Can one man be screwed by the leadership of this country twice in the span of one career?
I didn't think so, but watching the General Shinseki witch hunt makes me wonder.
General Shin is a man of honor.
The idea that he needs to resign because of the actions of some bureaucrats in the VA who abused their authority is craziness! Everyone knows the facts. The VA is understaffed, over worked and is suffering because of some issues that I'm well aware but won't go into.
Another thing about this issue that burns me up is the fact that a "Vets organization" kicked all this off. I mean seriously? Really? I hope everyone can see that for what it is.
A power grab.
To force the man that stood up to Rumsfeld on the number of troops needed to successfully invade and pacify Iraq, was fired because of it and then believe he would turn around and ignore problems in the VA is laughable.
He deserves the benefit of the doubt. He deserves our patience while he investigates what happened and who's responsible.
UPDATE: I've been watching the coverage of the General Shinseki testimony and the talking heads after it. Vets are about to screw themselves and think that they've won while doing it. This is the very thing that some liberals, penny pinchers and big government types have been looking for. Kill the VA Medical system and dump everyone into Medicare system! For all those vets that are bitching now, just wait till you're part of Medicare! This seems almost calculated now. I hope it doesn't happen but the calls to reform the VA are getting louder and I see trouble ahead. Not solutions but trouble.
I agree, for all the flack he got for going to the Black Beret, he did get the Army to adopt the Stryker formation as an interim solution knowing full well that we would get stuck with the "interim solution" for decades, but it created some strategic and tactical flexibility that the Army desperately needed to bridge the "light/heavy" gap.
ReplyDeleteBut in his role as head of the VA General Shinseki managed to haul the VA into a more modern disability rating system which has quite frankly handled the additional workload brought on by the War on Terror much better than anyone would have ever expected.
I'm not going to say that the organization is without fault, but as someone who has walked a number of Soldiers through the process of leaving the Army for medical reasons and transitioning them to VA care, I have seen firsthand how effectively General Shinseki changed that organization. But it didn't happen overnight, and many of the players in the VA bureaucracy have been there longer than he has, so the best judge of his leadership abilities isn't that some folks in his organization did wrong, but how he deals with the outcome of the investigation.
When something is rotten in the engine room, changing who wears the Captain's Hat on the bridge isn't how you go about fixing the issue. The VA has gotten better under his leadership, and I expect that trend to continue despite the setbacks of regional scandals coming to light.
The Veterans Administration was broken and fullasheet long before Gen Shinseki got there.
ReplyDeleteBlaming him is like blaming Bob Ballard for the Titanic disaster just because he was the last man of authority to visit the ship.
Shinseki particularly got sandbagged by dual wait-list accounting in Phoenix, and possibly other locations. Employees would enter a vet's name in the computer and also in a notebook, report the computer entry to Washington, then delete the computer entry and work out of the notebook. No way for Shinseki to know that, presumably.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Iraq, Rumsfeld has claimed that his plan was to get in and get out, and not to pacify. Then, he has said, he got blind-sided by Bush's appointment of Jerry Bremer to replace Rumsfeld's man, Jay Garner. Then Bremer, who Rumsfeld alleges didn't report to him, disbanded the Iraq military and the brutal occupation started and continued. "Jerry Bremer, of course, [was] a presidential envoy and, as such, he reported to the president and to Condi at the NSC staff."
http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3744
Shinseki, by the way, was not a combatant commander and was not in the decision loop in 2003.
Shinseki was Army Chief of Staff and testified before Congress that double the number of troops would be needed beyond the Rumsfeld plan.
ReplyDeleteRummy got pissed and fired the guy because of it. in essence he got screwed because he told the truth. it was prime time viewing in the Officers/SNCO call later that day.
Well, again, Rumsfeld claims that the plan (using Jay Garner in Baghdad after Iraq's defeat) was to get in and get out, but then Bremer changed the whole scenario. Rumsfeld also claims that the CENTCOM commander backed the original plan. There's no evidence otherwise that I'm familiar with. The Army Chief of Staff is not familiar with the op plans nor the intelligence, and is not in the decision loop. He provides the resources, is all.
Delete(Now if he had been a blogger than he could talk about any damn thing, as I do.)
Don. it doesn't work that way. yes the service chiefs provide troops to the combatant commanders but they also provide advice to the commander in chief thru the chairman on military policy. that includes military plans of action. no. you won't have the JCS micro managing at cc (used to calling them cincs) but they will be fully aware of war planning and will have opinions.
DeleteBut bottom line, according to the interview with Bob Woodward, the chain of command went with the plan, and Shin may have had an opinion but he was not in the chain.
DeleteAdvice without having all the intel and the op plans? Not a factor. Shin in the Pentagon may claim to know the situation in Iraq but he definitely didn't .
Parallel situation: Admiral Greenert, whom I admire, may have an opinion on affairs in the Asia-Pacific, but they don't mean diddly when the balloon goes up and we need go with Locklear at PACOM. Greenert is only a provider, and (partially) thanks to him the US won't be providing the F-35C. which is one influence he DOES have -- but not force size. Sorry. Not force size.
well, i'm not going to argue the point. we're just going to agree to disagree.
DeleteShinseki got the shaft because he didn't follow the company line and Rumsfield shifted all the blame of Iraq on every subordinate he could find. If you listen to him talk, he sounds like it didn't happen under his watch or had nothing to do with it, real scumbag.
