Salute and Disobey?

THE MILITARY'S PLACE

Richard B. Myers and Richard H. Kohn

Michael Desch's "Bush and the Generals" (May/June 2007) contains significant errors of fact and interpretation. One of us, Richard Myers, has direct knowledge and personal experience with the subject; the other, Richard Kohn, has been studying and observing American civil-military relations for 45 years.

Bush administration officials did not, as Desch charges, "overrule" the military "on the number of troops to be sent" to Iraq or "the timing of ... deployment." Both were the result of over a year of questioning and discussion back and forth, and the final plan contained contingencies for different numbers of forces depending on the course of the campaign. To be sure, the combatant commander often found the probing and questioning of plans by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff distasteful. But in the end, all involved supported the final plan regardless of the disagreements along the way.

Contrary to Desch's interpretation, the Kosovo intervention in 1999 was not evidence of poor civil-military relations. The Joint Chiefs, the secretary of defense, and President Bill Clinton all agreed on limiting the application of force in Kosovo -- overruling the advice of General Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander for Europe, as was legitimate in the civil-military relationship.

There was no "truce" between the military and civilians after 9/11 because there had never been a war. There was just the friction and distrust (never open but exacerbated by Rumsfeld's approach and style) inherent in U.S. civil-military relations.

Desch charges that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's "cavalier dismissal of troop-requirement estimates by General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff," was "the clearest display of civilian willingness to override the professional military on tactical and operational matters." But it is not true that Shinseki's offered advice was subsequently overruled. In his congressional testimony, Shinseki told senators that such estimates should come from the combatant commander, and he never offered these troop numbers to either the Joint Chiefs or to the president. Desch is correct, however, that criticism of Shinseki's testimony by senior civilian officials was not conducive to proper civil-military relations.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold -- another retired military official who has recently criticized the civilian leadership -- left the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2002, before planning for the Iraq campaign was complete or the military was informed of a decision to go to war. Newbold never made his views known to the chairman or the vice chairman, for whom he worked directly.

Desch also implies that senior military officers were intimidated into silence on the number of troops needed in Iraq during the occupation. The truth, however, is that General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command from July 2003 until March 2007, and his commanders thought more U.S. troops would be counterproductive, and the Joint Chiefs agreed. Only following the deterioration of the situation several months after the 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra was there support for a rise in U.S. troop levels among some of the most senior military officers.

The recommendations that Desch draws from his faulty analysis are dangerous. Certainly, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates should "encourage, rather than stifle, candid advice from the senior military leadership." But to imply that Rumsfeld stifled candid advice is misleading. Some may have been intimidated by him, but he insisted that General Myers, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, provide advice -- and General Myers always did so, candidly. (If the chairman's advice differs from that of the service chiefs, he is obligated by law to state their advice as well.)

Desch recommends returning to "an old division of labor" in which "civilians give due deference to military professional advice in the tactical and operational realms in return for complete military subordination in the grand strategic and political realms." In fact, that "old division of labor" never disappeared, even after nuclear weapons and limited and guerrilla war blurred the distinctions and injected civilians much more heavily into operations and tactics, largely through the setting of rules of engagement. But "due deference" does not mean automatic consent, as Desch implies: that clearly would negate civilian control of the military. Meanwhile, once military advice has been offered, automatic consent by the military in strategic and political matters is necessary -- regardless of whether or not the military advice is heard, listened to, and considered.

Desch questions "salute and obey" as the norm for the U.S. military, but he seems to base this on a misinterpretation of H. R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. (Kohn supervised McMaster's master's and Ph.D. theses, which became the book.) This misinterpretation is common in the military. In reality, the book argues and implies nothing other than this: during the Vietnam War, the Joint Chiefs should have spoken up forcefully in private to their superiors and candidly in testimony to Congress when asked specifically for their personal views, and they should have corrected misrepresentations of those views in private meetings with members of Congress.