COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY

A letter to the editor in the New York Times of Sunday, June 5, 2005, cogently summarized the thoughts of at least a few Americans. In its entirety, the letter, from Joseph Chianese of Oakland, California, stated:

Under the present command, when anything goes well in the military, the president, Congress, the Defense Department and the generals fall over one another taking credit. But when something goes awry, they start another investigation and bust a private.
Perhaps recruiting will improve when the leadership does.

Unfair or at least overstated? Perhaps, but the fact is that no one at the top of the nation’s leadership structure has taken more than nominal responsibility or suffered any public consequences for the military, intelligence, and foreign policy mistakes and miscalls of the last few years. Indeed, the President has gone out of his way to praise some architects of the nation’s efforts, giving Medals of Freedom to George “Slam Dunk” Tenant, Paul “Chaos” Bremer, and Tommy “No Plan for the Aftermath” Franks.

Meanwhile, such proven-correct critics as former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who testified before Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to control Iraq, are ignored.

In this writer’s opinion, the President and his immediate associates are not guilty in a legal sense of dishonorable actions by lower ranking individuals carrying out national policy. Those at the top of the chain of command, however, do bear moral and political responsibility, a responsibility that they have not been men, and woman, enough to accept. Among their major mistakes are two that fall within those alluded to by the New York Times letter writer.

First was the decision to invade Iraq with forces inadequate to secure the country after the collapse of the regular Iraqi military. This decision resulted in U.S. forces being spread dangerously thin, which in turn reduced the supervision exercised over units and individual soldiers. The inadequate supervision has most likely been a major contributor to the unfortunate acts by a few members of the military and of the intelligence community.

The second mistake was the rather cavalier attitude expressed by the highest leadership toward the treatment of detainees. The President, backed by the Attorney General, said that the Geneva Convention did not apply. The Secretary of Defense apparently became directly involved in drawing up a list of permissible means of “persuasion.” The message this cavalier attitude conveyed to the lower echelons was not quite “anything goes,” but dangerously close to it.

What the President, the Vice President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of Defense and their immediate subordinates were guilty of is not comprehending the nature of military force. Often lost in the high-tone rhetoric of patriotism and in the idealistic commitment to freedom for all is the fact that military force is an extremely violent instrument of national policy. When the proverbial dogs of war are let loose, the overall national objective may be achieved, but the negative side effects and collateral damage can be extensive. To lessen these undesirable consequences, and to ensure that the national objectives are indeed achieved, the military objectives should be identified with precision, the military force committed should be at least adequate, and the nation’s adherence to humanitarian principles developed at great cost over a long period should not be compromised.

In short, what our national leadership has been guilty of in recent years is naiveté. The chief members of that leadership have portrayed themselves as hard-nosed realists. They are hard-nosed all right, but not realists. Their actions have shown a distinct lack of understanding of a fundamental component of national policy, that component being military force. They have shown that they don’t understand how military force should be employed, they don’t understand its limitations, and they don’t understand the passions released when men and women take up arms to do a difficult, nasty job.

DSH