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GUEST COLUMN

(9/2/2006)

Why Rumsfeld Should Be Fired

For not learning the lessons of previous conflicts

By Anton Kaiser

The seventies were a disaster for America. Nixon resigned. Vietnam fell. The notorious Church Commission devastated our intelligence agencies. The Shah of Iran was deposed, with gleeful liberal support. Carter was elected. The Ayatollah became entrenched in Persia, to begin the modern Islamic terrorist movement. Iran took American hostages from our embassy. And the Desert One rescue attempt failed. The American military took note. At the Command and General Staff College there was a presentation with a chart showing the decline of the U.S. military. Desert One was the low point. In consequence, the Army set out to completely reassess its strategies and tactics, previously based on outdated NATO concepts of "active defense."

In the eighties, the military developed a new doctrine of "deep attack." The linchpins for this concept were "overwhelming force" coupled with an "exit strategy." These concepts came from the lessons of Vietnam: go in to win, and have a way out. Moreover, U.S. senior military commanders were expected to insist that politicians confront these two principles when considering any act of war. In part, this doctrine came from President Reagan who insisted that military planners double their estimated forces for the invasion of Granada. His rationale was simple: "If you had doubled the number of helicopters for Desert One, you would be briefing Carter now instead of me." The U.S. military proceeded to overwhelm Grenada, and the doctrine of overwhelming force was confirmed. Of course the world ridiculed the idea of sending 6,000 Americans against just 600 Cubans, but Grenada quickly disappeared into the scrapheap of history. Virtually no one talks of Grenada today.

Next came Panama, during the Bush-1 administration. By this time there was a burgeoning conflict within the military. Some were advocates for heavy forces, necessary to engage the communist threat. Others felt that emerging technologies allowed for lighter forces, or rapid deployment forces, who could strike quickly and without the strenuous costs inherent to heavy force logistics; i.e., we began to think we could fight our wars cheaper. In fact, light forces quickly took Panama and confirmed the possibility of quick, cheap and easy wars.

But in the early nineties, fast on the tail of Panama, came the first Persian Gulf war, and the first real test of our doctrine for heavy forces. The Iraqi's were Soviet equipped and trained. In essence, Iraq became the ultimate test for our NATO war plans against the Soviet Union. Those plans called for first achieving air superiority, and then destroying command and control facilities with air power. With the enemy blinded and helpless, overwhelming ground forces could easily conduct a deep attack. This doctrine worked to perfection during Operation Desert Storm. Light forces (marines) were used as a tactical deception, feigning an amphibious assault against the beaches of Kuwait, while heavy forces swept deep behind the Iraqi Republican Guard, who were diligently awaiting the nonexistent marine landings. Light forces were also used in an airlift to establish a fuel re-supply point for the rapidly advancing heavy forces. This brilliant combination of light and heavy forces stunned Iraq's Soviet advisors. Shortly thereafter Yeltsin took power in Russia, his Soviet generals dutifully sitting on their hands, fully aware of their military inferiority against the west should they attempt a coup. The communist threat evaporated, and so began the decline in America's war fighting doctrine.

In the first Persian Gulf War, NATO commanders had witnessed the immense devastation inherent to rapidly advancing technologies in air power. In fact, it seemed, wars could be won with air power alone, avoiding any credit to ground forces who simply cake-walked their way to victory, and to undeserved victory parades. Inter-service rivalries raised their ugly head. After all, the Air Force had won the First Persian Gulf War, not the Army. What is more, Wesley Clark, a rare politically liberal general, and Bill Clinton, a not unusually liberal dove, emerged to become the NATO commander and President of the United States, respectively. Therefore, when Bosnia became the next challenge, air power alone seemed the answer. Unfortunately, it worked.

The last time air power alone had won a war was during WW II. Two atomic bombs had defeated Japan. The military at that time responded accordingly, organizing and equipping its ground forces into bulky pentomic divisions for cleanup operations, assuming future wars would be based on nuclear air power. That nuclear air power, of course, was defeated by a guerrilla war in Vietnam.

