Once again, I say that Bush and Rumskull are to blame.

Overview

Via Kevin Drum and Phillip Carter, I found an article by Army Lt. Col. Paul Yingling which basically tears a new one for the military brass over the Iraq war. Before discussing the article, here's the bio blurb from the article:

ARMY LT. COL. PAUL YINGLING is deputy commander, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Operation Desert Storm. He holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago.

In other words, his article is written with more than a bit of firsthand experience and knowledge. The article is published in the Armed Forces Journal and is entitled "A Failure in Generalship." The article overall is an examination of what Yingling see as the deficiencies in the current general officer corps and the system which has produced those officers. Part of that examination is how we arrived at the current situation in Iraq, and that is the focus of this post.

That being said, the overall focus of Yingling's article is the need for a different direction for and from the general officer corps. After reading his article, I cannot dispute his conclusions in that regard, and nothing in this post should be interpreted otherwise. I will be using portions of his article to discuss my view that the people primarily responsible for the mess in Iraq are George W. Bush and Donald Rumskull. Consequently, I have to admit that I will be taking some of Yingling's article out of context.

Yingling's argument is that the military generals are primarily responsible for the lack of planning that resulted in the absolute mess that Iraq inevitably became. I still maintain that while the generals deserve blame, the real responsibility rests on George W. Bush and Rumskull.

Previous discussion on this matter

On August 17, 2004, I posted Official campaign planning doctrine and the post-war period, which explained my position that under the official doctrine in effect before the war (Joint Publication 5-00.1, Joint Doctrine for Campaign Planning), the persons primarily and ultimately responsible for such planning were Bush and Rumskull. My view differed a bit from that of Phillip Carter, and we each noted that difference on our respective blogs. Carter's view back in August 2004 is reflected in Yingling's analysis in 2007, and that view is that the generals are primarily to blame for the situation in Iraq. Last year I found more evidence to support my position (see Disagreements among military commanders over the war resurface, I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: Bush and Rumskull are to blame, and Rumskull defense #2: There has to be trust). My view does not excuse the generals, but I still maintain that, according to official doctrine and facts that have been established since the war began, Bush and Rumskull are to blame. This post is a continuation of the previous discussion.

Generalship in general

The first section of Yingling's article is entitled "The Responsibilities of Generalship," and the paragraph excerpted below shows much of the foundation on which he builds his case that the generals are to blame for Iraq.

Popular passions are necessary for the successful prosecution of war, but cannot be sufficient. To prevail, generals must provide policymakers and the public with a correct estimation of strategic probabilities. The general is responsible for estimating the likelihood of success in applying force to achieve the aims of policy. The general describes both the means necessary for the successful prosecution of war and the ways in which the nation will employ those means. If the policymaker desires ends for which the means he provides are insufficient, the general is responsible for advising the statesman of this incongruence. The statesman must then scale back the ends of policy or mobilize popular passions to provide greater means. If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results.

(emphasis added). In other paragraphs Yingling says that generals "must visualize the conditions of future combat," learn and apply the lessons of previous armed conflicts, "explain[] to civilian policymakers the demands of future combat," and speak out about these matters in the event that policymakers seem to be taking an ill-advised path. I have no quarrel with any of the foregoing on general principle (no pun intended). Indeed, Yingling's analysis is consistent with the doctrine established in Joint Publication 5-00.1. However, the Iraq war has had a twist to it which presents a flaw in the application of these overall principles. That flaw actually appears in this sentence from the opening section of Yingling's article:

However much it is influenced by passion and probability, war is ultimately an instrument of policy and its conduct is the responsibility of policymakers.

(emphasis added). Stated differently, the ultimate responsibility rests on civilians rather than the military. Moreover, since the military is run by the executive branch, that means that the Bush administration has that responsibility. Therein lies the flaw. Moreover, as I have explained before, under JP 5-00.1 there are two policymakers who expressly have that ultimate responsibility: Bush and Rumskull.

As discussed below, Yingling makes the case that the general officer corps failed to perform the duties mentioned above. There certainly is evidence to strongly support Yingling's argument. However, my view is that it likely would not have mattered what the generals did or did not do because they were not running the show. The civilians in the Bush administration were in charge, and they already had their minds made up on almost everything.

