67page

<a href="http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette">www.mca-marines.org/gazette</a> 65 M a r i n e C o r p s G a z e t t e • M a y 2 0 0 9 the military, only the Marines dissented. Overall, the U.S. military command agreed with a strategy that substituted physical for moral determination and led to body counts as the measure of progress. McNamara gradually came to disbelieve the military reports and qui- etly turned against the war. Thus there was “garbage” in the form of body counts inflated by the military and “lies” (deception) by a Secretary of Defense who did not be- lieve in his own strategy, plus a Joint Chiefs of Staff that did not demur in a flawed strategy. Generals and civilian officials alike shared responsibility for the conduct of the war. Similarly, in Iraq the generals weren’t on one side and the civilian of- ficials on the other. Former Secretary of State, retired Army GEN Colin L. Powell, who had served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Meet the Press that he didn’t think the prepa- rations for war were adequate. But he went on to argue that both the civilians and the generals knew of the difficul- ties before invading Iraq. “Those that had experience in war understood,” he said, “that we were taking on some- thing that was going to be a major bur- den for many years, and I think the president was well aware of that.”3 Then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wanted to turn the war over to Iraqi forces as fast as possible. This was a flawed strategy. But as in Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs were diffi- dent, while the U.S. Central Command (USCentCom) commanders—GENs Tommy R. Franks and then John P. Abizaid, USA—and the U.S. com- manders in Baghdad—LTGs Ricardo S. Sanchez and then George W. Casey, Jr., USA—never asked for additional U.S. troops. Indeed, the National Secu- rity Council staff in the fall of 2006 by- passed the generals and civilians in the Pentagon in order to gain support for surging more troops.4 Some generals blamed Rumsfeld for a flawed strategy, and others defended him. No active duty general retired in protest against the war, and several re- tired generals who did protest retained lucrative ties with defense corporations that were profiting from the war. Then- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen Richard B. Meyer, USAF, forcefully ar- gued that Rumsfeld had indeed lis- tened to his professional advice and that of his colleagues.5 In 2008 GEN Powell did criticize the Defense Department for “invent- ing numbers of Iraqi security forces— the number would jump 20,000 in a week. We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000.”6 Although such num- bers were factual, they measured only an input—a warm body—and not an output—a determined soldier. Since such quantitative reports proved to be misleading when things later fell apart, they might qualify as the garbage cited by Zinni. But those numbers were produced by military staffs in Baghdad, not by the civilian Pentagon staff in Washing- ton. For instance, in 2004 then-LTG David H. Petraeus, USA, in charge of training the Iraqi forces, wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post, “164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) . . . are performing a wide variety of security missions.”7 As for lies, there is no evidence that any general or civilian official was being deceptive. Although Rumsfeld was disliked by many generals and ac- cused of bullying, that did not make him a dishonorable man. He was not issuing his own assessments while con- cealing those of the military. According to the Multinational Force Campaign Assessment written in Baghdad, the out- look in Iraq was bright at the end of 2005. Yet a few months later Iraq dis- integrated. Excessive optimism was shared by civilian officials and military staffs alike. Reports from Afghanistan reflected similar optimism. In 2002 the Taliban were routed, al-Qaeda driven out, and a national government elected. Things seemed good. Yet in 2008 the Chair- man of the Joint Chiefs said we weren’t winning and ordered a new strategy. How had the situation deteriorated over 6 years without warning bells clanging? How could so much garbage and lies—faulty assessments year after year—have accumulated in two the- aters of war? Dishonest military or civilian offi- cials were not withholding bad news. Instead, the staffs, military and civilian alike, were wrestling to assess risk in two fledgling sovereign states wracked by vi- olence. Risk assessment was the art of relating the odds of achieving stability in a foreign country to varying levels of American military involvement. In both countries, risk assessment (does the situation require more Amer- icans in combat?) was poor due to three factors. The first was the culture of large guild organizations. Military officers had spent their careers prepar- ing for battlefields where they were ex- pected to prevail. If they didn’t have enough forces, that was no excuse. The divisions and battalions charged with winning were asked to evaluate them- selves. Every commander believed he could get the job done with the forces he was allocated. Officers at all levels of command and staff knew one an- other; they had served together and come up the ranks together. Given that cultural context, it was unreasonable to expect evenhanded candor from the commanders charged with controlling a battlespace. The military rewarded progress. The problem was not unique to the military. Risk assessment is a systemic challenge for all large institutions. The current recession, for instance, oc- curred because financial institutions ran wildly imprudent risks. Citigroup, for example, traded exotic instruments that concealed mountains of bad debt. When investors recognized this, Citi- group’s value fell from $244 billion to $20 billion, and 100,000 workers lost their jobs. Why did alarm bells not go off inside Citigroup as toxic debt rose? It turned out that the bank’s director of risk assessment and its director of trad- ing were close friends who commuted to work and took vacations together. The New York Times reported they “saw no red flags because they had climbed the bank’s corporate ladder together.”8
67page

www.mca-marines.org/gazette