Thursday, October 23, 2003
The Rumsfeld memo.
After all the hoopla, one question remains: why was the memo leaked?
Don't answer that yet. Instead, let's review what went on.
OK. The memo got leaked. And the result? Headlines from Chicken Little. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We're losing in Iraq! Secretary of Defense's much less optimistic than he lets on. Etc., etc.
I read the memo. Seemed to me to be more like a gut check. It's really easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, especially when swaddled by a huge bureaucracy. Think Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker in 1945: totally out of touch with reality, ordering non-existent troops and vengeance weapons into battle.
The best thing any good commander an do, any morning, is put a bit of stick about as this memo does. Question your principles, your axioms, your assumptions. Ask how progress can be measured. Ask whether the organization is up to the task before it. This was exactly the right memo to send to the troops, and I hope he sends more of them.
Then the memo was leaked. Whoever leaked it knew it would be dowdified to have the worst possible meaning, possibly causing embarrassment, and at least making life a bit more difficult for the SecDef.
Hmmm. Rumsfeld wants to shake up a huge bureaucracy, transform it, make it more efficient, lighter on its feet, more lethal, less tied to multi-billion, multi-year programs. He even questions whether the huge bureaucracy is actually up to the task. Hmmm. I wonder who'd leak such a memo.
Of course it was some senior officer at the Pentagon.
Listen: when General Shinseki - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - retired, his retirement had been announced 14 months in advance. Nobody from the SecDef's office attended the retirement. Shinseki was an advocate of massive force, an adherent to the cold war way of thinking. Rumsfeld wanted him gone in the worst way. And I can't blame the SecDef. Had Shinseki been running Gulf War II, we'd have had a repeat of Gulf War I, and the Iraqi oil fields would still be burning today.
Now, guess what? Generals tend to promote people who think the way they do. For one Shinseki you can be sure there are many three-, two-, and one-stars, and hordes of Colonels, Majors, Captains, who think just like him. Hell, they're building their careers, right now, based on shepherding gigantic spending programs through the Pentagon. They've got their PPBSs, their JLRSAs, their JSPDs, their LRPs. They're planning for 4, 5, 7 years out. They've got no time for wars on terror, dammit! They've got high-tech fighters to buy. The last thing they want is Rumsfeld breaking their rice bowel.
I fully expect that in the next year or two we're going to see unprecedented numbers of retirements among America's most senior military leaders. There will be more leaks. There will be a press hue-and-cry against the SecDef for "hollowing out" our senior military leadership. Mark me, you heard it here first.
Here's the deal: the War on Terror is a whole new kind of war, for an organization that doesn't work that way. The Pentagon is more oriented towards war across the North German Plain. Well, actually, under Clinton the Pentagon became meals-on-wheels for every tinpot dictator who screwed up badly enough to start a famine or genocide at home. It's a huge change in focus to switch from meals-on-wheels to War on Terror, but that's what's going to have to happen. And it will happen.
The success of those fighting for the status quo will be measured in American blood and treasure lost to terrorism.
After all the hoopla, one question remains: why was the memo leaked?
Don't answer that yet. Instead, let's review what went on.
OK. The memo got leaked. And the result? Headlines from Chicken Little. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We're losing in Iraq! Secretary of Defense's much less optimistic than he lets on. Etc., etc.
I read the memo. Seemed to me to be more like a gut check. It's really easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, especially when swaddled by a huge bureaucracy. Think Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker in 1945: totally out of touch with reality, ordering non-existent troops and vengeance weapons into battle.
The best thing any good commander an do, any morning, is put a bit of stick about as this memo does. Question your principles, your axioms, your assumptions. Ask how progress can be measured. Ask whether the organization is up to the task before it. This was exactly the right memo to send to the troops, and I hope he sends more of them.
Then the memo was leaked. Whoever leaked it knew it would be dowdified to have the worst possible meaning, possibly causing embarrassment, and at least making life a bit more difficult for the SecDef.
Hmmm. Rumsfeld wants to shake up a huge bureaucracy, transform it, make it more efficient, lighter on its feet, more lethal, less tied to multi-billion, multi-year programs. He even questions whether the huge bureaucracy is actually up to the task. Hmmm. I wonder who'd leak such a memo.
Of course it was some senior officer at the Pentagon.
Listen: when General Shinseki - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - retired, his retirement had been announced 14 months in advance. Nobody from the SecDef's office attended the retirement. Shinseki was an advocate of massive force, an adherent to the cold war way of thinking. Rumsfeld wanted him gone in the worst way. And I can't blame the SecDef. Had Shinseki been running Gulf War II, we'd have had a repeat of Gulf War I, and the Iraqi oil fields would still be burning today.
Now, guess what? Generals tend to promote people who think the way they do. For one Shinseki you can be sure there are many three-, two-, and one-stars, and hordes of Colonels, Majors, Captains, who think just like him. Hell, they're building their careers, right now, based on shepherding gigantic spending programs through the Pentagon. They've got their PPBSs, their JLRSAs, their JSPDs, their LRPs. They're planning for 4, 5, 7 years out. They've got no time for wars on terror, dammit! They've got high-tech fighters to buy. The last thing they want is Rumsfeld breaking their rice bowel.
I fully expect that in the next year or two we're going to see unprecedented numbers of retirements among America's most senior military leaders. There will be more leaks. There will be a press hue-and-cry against the SecDef for "hollowing out" our senior military leadership. Mark me, you heard it here first.
Here's the deal: the War on Terror is a whole new kind of war, for an organization that doesn't work that way. The Pentagon is more oriented towards war across the North German Plain. Well, actually, under Clinton the Pentagon became meals-on-wheels for every tinpot dictator who screwed up badly enough to start a famine or genocide at home. It's a huge change in focus to switch from meals-on-wheels to War on Terror, but that's what's going to have to happen. And it will happen.
The success of those fighting for the status quo will be measured in American blood and treasure lost to terrorism.
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