Similarly, the surrender of Milosevic in Bosnia, under Clark and Clinton, gave added weight to the idea of using air power alone. Heavy forces were not needed and too expensive. Light, fast, and cheap ground forces were the answer. We needed to be smarter and quicker than the enemy, not stronger. The deep attack doctrine of heavy forces came under attack. We didn't need to overwhelm our adversaries, we just needed to outsmart them. These were the ghosts from McNamara's "best and brightest" rising from their graves to again infect the defense forces of America. Special forces, special operations - Green Berets - were the answer to modern warfare. The entire American army donned black berets.

In the meantime, American ground forces were cut from 783,000 to less than 500,000 - the "peace dividend" promised from winning the Cold War. Ironically, however, most of the cuts were made in light forces, which dramatically conflicted with the new and emerging doctrine of smarter and cheaper. So suddenly there was a shakeup in our senior military leadership. Ground forces had not been needed in Bosnia, as recommended by the Joint Chiefs. Nor were massive ground forces needed in Afghanistan. The Taliban had been defeated by air power alone, with the help of a few special operations experts. Never mind that Bin Laden escaped. Thus, when Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army, recommended 350,000 ground troops for the second invasion of Iraq, he was unceremoniously shelved: this was the old doctrine of overwhelming force, not the new doctrine of smarter and cheaper. Not surprisingly, the new Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff became an Air Force general, and the die was caste for our current disastrous occupation of Iraq.

"Shock and awe" is the true acronym for the current Department of Defense doctrine of "smarter and cheaper." Rumsfeld, like McNamara, felt he was smarter than the tried-and-true lessons of history, which the Colin Powell doctrine of overwhelming force had endorsed. A decade of gut-wrenching military analysis was tossed aside. The Second Iraq War would rely on airpower alone, with a mop-up force of just 150,000 American troops - 200,000 less than recommended by Shinseki. But, like McNamara in Vietnam, Rumsfeld was met with a guerrilla war in Iraq. Smarter and cheaper met with the true meaning of smarter and cheaper. Iraqi guerrillas quietly melted into the urban and rural countryside to be bombed one at a time, an expensive proposition. Rumsfeld had been outsmarted.

Meanwhile, our ground forces were being restructured into "Stryker" brigades - smaller, lighter units designed to rely solely on technology and airpower - shades of the fifties.

Short of nuclear war, we can still bomb our adversaries into oblivion. But against a determined enemy, like the North Vietnamese or the current Iraqi insurgents, overwhelming ground forces are necessary, as Shinseki knew. The proof is in the absence of any victory parades, as still promised by Bush II. The easy capitulations of Milosevic in Bosnia and the Taliban in Afghanistan unwittingly led us back to that same swamp we had struggled for so long to come out after Vietnam.

What is more, Israeli generals also suffered from our regression. They too came to believe that airpower alone could decide wars. Against the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, they expected a quick capitulation in the face of their overwhelming air superiority. The false lessons of Bosnia and Afghanistan were again embraced. Therefore, and not surprisingly, Israel also failed to integrate their ground forces with air superiority. Understandably, they eventually limped their way back to the peace table and to negotiations with another determined guerrilla force.

Since Bosnia, Rumsfeld and his surrogate, Wesley Clark, have led us back to where we began over forty years ago. We are not smarter, and war is not cheap. Occasionally we might get lucky, but is it worth the price? We know what works, as blunt and expensive as it is. And isn't that what we want from our military leaders - grave, hard-edged assessments that bring our politicians to their knees before engaging in frivolous war? Inter-service rivalries, unnecessary doctrinal disputes, consistent over-reliance on technology, and misplaced egos have already proven themselves detrimental to the business of conducting war. Why repeat our mistakes?

If the Rumsfeld legacy persists, and the reconstruction of our armed forces continues, he will guide us back to the days of berets and to the years of tears that we all know too well. It took the military more than a decade to recover from the McNamara era. How long after Rumsfeld?

Anton Kaiser was born in South Dakota.  He is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who graduated from West Point and spent 23 years in the Infantry, including service in Vietnam, West Berlin, and "Operation Just Cause", the Panama invasion. He served in six different Infantry Divisions and spent two assignments serving as an Inspector General.  He is an honor graduate of the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College.