Vietnam and Iraq--some similarities

Yingling cites the Vietnam War as having presented hard lessons that were ignored when the Iraq war came around almost 40 years later. He summarizes the failure in Vietnam as follows:

America's general officer corps refused to prepare the Army to fight unconventional wars, despite ample indications that such preparations were in order. Having failed to prepare for such wars, America's generals sent our forces into battle without a coherent plan for victory. Unprepared for war and lacking a coherent strategy, America lost the war and the lives of more than 58,000 service members.

Specifically, he notes that there were many prior indications that Vietnam would become an insurgency conflict, that indeed it became an insurgency conflict, and that "America's generals failed to prepare their forces for counterinsurgency." I knew this already, but, as a holder of a History degree, I am sad to say that I did not know something else Yingling stated:

These lessons were not lost on the more astute members of America's political class. In 1961, President Kennedy warned of "another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin — war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by evading and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him." In response to these threats, Kennedy undertook a comprehensive program to prepare America's armed forces for counterinsurgency.

This bit of history presents a major difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, but that will be discussed in the next section.

Over at Millennium Challenge 02 and the Iraq War, I discussed some lessons that should have been learned and applied in the Iraq war. Millennium Challenge 02 was the major war game held prior to the Iraq War. General Paul Van Riper was commanding the opposing force in MC 02, and he utilized many unconventional tactics, including the use of small planes and boats in suicide attacks and communicating through motorcycle messengers and coded messages in the call to prayer. Many of the results of such tactics (such as the sinking of almost the entire U.S. fleet) were nullified, and he was order to stop using many of these tactics. As I explained in Millennium Challenge 02 and the Iraq War, in the context of war gaming in general and MC 02 specifically, such actions were not necessarily wrong or unfair, but they presented valuable lessons which went unheeded. As Van Riper said,

A phrase I heard over and over was: "That would never have happened." And I said "nobody would have thought that anyone would fly an airliner into the World Trade Center"...but nobody seemed interested...[T]hey refused to accept that we'd do anything they wouldn't do in the west.

MC 02 should have prepared our forces to expect unconventional tactics, and yet most acted surprised when the insurgency in the early days of the war employed unusual tactics and had some measure of success. In that sense, Vietnam and Iraq are similar.

Another similarity is that in each war, we were unprepared to fight an insurgency even if we had recognized that such a conflict would exist. According to Yingling,

The armed forces fought the global war on terrorism for the first five years with a counterinsurgency doctrine last revised in the Reagan administration...Procurement priorities during the 1990s followed the Cold War model, with significant funding devoted to new fighter aircraft and artillery systems. The most commonly used tactical scenarios in both schools and training centers replicated high-intensity interstate conflict. At the dawn of the 21st century, the U.S. is fighting brutal, adaptive insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, while our armed forces have spent the preceding decade having done little to prepare for such conflicts.

So we went into Vietnam without any real experience with or policy for counterinsurgency, and we went into Iraq with an outdated counterinsurgency doctrine.

Yingling's point, I believe, is that hard lessons were presented in Vietnam and that these lessons should have been applied in Iraq but were not. Certainly the generals bear some of the responsibility for such failure.

Yingling's greatest criticism seems to be that--like with the Vietnam war--the generals this time around did not sufficiently make their concerns known to the public or Congress. As discussed below, I am doubtful that if the generals had spoken out they would have made any difference.

Vietnam and Iraq--some big differences

Prior to Vietnam, the President and his administration were saying one thing and the military refused to listen. Regarding Iraq, Bush and the rest of his neocon buddies--including the Secretary of Defense--had already made up their minds about what was needed and how the war would be run, and--in my opinion--no one, including the general officer corps, could have done anything about that.

Yingling--like everyone else with any sense and grasp of reality--notes that we went into Iraq with far fewer troops than were needed to secure the country after Saddam was gone:

The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq's population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops.