ReplyDeleteHated the black berets but it does seem like he's getting thrown under the bus and that isn't right, especially since the people responsible will probably get away with at most a slap on the wrist. (Also slightly unrelated I hate that they had to call them stryker BCTs, its a good idea but a stupid name that comes from the stupid way people seem to think that they need to reinvent the wheel and take credit for it, its friggin called motorized infantry and its not new)
ReplyDeleteHow would things have been different in Iraq and Afghanistan had we occupied them with 500k men each?
ReplyDeletethis flies in the face of what Don posted about the secdef wanting an in and out plan and bremer changing things. a 500k force would have allowed for a quicker, more robust attack into Iraq, you would not have seen all the looting after the invasion, you probably would have not seen the ethnic cleansing, additionally you would have had a soldier or Marine on every street corner so life would have returned to normal for the Iraqi's much sooner and you would have seen a more orderly exit from the country. that exit would be counted in months and not years.
Deleteadditionally the search for weapons of mass destruction would have been easier, corruption would not have drained our coffers and you would have a much bigger force.
thats what everyone also forgets.
rummy was trying to inaugurate a new form of warfare. he wanted to prove that a small high tech force could do the job that a larger traditional force could.
they're still pushing the boulder up the hill and we'll see.
until true advances are made, we're still looking at situations where a primitive force will defeat us and there will be nothing we can do about it.
Rumsfeld was correct on the capability of the US military to defeat the Iraq military quickly. The failure came on what ensued after the military victory.
DeleteHeard from a high ranking official that worked on reconstruction, not a White House guy, USA officials really didn't understand the damage that was done with the looting and especially the tone it set. The Iraqis lost rapidly all confidence in USA officials. The other bone-headed decision like never listening to local officials but some young GOP kid from Harvard or Yale telling Iraqis how to do things like we do them in the USA was really stupid too. We rapidly paid the price of these early mistakes....
DeletePicking up hundreds of MAMs at midnight, zip-tying them, throwing them in the back of trucks, and taking them to Abu Ghraib and torturing them wasn't a real smart strategy, either. I remember, years ago, reading a lieutenant's similar views and that it would result in huge problems. But nobody listened to him.
DeleteSol, i am not arguing in a sense but wanting to make clarification when you said "until true advances are made, we're still looking at situations where a primitive force will defeat us and there will be nothing we can do about it.". I think this is true in a sense. The actual war went brilliantly, a smaller high tech force along with the fact the iraqi army was not anywhere near its former self was decimated, same in '91. The problem we had is that we didnt follow up with a larger stabilization force. Remember Rumsfeld did want to have another division in the assault but 4 ID was not allowed to use turkey as a launching off point and they didnt want to wait any longer as the seasons were going to make it difficult if they wanted too long in march or into april. Now we need to always make sure we put overwhelming forces in the field if we go forward but i think Iraq showed us we are great at destroying things, not so much about building them.
Deletei guess it all depends on perspective. i read all about to glowing victory and how easy it was. i was stunned.
Deleteit wasn't easy at all. why the Pentagon is trying to say that it was is beyond me. it was series of short sharp battles during the invasion followed up with a long drawn out insurgency. i don't see any of it as easy and i bristle at those that say it was.
of course i could be wrong. maybe it was easy and i'm missing something.
Sol, i just have to post to agree I think Gen. Shinseki is one of the great and honorable statesmen of our time, he was honest when needed to be and Rumsfeld was a horrible leader for not respecting the opinions of others. the VA has been being destroyed since we invaded Iraq, a few years at the help isnt going to repair it, especially with the penny pinchers in congress and other areas of government.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, I ran a web-page called "Rummywatch." It required daily notice of what Donald Rumsfeld said.
ReplyDeleteThere was no shortage of bullshit from Rummy. He was big on the new Islamic empire or whatever he called it. He was a brilliant man who made a lot of stupid remarks. He ran the Pentagon press conference personally, never needed a spokesman. He had no use for anyone who disagreed with him and he was a control freak. He had the Pentagon "press corps" in the palm of his hand, always. Totally in control, whether in the Pentagon Press Room or at a foreign base with his "hoo-ah."
The only general who EVER bested him was the lackluster Peter Pace, when General Pace countered Rumsfeld once and said that atrocities noticed by US military personnel ought to be reported on the spot. That was the one and only time Rumsfeld ever got bested. Ever, to my knowledge.
Rumsfeld was a brilliant man -- prone to imbecilities. A Sample:
"The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein -- and they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group." Well, duh, Rummy.
Rumsfeld. Somebody will write the book.
GEN Tommy Franks knew from wargaming that he could win a maneuver fight against Iraq with the force he assembled as the CENTCOM Commander.
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography he mentions his leadership style was to make "the dudes with twenty pound brains make the plans that give me, the executive, options to choose from." Basically he admitted that he picked a solution he liked that was written by a Colonel, or Major, or Captain on staff and rolled with it without considering the stability mission after the fighting was over.
And yes, GEN Shinseki was not part of that decision loop, the JCS and service Chairmen are outside of the POTUS/SECDEF/COCOM command chain. However there were plenty of other 4 Stars who mentioned that GEN Franks went to war without enough troops, including GEN Schwarzkopf. Let us just say that the blame lies solely on GEN Franks for setting himself up for "catastrophic victory" and a SECDEF and POTUS who weren't interested in words of caution from others in the Military.