.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Not quite, and I thought about that. Work to rule means doing everything, just so, and allowing the short cuts and speed-making steps to be discarded.

There are standards. Take PT Tests. I have to do 38 push-ups, the same number of sit-ups and run two-miles in something like 17 minutes.

If I'm taking a PT test I can stop as soon as the grader says, "38". No one can make me do more.

Working to standard makes one's boss look bad. The principle in the services is to work to one's best (which is why I did 44 push ups, and 61 sit-ups, running the two-miles in 14:23). To have a subordinate who does merely the standard makes the subordinate look bad. To have everyone in one's command performing only to standard is a rebuke, from the bottom, which will be heard, at the top.

TK

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Heh--I'd heard earlier today everything you posted before

>>It didn't end there.<<

But not afterward!

I wonder what the conservative talk show hosts will make of this.