Yingling is correct about the original plan for the war, and, as explained in Rumskull defense #2: There has to be trust, Rumskull initially wanted about 40,000 troops, and thus began a negotiation process in which Rumskull kept pressuring CENTCOM to reduce the number of troops, and eventually Rumskull approved a plan for 250,000. Not only that, but, as reported by Knight Ridder, "the additional troops that the military wanted to secure Iraq after Saddam's regime fell were either delayed or never sent." So, there is evidence that the generals did speak up to the civilian leaders before the war, and that the civilians overruled the generals. Further evidence is found in a recent TV commercial by VoteVets.org, in which Maj. Gen. John Batiste, former commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, bluntly says "Mr. President, you did not listen [to the commanders on the ground]." Gen. Batiste resigned from the Army so that he could publicly speak out about what was going on in Iraq.

Still, Yingling is correct in stating that before the war, "Alone among America's generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that 'several hundred thousand soldiers' would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq." And Shinseki was publicly ridiculed by Rumskull and Wolfowitless and forced to retire early.

The previous two paragraphs present the basic reason why I claim that generals speaking out probably would have made no difference. Their concerns and desires as stated "in house" were ignored and/or rejected by the civilian leadership, and anyone who did speak out publicly was ridiculed and shown the door, to be replaced by someone who would follow the company line as established by the civilian leadership. I have detailed in many posts that loyalty and obedience are the qualities most prized by the Bush administration. Anyone who does not sufficiently show those qualities eventually gets replaced. The Bush administration does not tolerate dissent within its ranks, and, more significantly, once a policy decision has been made, it is almost never reevaluated. "Stay the course" is the more than the Bush administration mantra for the Iraq war. It is the very essence of everything the Bush administration does. Some generals did speak out about some things regarding the war, but Bush, Big Dick, Rumskull, etc., had already made decisions and were not going to listen to the military.

And now I will attempt to answer the following question: Why?

Why not enough troops? In a word, "Transformation."

"Transformation" refers to transformation of the military. And just what does that mean? I gave the following explanation in I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: Bush and Rumskull are to blame:

The subject of transformation (also known as "revolution in military affairs" or RMA) is worthy of several books, but here some of the policy's basic characteristics: 1) greater emphasis on and use of high-tech weapons and reconnaissance systems, 2) greater emphasis on and use of special forces, and 3) the removal of bureaucratic and institutional barriers so that all branches of the military can operate in cooperation.

Yingling explains that this "transformation" as pursued by the Bush administration was really nothing more than doing the same things with different equipment, and that Iraq called for a completely different approach. While I agree with him on those points, I still think that the primary blame for that rests not with the generals, but with the civilian leadership and Bush and Rumskull in particular.

Under the official campaign doctrine in place prior to the Iraq war, the National Command Authorities (Bush and Rumskull) were to provide the objectives and desired end state for the war, and they were supposed to provide strategic guidance that would define the role of the military in achieving the desired national strategic objectives--which were also to be determined by Bush and Rumskull. Not only that, but Bush and Rumskull were supposed to provide the termination criteria for the campaign (which would include the reconstruction/occupation phase). The military's job was to then come up with a plan that would accomplish all the foregoing things. Put simply, the military was to figure out the means by which it was to accomplish the goals as set by Bush and Rumskull and within the role for the military as defined by Bush and Rumskull. [See Official campaign planning doctrine and the post-war period for the detailed explanation.]

Instead, Bush and Rumskull did damn near nothing to provide what they were supposed to provide, and then they predetermined the means by which the military would accomplish its tasks. This matter is largely the subject of I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: Bush and Rumskull are to blame. It turns out that Bush was determined from the start of his first term that "transformation" was going to be implemented, and Rumskull, who also favored that goal, was supposed to achieve it. As I stated before, I believe that the Iraq war was viewed by Bush and Rumskull as the way to prove that their vision of "transformation" was right, and they decided from the beginning that the entire Iraq campaign would be done with fewer troops and more reliance on high tech systems and Special Forces. As a result, the generals had no meaningful chance for input and no chance to effectively plan the campaign. And, as Yingling explains in his article, prosecuting this Iraq campaign in the same manner as previous wars with the only change being a "leaner and meaner" military was a recipe for disaster. Regardless of what the situation on the ground was or ever was going to be, Rumskull and Bush were never going to change their approach.

Could the generals have done anything to change that situation? I lack the experience and expertise to make a definitive determination, but I do know that under the official campaign planning doctrine, the generals did not have the ultimate responsibility or the power to make the determinative decisions. Those matters were in the hands of Bush and Rumskull.

