Gautam Mukunda wrote: > The first mark of a successful Defense Secretary is a > military establishment that is deeply unhappy with > him. > > I think you're missing two things, Dan. The first is > the internal dynamics of the Pentagon, the second is > the proper relationship between a civilian > Administration and a military establishment. For the > second, I'd suggest reading Eliot Cohen's _Supreme > Command_, the only book I've ever read where I said > that I agreed with _everything_ in it, largely because > I once wanted to _write_ it, but he beat me to it. > Damn it. But, in brief, the job of the civilian > establishment is to force the military to do things it > does not want to do. See Lincoln in the Civil War, > Roosevelt in WW2, and so on. The failure in Vietnam > was not micromanagement, but a failure of civilian > control. No one in the civilian establishment ever > went to the Joint Chiefs and asked them how the hell > they planned to win.
Interestingly, I heard the NBC Pentagon correspondent on a radio interview today with an entirely different perspective. He said that he was starting to hear doubts about the war voiced privately by assorted civilian and military sources. He then mentioned some of th ecomplaints about Rumsfeld and brought up a comparison between Rumsfeld and the Sec. of Def. during Vietnam, Bob Mc Namara. The reporter's apparent claim was that the problems with Vietnam were largely Mc Namara's fault, that he had no real intention of winning the war, and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were marching in lockstep with him. I'd love to hear your thoughs on that last part, Gautam. Anyway, I think this reporter clearly was talking to the "heavy metal" crowd you mention, because he went on to harp about Rumsfeld's repeated rejection of Gen. Franks' war plans as "not high tech enough", and that there were insufficient ground forces involved. Lastly, he described what he said was the Pentagon doubters' nightmare scenario of a long drawn out war, with fighting in the streets of Baghdad, massive civilian and US casualties, and world outcry leading to a US withdrawal. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
