Generals weary of low troop levels (Novak: Pentagon generals won't vote for Bush)

suntimes.com ^ | April 8, 2004 | ROBERT NOVAK

[Arkinsaw]

There is reason to believe that there is much unhappiness at the Pentagon with Rummy on the troop level question.

Voting for Kerry or doing nothing will make it worse. There is only one choice for them.

[Jim Noble]

Unless I misunderstood what I've been hearing, Bush has said on numerous occassions that the Generals will get all they want...they just have to ask.

This is true (President Bush does say that)-but that assertion assumes that a large force will not be required.

There are 375,000 males in the US Army. The size of the active duty force is stable, or falling slightly.

What if the occupation and pacification of Arabia and Pakistan is required? What if we need ten million troops?

The Generals will get what they want, as long as what they want is what the high command is able to deliver. They cannot deliver much more than is already there.

Better hope we don't need it.

[xzins]

Not always.

I'm very pro-Bush, yet I always trusted Gen. Shinseki's estimate. I'd just retired from the army, and I had great confidence in the generals I'd ever run across. As a chaplain, I'd gotten to know many of them at a personal level, and as parishoners. So, I had come to trust the integrity of the other officers who been my commanders.

I do not think they make arbitrarily political decisions. That does not mean that their military decisions will not have an eye toward the political at times, but it does mean that I always saw them taking care of their troops and sincerely trying to win in their real and simulated combat situations.

Therefore, when Shinseki said 200,000 troops would be needed, I really didn't see it as that much more (relatively) than 150,000. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt....likewise with Rumsfeld because a 50,000 difference is not that much. Shinseki wanted two more divisions.

What he asked for was entirely consistent with the philosophy that Shinseki had been raised on.....absolutely, totally OVERWHELMING force. So much force that there's no doubt in the enemy's and the conquered population's mind that resistance is futile.

I can't fault Shinseki. There was nothing wrong with his estimate. (For those who like to brand him a "clintonoid," let me remind you that it takes a number of years to go from one star to four stars. I'd wager money that Shinseki's advance far preceded the tenure of bill clinton.)

The real damage here, folks, was done by bill clinton. He cut the army back to 10 divisions from 17-18 when he took over. Shinseki made a fair estimate about what was needed. Unfortunately, the backup divisions no longer existed. Now we have a huge rotation problem.

We need 17-18 divisions in this army for this world and these missions. I'm convinced that's true. I'm convinced that bill clinton decimated the force sustaining capability of the US Army. They blathered about 10 divisions being able to fight 2 simultaneous wars...you all remember that....but now we know the truth. He cut AT LEAST 5 divisions too many.

[CFC__VRWC]

Novak's jumped the shark - amazing how today's hysterical Bush hatred makes so many people do that.

[Badeye]

Good point. Novak has never quite forgiven Dubya and company for rejecting the call for the Bush Campaign to hire GOP types with "national campaign experience" in the spring of 2000, afer McCain was defeated in the primaries.

I'll also note its telling the guy works for CNN.....

[Destro]

But they say they are unable to vote for Don Rumsfeld's boss, and so will not vote at all. i.e. they won't vote for Bush. Where did you read Kerry?

[the_Watchman]

In defense of Destro, the last paragraph of the article actually states that the generals in question plan to not vote at all. I believe that that is how Destro could come to that conclusion.

I also do not like to see article titles changed by the poster. However, this is not really what happened. Destro added the "punchline" from the last paragraph and set it off in parentheses so that it would not be confused with the original title. I have no objection to this.

[q_an_a]

novak claims that men of action would rather take no action than to support President Bush ove John Kerry. who wants a bridge? Novak can't get over that mccain lost. he should be called Bob Perot-Novak because he always hated anyone with the name Bush.

[swarthyguy]

Perhaps we might even need the cancelled Crusader system.

I know, todays' wars will be different.

But if Generals are always fighting the last war, maybe Aghanistan doesn't need Crusaders, but a large war in the sands of Arabia Asia may. And that may be the next war, more oldfashioned than we anticipated.

Nutty me. But, expect the unexpected,eh?

[Alberta's Child]

There is reason to believe that there is much unhappiness at the Pentagon with Rummy on the troop level question.

Exactly. The real issue here is the difference of opinions between the military and civilian leadership in the U.S. Department of Defense.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, then about to leave as the Army's chief of staff, said "several hundred thousand soldiers" could be needed in Iraq. "Way off the mark," retorted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Let's be frank about this: the original estimates of manpower requirements by the civilians in the Pentagon were -- to quote Paul Wolfowitz -- "way off the mark."

