Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures'

Washington Post ^ | April 27, 2007 | Thomas E. Ricks

[Eyes Unclouded]

gotribe... didn’t shinseki come out and say we needed more men to go in and occupy? didn’t he get sacked for it?

Clinton cut the army down way too much.

[SoCal Pubbie]

One of the best posts on the situation I've read here in a long time, and its basis in personal experience made it all the more insightful.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Don’t forget the Army in who is fighting the war.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Suicide bombs via automobile or truck is only one of the problems. It won’t solve IED’s on the road, which have proven to be very, very deadly.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Part of the problem is that the enemy in Iraq is fighting a guerilla war. Patton didn’t face this issue, at least not in this magnitude.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Maybe he doesn’t care about promotion and would rather solve the problem!

[PISANO]

The passion of the people must be aroused. How?

I'm afraid that nothing short of a NUKE ATTACK on our shores will arouse the people of this nation!!

[ClaireSolt]

This is not necessarily true. “Entire country’s go to war not just the military.” He starts with the Prussian army and that initiated 200 years of mass civilian induction. However, there are many centuries of warfare that did not involve the nation at all. I don’t think there is any need for passion or sacrifice of all Americans. Let the pros do what they are trained to do just as they did during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Just as Bush said he didn’t see using million dollar cruise missles to bomb dessert tents, fighting the terrorists need not engage 300 m Americans.

[ClaireSolt]

I also think his recommendation that generals need advanced degrees in social sciences or humanities and to speak foreign languages is silly, and I have those degrees and language skills.

[omnivore]

"So suck up is a requirement for the stars. But he still should have kept his mouth shut. Pissing off higher ups was never a good promotion move."

I believe this was the main problem that Lt. Col. Yingling was arguing against in his article. That the culture of keeping your mouth shut, so as not to annoy higher ups with the truth of things, is a main factor in why we ended up with far fewer troops deployed than were needed.

Some here have mentioned that Lt. Col. Yingling didn't bring up SecDef Rumsfeld. The point is, the LTC is criticizing generals, not civilians. Notice that the one general who Yingling excepts from criticism is Gen. Shinseki. That in itself, praising Shinseki, is a rebuke to Rumsfeld.

It appears that Lt. Col. Yingling is simply stating that the culture of political sucking-up has overpowered the culture of telling the truth. If the truth is that you'll need 300,000 troops in theater to keep the bad elements from trashing the place AFTER the enemy's military collapses and their capital is seized, then any general who agrees to start the war when only half that many troops will be available, is a screw-up. What Yingling is saying is that it's not an acceptable excuse for that general to then come back and whine that the SecDef "pressured him" into cutting the number in half, that's what he means by moral courage (or lack thereof). And it's not an acceptable excuse for the general to come back and say he just screwed up the math, that's what Yingling means when he says such screw-up generals should be dinged a star or two when they retire, to keep them honest beforehand.

This is actually a clever article. By speaking out in a way which on one level makes it appear that he is taking a risk, he is advancing himself as a person who is not afraid to take the risk of speaking out by saying something that is unpopular with his superiors. But he has chosen to emphasize things (people working their way up by sucking up to superiors) which are so commonplace and obvious nowadays that they can hardly be denied, which has caused some readers to comment with yawns and so forth. The fact that we are living in a culture where it appears to be taking a career risk, simply to state the commonplace and the obvious, basically proves the author's point for him, that we are mired in a culture where the obvious cannot even be pointed out without risk. It's like the Emperor's New Clothes story. Lt. Col. Yingling is the kid who is saying that the Emperor is naked. It's not a bad strategy to position himself with. It comes with a risk, but it also has unique advantages. He was the guy who said it when nobody else did.

[GLH3IL]

Very true, but in the end war is what it is. If you read Patton’s writings you’ll see that he full grasps the understanding that the tactics and strategies of war will change, but the need for intelligent, bold, and effective leadership never ever changes. He always preached that war should be fought aggressively. Recall in his famous speech how Patton exorted his troops to make the “other poor bastard die for his country.” I firmly believe that today we can say the same thing, except with the terroists is much less dying for their country than dying for their cause.The ultimate nature of war has not changed. In order to defat this enemy we must do some very unpleaseant but very necessary things...

