That well-known voice of liberalism, the Military Times Media Group, publisher of the ArmyTimes, NavyTimes, AirForceTimes, and MarineCorpsTimes, has issued an editorial calling for Rumsfeld and Myers to be relieved. What’s interesting to me about this editorial is the way that it uses military language to analyze the whole Abu Ghraib affair, using phrases like “failure of leadership” and “lack of situational awareness” to describe the performance of top military and civilian leaders. [via IP]
Mackenab.com
A Man, A Dad, A Blog: Mackenab
That’s really not a surprise. A lot of folks in the Armed Forces really don’t like Rumsfeld because of his push to modernize war fighting and change some philosophies held by the Pentagon. They’d love to see him take a fall. I kind’ve like Rumsfeld in there, if nothing other than an ideological counterpoint to the more traditionalists in the Pentagon (e.g. massive troop deployments, etc).
Give me a break. I suppose that they don’t like Myers, either.
Rummy’s faster, lighter military philosophy seems to be having some problems on the ground in Iraq. And it sure as hell isn’t saving us any money. I thought it was a compelling strategy, too, when I first heard it. The fact of the matter seems to be, though, that occupying foreign countries takes quite a lot of men on the ground. So maybe those old stodgy military folks like Colin Powell might know a thing or two about running a military. Go figure.
I didn’t say that I endorsed Rumsfeld’s “lighter, faster military” approach, but rather, I like how he is a foil to traditional Pentagon approaches (e.g. huge military, ground presence, etc). The answer lies in the middle, and I think Rummy’s stirring up just enough stuff to start getting some reforms put into play. For example, a huge monolithic army does you no good if you have to fight an asymmetric war on many fronts. Increased special ops and new technologies are best for those sorts of things. That’s Rummy’s philosophy. Although I will admit his hubris caused us to have too small a force in Iraq to reconstruct the country as well as we could have.