A Case for Accountability By John Batiste

[jbfam4]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/18/AR2006041801164.html

A Case for Accountability

By John Batiste
Wednesday, April 19, 2006; Page A17


I had the opportunity to observe high-level policy formulation in the Pentagon and experience firsthand its impact on the ground. I have concluded that we need new leadership in the Defense Department because of a pattern of poor strategic decisions and a leadership style that is contemptuous, dismissive, arrogant and abusive. This dismissive attitude has frayed long-standing alliances with our allies inside and outside NATO, alliances that are fundamental to our security and to building strong coalitions. It is time to hold our leaders accountable. A leader is responsible for everything an organization does or fails to do. It is time to address the axis of arrogance and the reinforcing of strategic failures in decision-making.


Our current leadership decided to discount professional military advice and ignore more than a decade of competent military planning. It failed to consider military lessons learned, while displaying ignorance of the tribal, ethnic and religious complexities that have always defined Iraq. We took down a regime but failed to provide the resources to build the peace. The shortage of troops never allowed commanders on the ground to deal properly with the insurgency and the unexpected. What could have been a deliberate victory is now a long, protracted challenge.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims to be the man who started the Army's transformation. This is not true. Army transformation started years before this administration came into office. The secretary's definition of transformation was to reduce the Army to between five and seven divisions to fund programs in missile defense, space defense and high-tech weapons. The war on terrorism disrupted his work, and the Army remains under-resourced at a time when it is shouldering most of the war effort. Boots on the ground and high-tech weapons are important, and one cannot come at the expense of the other.

Civilian control of the military is fundamental, but we deserve competent leaders who do not lead by intimidation, who understand that respect is a two-way street, and who do not dismiss sound military advice. At the same time, we need senior military leaders who are grounded in the fundamental principles of war and who are not afraid to do the right thing. Our democracy depends on it. There are some who advocate that we gag this debate, but let me assure you that it is not in our national interest to do so. We must win this war, and we cannot allow senior leaders to continue to make decisions when their track record is so dismal.

The writer, a retired Army major general, commanded the First U.S. Infantry Division in Iraq. He is now president of Klein Steel Service Inc. in Rochester, N.Y.

[Dhalgren]

1. Any 'enemy of my enemy is my friend', however,

these generals are not even looking at the war, itself, only at its management and operation. Most of them (with one or two exceptions) do not see the war as having been wrong, but of only having been planned and executed poorly. Some one, somewhere, must stand up and tell the truth - in Iraq, the US is in the wrong...