Let's be brtually honest about something else here, too. If you look at the high-profile civilians in the Defense Department staff, you'll find that most of them are snot-nosed Ivy Leaguers with no military background. Heck -- you can't even distinguish them from the hacks that worked in the Clinton administration.

[kms61]

Rumsfeld hasn't helped matters by steadfastly insisting we don't need to reactivate any of those lost divisions.

[TrueBeliever9]

Many confide that they will not cast their normal Republican votes on Nov. 2

Many - how many is many? Two-three-four or five? There are many military at the Pentagon that are upset with the influence of the suits; however, the majority (ret and active) will not cast their normal Republican votes - they will cast a emphatic Republican vote!

[TrueBeliever9]

Many confide that they will not cast their normal Republican votes on Nov. 2

Many - how many is many? Two-three-four or five? There are many military at the Pentagon that are upset with the influence of the suits; however, the majority (ret and active) will not cast their normal Republican votes - they will cast a emphatic Republican vote!

[WOSG]

Sorry, but Novak is anything *but* a DNC hack.

He is however a paleocon-type who hates anything that helps isreal who is digging up nuggets to fling at his neocon nemeses. Note the point of his whole article: Blame Wolfowitz. This is one of those paleo/neo spats. Novak doing a 'see I told you so' on Wolfowitz' early optimism.

Publicly the generals are saying they have enough. Frankly, I dont understand why more troops would help when the troops we have are using restrictive tactics anyway. we probably could use a bigger force in fallujah, but they dont want to attack it as a massive show-of-force, they want to go house to house.

We could hold Iraq with 10,000 troops if our goal was simple "blow away anything that got in the way".
So it's not the troop levels, its the rules of engagement.
And the operational goal. DoD doesnt *want* to be the policemen of Iraq, get Iraqis to do that. Look at HOW MUCH WORSE it would have been for Sadr's army to directly confront American troops in every neighborhood; the sense of 'occupation' would only give more 'legitimacy' to a 'resistance to occupation'. We dont want to occupy Iraq we want to make it a stable democracy. We cant do that with US troops alone, we need Iraqis building the country.

Bottom-line, I dont know if Novak's comments are common among generals but I am sure that DoD is on the level, if they want more troops they would ask for and get them. Novak has too many axes to grind here to be more right than Genl Meyers.

[SolutionsOnly]

As is Ted Kennedy to the Democrats, Robert Novak is to conservatives. What an embarassment he is!

[RoseofTexas]

Sensational(rat-made lying articles)Headlines, sell papers! Americans don't read articles anymore, they only read headlines!

[theFIRMbss]

>Adhering to the principle of civilian control of the military and unvarying obedience to orders, the generals have not publicly expressed their opinion that Shinseki was much closer to the truth than Wolfowitz

Is it possible
that Bush had to get AWACS
from NATO (back then)

because there's some doubt
among political types
about how much they

can trust our forces?!
Could there be that big a split
between suits and stars?

[TrueBeliever9]

Many of the officers (especially ret) were really motivated when Clark was in the picture - movtivated to make sure he was not nominated. Their sentiments towards Kerry are much more emphatic! Officers will not stay home on election day - as Christians won't - no matter what snakeoil journalists/activitics try to sell in the media. The stakes are too high and no one knows that more than the Pentagon and our military (God bless them one and all)!

[MNJohnnie]

Rummor and innuendo not fact. If Novack cannot get anyone to go on the record he should keep his mouth shut. This isn't journalism, it's typical anti-Bush propaganda. Rumsfield said if the ground commanders ask for more troops, they will get more troops. Novak is just the shill for the hard right who hate the Neo-cons more then they hate the Democrats. Since Novak has decended into the fever swamp, I am taking him off my reading list.

[Sam Cree]

"10 or 12 years ago we had 18 Divisions in the army...Now we have 10...Not Bush's fault"

I have heard this. I'm not a military man, and not knowledgable on the subject. But I do have the idea that we may not have a large enough army to handle all the potential threats that today's world poses, that is, if very many of them manifest at once.

If memory serves, however, 19th century Britain conquered the world with tiny armies that it sent to all continents. Sometimes, though, because of this, they got their heads handed to them in a basket. India, for example. But they always sent a new force later to set things right.

I have wondered if there was not something of a parallel here for the US.