Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is crude. He could also be described as arrogant, although that word sometimes carries with it a sense of wise, overriding leadership. An argument can be made that Rumsfeld's behavior at home and abroad is now such that he represents a serious losing card for the Bush administration and the United States -- and that he should go.
The retirement ceremony Wednesday of the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, in office for the past four years, put a national spotlight on a serious problem between Rumsfeld and the uniformed forces. The secretary of defense did not attend, and neither did any other senior Department of Defense civilian official. It was an astonishing snub, unprofessional in the extreme. Gen. Shinseki answered only with remarks on leadership's being effective only when the leader has love for those whom he leads.
Rumsfeld has recommended that President Bush replace Gen. Shinseki with Gen. Peter S. Schoomaker, a retired four-star general who is a former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld had sought to reduce Gen. Shinseki to lame-duck status more than a year ago by naming a different successor, who has since chosen to retire instead. Rumsfeld's bringing back an officer who retired three years ago, rather than choosing an active-duty officer, is to stick his fingers in the eyes of the active-duty military, suggesting that he considers none of them up to the job. This, after they have just won two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq.
It should be clear from the start in looking at the Rumsfeld vs. the uniformed military struggle that it is in no way about the question of civilian authority over the military. I worked over 38 years with the American military, always as a civilian. America's military accept in full civilian authority over the military. If anyone among them wavers on that principle, he or she is quickly taken out of the game.
At the same time, it must never be forgotten that the difference between civilians and the uniformed military is that the latter are the ones who go out and get killed for their country. Some 179 have died in the Iraq war so far, with the figure still rising. What that gives them is a right to be heard. And that is what Rumsfeld doesn't give them, unless they agree with him. He has surrounded himself with a group of hardcore, and not especially talented, political ideologues who make the decisions. The role of America's senior military officers in this affair is to do what they are told and not question Rumsfeld's decisions.
Gen. Shinseki's sins, according to Rumsfeld, involved continuing to present his and his staff's assessments, whether they agreed with Rumsfeld's or not. Gen. Shinseki has been the Army's prime advocate of transformation, changing the Army's fighting posture to meet the needs of a 2003 world. The most visible crunch came when, in a congressional hearing, Gen. Shinseki was asked how many troops he believed would be required to defeat and occupy Iraq. He replied that, based on his own experience as commander of U.S. forces in the postwar period in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he thought the Iraq project might require as many as several hundred thousand U.S. troops.
This response was at variance with Rumsfeld's own line at the time that it would take many fewer than that. Gen. Shinseki turned out to be right. There are now some 165,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the place is clearly not yet under U.S. control, and there is also no indication that the requirement for many U.S. troops is likely to change in the foreseeable future.
Another relevant piece for the rest of us in the Rumsfeld vs. Shinseki dispute -- the cynosure of the larger Rumsfeld vs. America's uniformed forces issue -- is the career of Gen. Shinseki himself, and what he stands for in the U.S. Army. Gen. Ric Shinseki is a Japanese-American from the Hawaiian island of Kauai. He was wounded once in Vietnam, stitched back together, and then sent there again for another combat tour. During the second tour he was wounded severely, losing most of a foot. He still didn't quit. He eventually reached the Army's highest post when he was named chief of staff in 1999.
When Gen. Shinseki reviewed the troops gathered for his retirement ceremony, on his last day in the Army, he walked across the field at Fort Myer with a limp from his old wound. He introduced himself with his signature line: "My name is Shinseki. I am a soldier." Gen. Shinseki and his wife, Patty, whom he said was the only person he loved more than the Army, personify the Army as it sees itself, as one family.
Rumsfeld should have been there. Even if he didn't like Gen. Shinseki, he is secretary of defense and this was a great soldier who was retiring after 38 years of self-sacrificing service to his country. Rumsfeld was off in Europe seeing how much he could do to continue to get under the skin of as many of America's "old" allies as possible.
The problem of leadership between Rumsfeld and the Army comes at a time when some 370,000 troops are deployed abroad in some 120 countries. The critical fact is that long deployments of troops in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are taking a heavy toll on the morale of the troops in the field. Their equipment is also taking a terrible beating from the fine sand and high temperatures in Iraq.
Just as one swallow does not make a spring, a quarrel such as that between Rumsfeld and Gen. Shinseki does not necessarily constitute a crisis. When Rumsfeld returned from Europe, he offered a "a brief salute" to Gen. Shinseki in his remarks at the annual Army Day celebration, held Friday at the Pentagon.
Nonetheless, Rumsfeld's desire to pull back into service another retired general -- reminiscent of retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, whom Rumsfeld chose to run Iraq -- to serve as chief of staff of the Army, the representative of the largest service on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, does not bode well. The impact will be felt by generals who might have been named to the post -- including those who have been in charge of the Afghanistan and Iraq efforts -- and by the other men and women of the Army who saw Rumsfeld deliver the insults -- to Gen. Shinseki, and to the Army in the new nomination.
The last question has to be, just what good does Rumsfeld do the Bush administration, or the United States now? He kicks the shins of the Germans and the French -- maybe they deserve some of it -- but he also shows disrespect to the uniformed forces who go out and die to implement Bush administration policies. Those people deserve exactly the opposite.
Isn't it time now for Rumsfeld to march off the field himself? President George W. Bush wanted President Gerald Ford's secretary of defense in his administration in the first place for Rumsfeld's experience. Can't he do without that now? It's likely the Army would be prepared to line up for a nice retirement ceremony for Mr. Rumsfeld.
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