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 America
would be a whole lot safer if the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, was flying for Virgin
Airlines, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was competing
on "Survivor." Both war leaders have done so
miserable a job honchoing the military side of our critical
conflict against global terrorism, and in the process
so jeopardized our national security, that they should
be sacked for dereliction of duty.
Contrary to continuing political spin,
Iraq and Afghanistan both are running sores with little
promise of even a long-term turnaround, and our world
today is far more dangerous than it was before 9-11. Unless
there's a 180-degree change in overall strategy, the USA
is doomed to follow the same bloody path through these
two brutal killing fields that the Soviet Union took in
Afghanistan.
The mighty sword that Rumsfeld and Myers
inherited four years ago – the finest military force
in the world – is now chipped and dulled. And the
word is that it will take at least a decade to get our
overextended, bone-tired soldiers and Marines and their
worn-out gear back in shape.
Top generals like former NATO commander
Wes Clark and a squad of retired and active-duty four-stars
warned long before the invasion of Iraq: Don't go there.
It doesn't involve our national security. It's not the
main objective in our war with international terrorism.
Even retired four-star Colin Powell said that if we go
to Iraq and break the china, we own it. But know-it-all
Rumsfeld and go-along-to-get-along Myers totally ignored
this sound military advice.
Before the invasion of Iraq, Army Chief
of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, a distinguished soldier with
counter-guerrilla campaigns in Vietnam and Bosnia under
his pistol belt, was asked by Congress how many soldiers
he thought would be needed for the occupation phase in
Iraq. His response: A minimum of 200,000.
Rumsfeld treated this courageous soldier
– who left half a foot in the Vietnam Delta –
like a leper for telling a truth that was obviously contrary
to party lockstep. And Shinseki's spot-on troop estimate
was discredited and ridiculed by senior Pentagon chicken
hawks like Paul Wolfowitz, a man who dodged the draft
during Vietnam and wouldn't know a tank from a Toyota.
Even though Rumsfeld and Myers know zilch
about ground fighting in an insurgent environment, they
were convinced "Shock 'n' Awe" would do the
trick, just as another military dilettante, former SecDef
Robert McNamara, believed the big hammer would win in
Vietnam, a war where the USA dropped three times the bomb
tonnage and used twice the artillery firepower than was
used in all of World War II.
Space doesn't allow for the long laundry
list of what went wrong after the Iraqi army was predictably
defeated by a brilliant "Wham, Bam, Goodbye Saddam"
air-and-ground attack and the present occupation phase
kicked off. But the key screw-ups are:
- Our ground units went in far too light.
They didn't have – and still don't have –
sufficiently trained numbers and the right force mix
to cope with the growing mess on the ground.
- There wasn't an effective plan to deal
with the looting, rioting and civil disorder or the
early insurgent attacks. Army and Marine skippers in
Iraq from company to division tried to put out four-alarm
fires without sufficient force, equipment and logistics.
Crisis management prevailed.
- Iraqi police, civil-defense corps,
the regular army and border-patrol units – which
could have prevented much of the chaos and civil disobedience
that followed – were precipitously disbanded.
In this column on April 1, 2003, when
many Americans and all the White House and Pentagon war
hawks were gloating about the easy victory in Iraq, I
wrote: "Hopefully ... he (G.W. Bush) won't make the
mistake of another Texas president who didn't sack his
SecDef and Joint Chiefs chairman straight away for their
screw-ups."
Fox's Brit Hume publicly ridiculed my
analysis, much like Wolfowitz did Shinseki's. I wonder
if Hume and Wolfowitz like their crow served hot or cold.
Our president says he's not big on reading
newspapers. But perhaps former librarian Laura will share
this column with her husband and suggest he follow Harry
Truman's example of firing his inept SecDef when the Korean
War was going badly.
Eilhys England contributed to this
column.
Col. David H. Hackworth, author of his new best-selling
"Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," "Price of
Honor" and "About Face," has seen duty
or reported as a sailor, soldier and military correspondent
in nearly a dozen wars and conflicts – from the end
of World War II to the recent fights against international
terrorism.
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