At Army Base, Officers Are Split Over War

[cal04]

Here in this Western outpost that serves as the intellectual center of the United States Army, two elite officers were deep in debate at lunch on a recent day over who bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq — the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him.

“The secretary of defense is an easy target,” argued one of the officers, Maj. Kareem P. Montague, 34, a Harvard graduate and a commander in the Third Infantry Division that was the first to reach Baghdad in the 2003 invasion. “It’s easy to pick on the political appointee.”

“But he’s the one that’s responsible,” retorted Maj. Michael J. Zinno, 40, a military planner who worked at the headquarters of the Coalitional Provisional Authority, the former American civilian administration in Iraq.

(snip)
As the war grinds through its fifth year, Fort Leavenworth has become a front line in the military’s tension and soul-searching over Iraq. Here on the bluffs above the Missouri River rising young officers are on a different kind of journey — an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/us/13cnd-army.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[nightrider767]

1. Rumsfelds a strong-minded bully

who railroads any opposition. I'm not sure he's the biggest issue here. I think the biggest point here is that the military may have learned an important lesson about acquiescence and not speaking up and using their brains...

Rusmfeld won't be the last political appointee hack to mismanage the military. Hopefully our military will be more ready to deal with the next one by learning to be more forceful and honest. In the end, all the generals who "towed the line" in Iraq will only have the pleasure of retiring in disgrace.....

[Toots]

2. Doesn't sound like they are split over the war/occupation only who to blame for it..

:shrug:

[nightrider767]

4. I'm no fan of this war,

I'm against war in general terms. But in this particular case, thousands of lives would have been saved if we went in with a good plan, way more troops, put the country on lock-down till civil order was established and a new government formed. But that didn't happen because we got a bunch of cowboys running things.

Or another way to look at it, is that this war is bull$hit.

When will we learn?

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. It is not the military's role in our Democracy...

... to push for or against mega policy decisions. It is not up to military leaders to adivse whether or not the United States needs to and/or should go to war. It is not for them to say whether or not that would be a good or bad idea. It is up to them to provide their best professional opinions on what likely will or will not happen if the U.S. uses or does not use force in a specific situation. It is up to civilians to use that information to make the decisions. It is up to the military to provide realistic estimates of the costs and difficulty involved in achieving military objectives should the civilian leadership order them to do so.

They are having appropriate internal debates for a military under civilian leadership.

[Hangingon]

3. It has been a couple of years since I read Tommy Thompson's

autobio but I remember his version of the planning leading up to the war. It was centered in Central Command and many of its iterations were highly critized by the Joint Chiefs. It goes partly to the oorganization of the military after Goldwater-Nichols Act which made the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs the senior advisor to the POTUS and SecDef. Service chiefs provide resources to warfighters. It created joint commands like Central Command as the warfighter. Centcom prepared the warplan which was accepted by political leaders. As I remember Thompson's book, he was the major planner working with Sec Def. Plans were reviiewed by the Joint Chiefs and there was criticism.