Rumsfeld, and the generals [edited]
Nov. 30th, 2005 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumRummy 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 04:59 pm (UTC)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
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 05:07 pm (UTC)That's beautiful Terry. Utterly beautiful. It captures the essence of what we are quite nicely.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 05:28 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 06:47 pm (UTC)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
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 07:42 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 07:41 pm (UTC)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.