This is one Vietnam vet (Army grunt type) who is happy to
give a tip of his boonie hat to this Navy Chief who so
eloquently put into words what many of us feel.
JIM STONE, Echo 2/39 Recon 2/68-2/69.
We've won fights in which we possessed overwhelming
technological superiority (Desert Storm), as well as
conflicts in which we were the technical underdogs (the
American Revolution).
We've crossed swords with numerically superior foes, and
with militarizes a fraction of the size of our own.
We've battled on our own soil, and on the soil of foreign
lands -- on
the sea, under the sea, and in the skies. We've even engaged
in a bit of cyber-combat, way out there on the electronic
frontier. At one time or another, we've done battle under
just about every circumstance imaginable, armed with
everything from muskets to cruise missiles. And, somehow,
we've managed to do it all with the wrong Army.
That's right, America has the wrong Army. I don't know how
it happened, but it did. We have the wrong Army. It's too
small; it's not deployed properly; it's inadequately
trained, and it doesn't have the right sort of logistical
support. It's a shambles. I have no idea how those guys
even manage to fight.
Now, before my brothers and sisters of the OD green
persuasion get their fur up, I have another revelation for
you. We also have the wrong Navy. And if you want to get
down to brass tacks, we've got the wrong Air Force, the
wrong Marine Corps, and the wrong Coast Guard.
Don't believe me? Pick up a newspaper or turn on your
television. In
the past week, I've watched or read at least a dozen
commentaries on the strength, size, and deployment of our
military forces. All of our uniform services get called on
the carpet for different reasons, but our
critics unanimously agree that we're doing pretty much
everything wrong.
I think it's sort of a game. The critics won't tell you what
the game
is called, so I've taken the liberty of naming it myself. I
call it the
'No Right Answer' game. It's easy to play, and it must be a
lot of fun because politicos and journalists can't stop
playing it.
I'll teach you the rules. Here's Rule #1: No matter how the
U.S.
military is organized, it's the wrong force. Actually,
that's the only rule in this game. We don't really need any
other rules, because that one applies in all possible
situations. Allow me to demonstrate...
If the Air Force's fighter jets are showing their age,
critics will tell us that Air Force leaders are mismanaging
their assets, and endangering the safety of their personnel.
If the Air Force attempts to procure new fighter jets, they
are shopping for toys and that money could be spent better
elsewhere. Are you getting the hang of the game yet? It's
easy; keeping old planes is the wrong answer, but getting
new planes is also the wrong answer. There is no right
answer, not ever. Isn't that fun?
It works everywhere. When the Army is small, it's TOO small.
Then we start to hear phrases like 'over-extended' or
'spread too thin,' and the integrity of our national defense
is called into question. When the Army is large, it's TOO
large, and it's an unnecessary drain on our economy. Terms
like 'dead weight,' and 'dead wood' get thrown around.
I know what you're thinking. We could build a medium-sized
Army, and everyone would be happy. Think again. A
medium-sized Army is too small to deal with large scale
conflicts, and too large to keep military spending properly
muzzled. The naysayers will attack any middle of the
road solution anyway, on the grounds that it lacks a
coherent strategy. So small is wrong, large is wrong, and
medium-sized is also wrong. Now you're starting to
understand the game. Is this fun, or what?
No branch of the military is exempt. When the Navy builds
aircraft carriers, we are told that we really need small,
fast multipurpose
ships. When the Navy builds small, fast multi-mission ships
(aka the Arleigh Burke class), we're told that blue water
ships are poorly suited for littoral combat, and we really
need brown water combat ships. The Navy's answer, the
Littoral Combat, isn't even off the drawing boards yet, and
the critics are already calling it pork barrel politics and
questioning the need for such technology. Now I've gone
nose-to-nose with hostiles in the littoral waters of the
Persian Gulf, and I can't recall that pork or politics
ever entered into the conversation. In fact, I'd have to say
that the
people trying to kill me and my shipmates were positively
disinterested in the internal wrangling of our military
procurement process. But, had they been aware of our
organizational folly, they could have hurled a few
well-timed criticisms our way, to go along with the mines we
were trying to dodge.
The fun never stops when we play the 'No Right Answer' game.
If we centralize our military infrastructure, the experts
tell us that we are vulnerable to attack. We're inviting
another Pearl Harbor. If we decentralize our infrastructure,
we're sloppy and overbuilt, and the BRAC experts break out
the calculators and start dismantling what they call
our 'excess physical capacity.' If we leave our
infrastructure unchanged, we are accused of becoming
stagnant in a dynamic world environment.
Even the lessons of history are not sacrosanct. When we
learn from the mistakes we made in past wars, we are accused
of failing to adapt to emerging realities. When we shift our
eyes toward the future, the critics quickly tell us that
we've forgotten our history and we are therefore doomed to
repeat it. If we somehow manage to assimilate both
past lessons and emerging threats, we're informed that we
lack focus.
Where does it come from: this default assumption that we are
doing the wrong thing, no matter what we happen to be doing?
How did our military wind up in a zero-sum game? We can
prevail on the field of battle, but we can't win a war of
words where the overriding assumption is that we are always
in the wrong.
I can't think of a single point in History where our forces
were of the
correct size, the correct composition, correctly deployed,
and
appropriately trained all at the same time. Pick a war, any
war. (For
that matter, pick any period of peace.) Then dig up as many
official and unofficial historical documents, reports,
reconstructions, and
commentaries as you can. For every unbiased account you
uncover, you'll find three commentaries by revisionist
historians who cannot wait to tell you how badly the U.S.
military bungled things. To hear the naysayers tell it,
we could take lessons in organization and leadership from
the Keystone Cops.
We really only have one defense against this sort of
mudslinging.
Success. When we fight, we win, and that's got to count for
something. When asked to comment on Operation Desert Storm,
the U.S. Army's Lieutenant General Tom Kelly reportedly
said, "Iraq went from the fourth-largest army in the world,
to the second-largest army in Iraq in 100 hours." In my
opinion, it's hard to argue with that kind of success, but
critics weren't phased by it. Because no matter how well we
fought, we did it with the wrong Army.
I'd like to close with an invitation to those journalists,
analysts,
experts, and politicians who sit up at night dreaming up
new ways to criticize our armed forces. The next time you
see a man or woman in uniform, stop for ten seconds and
reflect upon how much you owe that person, and his or her
fellow Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen. Then say,
"Thank you." I'm betting you won't even have to explain the
reason. Our Service members are not blind or stupid. They
know what they're risking. They know what they're
sacrificing. They've weighed their wants, their needs, and
their personal safety against the needs of their nation, and
made the decision to serve. They know that they deserve our
gratitude, even if they rarely receive it.
Two words -- that's all I ask. "Thank you." If that's too
hard, if you
can't bring yourself to acknowledge the dedication,
sincerity and
sacrifice of your defenders, then I have a backup plan for
you. Put on a uniform and show us how to do it right.
(c) 2005 Jeff Edwards.
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