Who was supposed to do the work?

Yingling describes the poor planning for the "post-war" period as follows:

Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle. In 1997, the U.S. Central Command exercise "Desert Crossing" demonstrated that many postwar stabilization tasks would fall to the military. The other branches of the U.S. government lacked sufficient capability to do such work on the scale required in Iraq. Despite these results, CENTCOM accepted the assumption that the State Department would administer postwar Iraq. The military never explained to the president the magnitude of the challenges inherent in stabilizing postwar Iraq.

Again, Yingling seems to place much of the blame on the military. I do not. The Bush administration never had its act together when it came to administering Iraq after Saddam was gone. Various methods were tried, and that showed a penchant for inconsistency. There were, however, at least two constants: 1) the military would not do much of the work because that would require more troops, and more troops would show that "transformation" would not work; and 2) private companies would contract to do a lot of the work.

Initially, if the military assumed that the State Department was going to be responsible for the administration of postwar Iraq, the civilians who were the military's bosses certainly did not. Again, this is something that has been discussed in detail on this blog. Here's the short version...The person originally put in charge of the post-war effort was retired general Jay Garner. He was supposed to report to Tommy Franks. For 18 months prior to the war, the State Department had a group working on planning for the post-war period. That effort was the Future of Iraq Project. When Garner found out about that project, he made the leader of the project part of his team. Rumskull then went to Garner and told him that person had to be dismissed and that such order came from someone higher up in the administration than Rumskull. Severals months after the war started, Garner was dismissed, and the CPA, led by Paul Bremer, took over.

Through all of the various attempts at administering Iraq, private contractors were omnipresent. That is a topic on which I have not not written much, but I will say I think it is pretty clear that Bush and Rumskull decided before the war that private contractors rather than the military would provide the manpower and materials for reconstruction and occupation and administration. That way, the number of troops used could be kept down (in theory). Also, it would be part of the Bush administration's efforts to privatize more and more governmental functions. Most importantly, that decision would mean that Bush would make sure that his good buddies in the private sector (like Haliburton, for instance) would make billions of dollars and be happy. In other words, the decision to use private contractors was a basic (and base) political decision. And when it comes to politics and huge amounts of money, it is the civilian politicians, not the military generals, that call the shots. I have said over and over that the Bush administration is far more concerned about getting and keeping power than actually doing anything constructive, and the "selling of Iraq" to the U.S. private sector is more evidence of this. I really do not think that the generals had any chance to influence the Bush administration in this regard.

Also, when it comes to deciding how elements of the executive branch are to be utilized, that is the exclusive domain of the President, and the military generals have no controlling say. Try and tell me that the State Department was ever in charge of anything regarding Iraq and I will say you are delusional. Again, that was a decision that was completely out of the generals' hands. If the military assumed that the State Department would be running the show, then why did the Pentagon--headed up by Rumskull--shut out the State Department and just about every other federal organization? Rumskull, as the person in charge of running the entire military, had to be complicit in all decisions regarding Iraq.

Conclusion

Again, I concede that I have taken parts of Yingling's article out of context for my own purposes. Am I saying that the generals bear no responsibility? No. Am I saying that the generals should get none of the blame? No. However, I am saying that the generals never were the persons who were going to make the big decisions, and the civilians who got to make the big decisions made poor ones for poor reasons and refused to listen to anyone else and change those decisions. In other words, I do not think that the generals could have affected the situation significantly. I might very well be wrong about that. Also, I think that one of Yingling's main points is that it appears that the generals did not really try. There is some evidence to the contrary, but he might very well be right. In any event, I am still saying that the civilians in the Bush administration--especially Bush and Rumskull--do bear the primary responsibility and they should be hit with the vast majority of the blame. While I do not dispute Yingling's contention that the general officer corps has failed in the past and needs to be critically evaluated and changed, I do not want people to overlook the failures of the civilian leaders in this Iraq fiasco. I do not want the need for accountability in our civilian leaders to be swept under the rug.

And until someone can explain why I should contend otherwise, I will keep saying that George W. Bush and Rumskull are to blame for the horrific lack of planning for Iraq.