The VA Should Come Out Better Under General Shinseki

Morganas article @ http://www.broowaha.com/article.php?id=4519 V A Cuts & Runs On Lady Vets made me laugh and want to punch some faces, that police chief being the first! Military women are everywhere. On land, at sea, in the air and on space missions. The link is groovy.

It would be interesting to see how retired 4-star General Eric Shinseki would react to stories like these here. If his past is an indication of General Shinseki’s future behavior and beliefs, the VA should come out better under General Shinseki. Perplexingly I couldn’t find an e-mail for General Shinseki or the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs or even contact info for the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs. That is another VA issue that should be resolved.

I liked that Obama’s pick, now confirmed, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Shinseki , publicly clashed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraq over how many troops the U.S. would need to keep in Iraq for the postwar occupation of that country.

As Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation. From then on, Shinseki's influence on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly waned. The end of his term of Army Chief of Staff came in June 2003, just three months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and at that time General Shinseki retired from the military.

When the insurgency took hold in postwar Iraq, Shinseki's comments and their public rejection by the civilian leadership were often cited by those who felt the Bush administration deployed too few troops to Iraq. On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said that General Shinseki had been correct that more troops were needed.

In 2001, Shinseki reportedly staved off suggestions by Rumsfeld and his aides that the Army be reduced in size. According to one source, at their first meeting Shinseki told Rumsfeld that his orders would not be implemented. The Quadrennial Defense Review issued in 2001 maintained the existing size of the Army. Another fight ensued in 2002, when Rumsfeld cancelled the XM2001 Crusader, an artillery system supported by Shinseki and members of Congress.

The personality clash between Shinseki and Rumsfeld was well known. Shinseki had a reputation as a quiet, reserved officer, while Rumsfeld had a history of his tough questioning and "wire-brushing" senior officers. (Barnett describes wire-brushing as "chewing them out, typically in a public way that's demeaning to their stature. It's pinning their ears back, throwing out question after question you know they can't answer correctly and then attacking every single syllable they toss up from their defensive crouch.") Shinseki and other army officers resented Rumsfeld's rough treatment of officers, while Rumsfeld and his aides felt the military had to be challenged vigorously in order for the civilians to exercise effective control of the department and steer it in the direction in which they wanted it to go.

Shinseki and Rumsfeld had significantly different approaches to military doctrine. For example, following September 11, 2001, Rumsfeld was in a meeting whose subject was the review of the Department of Defense's (Contingency) Plan in the event of a war with Iraq (U.S. Central Command OPLAN 1003-98). The plan (as it was then conceived) contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld opined was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:

As General Newbold outlined the plan … it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated. For Rumsfeld, the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute. It was, Rumsfeld declared, the "product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military."

[T]he Plan . . . reflected long-standing military principles about the force levels that were needed to defeat Iraq, control a population of more than 24 million, and secure a nation the size of California with porous borders. Rumsfeld's numbers, in contrast, seemed to be pulled out of thin air. He had dismissed one of the military's long-standing plans, and suggested his own force level without any of the generals raising a cautionary flag.

In a public rebuke to General Shinseki, Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, called Shinseki's estimate "far off the mark” and "wildly off the mark". Wolfowitz said it would be "hard to believe" more troops would be required for postwar Iraq than to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Specifically, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:

Wolfowitz: There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq's reconstruction. We can't be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators ... [but] I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.

On November 15, 2006, Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, acknowledged that in his view, and with hindsight, General Shinseki had been correct in his view that a larger postwar force was needed. Abizaid noted that this force could have included Iraqi or international forces in addition to American force:

Graham: Was General Shinseki correct when you look backward that we needed more troops to secure the country, General Abizaid?

Abizaid: General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution, and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations.

No senior civilians attended General Shinseki's retirement ceremony, which broke historical precedent. Most Army officers and Senior enlisted, such as Major General John Batiste (ret.) who called for Rumsfeld's resignation, saw this as an intentional slight and foremost sign of disrespect directed toward General Shinseki by the civilian leadership.

General Shinseki has served as a director for several corporations: Honeywell International and Ducommun, military contractors; Grove Farm Corporation; First Hawaiian Bank; and Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.[25] He is a member of the Advisory Boards at the Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and to the U.S. Comptroller General. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council of the United States, and the Association of the United States Army.

Shinseki was born in Lihue, Kauai in the then Territory of Hawaii, to a Japanese American family. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree and a commission as a second lieutenant. He earned a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Duke University. He was also educated at the Armor Officer Advanced Course, the United States Army Command and General Staff College, and the National War College. General Shinseki has taught at the U.S. Military Academy’s Department of English.