[Mb-civic] Listen to the Brass - David S. Broder - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Listen to the Brass
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By David S. Broder
The Washington Post
Tuesday, April 18, 2006; A19

Several months ago, when Rep. John Murtha, the Marine Corps veteran and 
longtime Democratic advocate for military preparedness, spoke out on the 
Iraq war, I received an interesting phone call from the Pentagon. When 
Murtha advocated a fundamental reassessment of American strategy in the 
war, including an early redeployment of U.S. troops to neighboring 
countries, I noted that he had spent many hours visiting wounded 
veterans of that war at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval hospitals. A 
warmhearted, emotional man, Murtha was responding, I suggested, to what 
he had experienced in those hospital wards.

The unsolicited caller from the Pentagon identified himself by name and 
rank, then said, "This is a private call. I am not speaking officially. 
But I read your column, and I think it is important for you to know that 
Jack Murtha knows us very well and speaks for many of us."

I thanked him and said, "I get the message." Don't dismiss Murtha's 
misgivings as just sympathy for the wounded. He has allies in the 
uniformed military who cannot speak out themselves.

I've thought back to that conversation as a succession of retired 
generals have come forward in the past few weeks to express their 
disagreement and dismay at the conduct of the war and to call for the 
resignation of its architect, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Seeing 
these senior officers take this public stand is unprecedented; even in 
Vietnam, with all the misgivings among the fighting men, we saw no such 
open defiance.

The president has reaffirmed his confidence in Rumsfeld, and the 
secretary himself has been dismissive of the complaints, saying that if 
the defense secretary were fired "every time two or three people 
disagreed . . . it would be like a merry-go-round."

But the case the generals are making is as serious as it is passionate. 
To take but one example, the essay in Time magazine by retired Marine 
Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, the former director of operations for the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, lists six separate areas in which he saw failure on the 
part of the civilian leadership of government:

"The distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like 
micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do 
the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in 
time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency 
was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who 
could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the 
continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit 
assets to the same degree as the Defense Department."

Adding these together, he concluded with the words that have come to 
constitute the definitive rebuke to the administration's leaders: "My 
sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done 
with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who 
have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results."

Gen. Newbold makes it plain that he is not advocating immediate 
withdrawal from Iraq unless the Iraqi political factions fail to form a 
government and fall into civil war. But he insists new leadership is 
needed in the Pentagon.

His words echo those of another retired Marine general, Anthony Zinni, 
whose criticisms were quoted in an earlier column of mine. And there are 
other notable leaders in civilian life, outside the White House, who 
have been making the same points publicly for months and even years. 
Sen. John McCain, a Republican, and Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat, have 
been in and out of Iraq more than a dozen times since the start of the 
war. Both of them supported the war and oppose withdrawal. But both have 
said repeatedly since their first visits that they have never found an 
officer of any rank who has not said, privately and urgently, "We need 
more troops to complete this mission."

Rumsfeld and President Bush insist that the manpower and strategy have 
been exactly what the commanders in the field thought best, but now 
general after general is speaking out to challenge that claim. The 
situation cries out for serious congressional oversight and examination; 
hearings are needed as soon as Congress returns. These charges have to 
be answered convincingly -- or Rumsfeld has to go.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/17/AR2006041701260.html
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