“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.” - General George Patton Jr

The challege today is the HOW of doing the above, not the need to do it. We must find ways to cut off their line of supply, we ARE slowly eroding their morale though (Pelosi and Reid are doing their very best to buck our enemies up), we are working very hard to do the necessary things to get Iraq back on it’s feet. The issue is leadership, both from the civilian leadership and in the higher levels of command within the Department of Defense and the respective service branches.

I really do believe that we are, to some degree, a victim of our own success and power. We became arrogant to a degree that did not allow our senior command and civilian leadership to understand that we need a killer instinct thatexceeds that of our enemy. Our troops on the ground have demonstrated that they get this simple concept, their senior leadership is less aware of how savage we must get to beat these guys.

This is a fight that was never going to be quick, easy, and painless, but then war is never really any of those things is it? Let’s honestly look at our civilan and military leadership and demand that they fight to win, not fight to win publicity points. Let’s look at presidential candidates that know what it’s going to take to win, Duncan Hunter clearly does, Fred Thompson seems to, the rest of the republicans - I’m still not convinced that they do, the Democrats have absolutely no idea.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Frankly, I don’t know if the American people have what it takes anymore. It’s hard to know I suppose.

[corlorde]

didn’t shinseki come out and say we needed more men to go in and occupy? didn’t he get sacked for it?

Shh, the boys from Yale running the war from DC know what they are doing.

[PierreLegrand]

I don’t think there is any need for passion or sacrifice of all Americans. Let the pros do what they are trained to do just as they did during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Would be nice if it were as simple as that but I am afraid the days of allowing the "Pros" to do their job is behind us. The civilians control the purse strings and if they are not in the war effort then the purse gets spent on other items.

Also it bears understanding that this isn't like other wars which were fought by the pro's. Most of those wars weren't existential affairs. This one is. In this war only one of us is going to walk out the other end. Used to be that the world was a big old place...it no longer is. Now if we don't get the population engaged and behind the war effort we will lose. Losing will not be some academic affair where we sit around drinking with Mike Wallace discussing where we went wrong. Losing will be a dramatic affair.

We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.Hussein Massawi, a former Hezbollah leader.

That is the sort of behavior we are fighting...we are fighting the sort of enemy that is terribly dangerous because of his ignorance and hatred of our culture. He doesn't want to reach accomadation...

[ClaireSolt]

I don’t agree. Consider Columbia. We have been fighting that for years and have now had some real success without getting the passions of the people involved. We have a million soldiers deployed all over the world without any notice. $100b is not that big a strain on our budget. We are being forced to pay attention to every suicide bomber in Iraq because some far leftists think it is a political opportunity. The best thing that could happen would be to let this go to the back pages of the news and let the military do their jobs.

[Eyes Unclouded]

You go to war(we want) with army you have(which we cut the legs off of)!

How is our republic gonna survive them?

[xarmydog]

I read your post twice to make sure I got a grasp on the article.You are correct about too many people who suck up that are more concerned with a promotion than the actual results of the end situation.I do have to agree with you on your assessment.The attempt to get the job done with as few troops as possible was initially accomplished.But there should have been more sent in to maintain what was secured,so that the operation could have continued on instead of waiting until it became obvious there were more needed.I hope our country does not give up the fight.Thanks for the response.

[GOPJ]

Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that passion, probability and policy each play their role in war. Any understanding of war that ignores one of these elements is fundamentally flawed.

Thanks for the ping.

[Chgogal]

“How?”

It looks like we have to be attacked again, because 40% of the population DID NOT learn from 9/11. That old adage applies, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” The Democrats/Left/MSM did not take responsibility from our POLITICAL surrender in VietNam and are hellbent on reliving defeat at the cost of millions of lives, both in the ME and in the West. They will most like not take responsibility AGAIN for their surrender because we will not insist upon it. The Democrats/Left/MSM did not learn from the West’s ineffectiveness of the 1990s and are hellbent on repeating history at the cost of a large metropolitan community. That’s the way things are pointing and let me say it first, IT WILL BE THE DEMOCRATS’ FAULT. IT WILL BE REID’S, KENNDY’S, KERRY’S, CLINTON’S, OBAMA’S,......FAULT. After all, according to Ried, we lost the war on terror in Iraq (with the help of traitors like Ari Emanuel, Congressmen Rahm Emanuel’s brother). (Grrrrrrrrrrrr.......)