As the war in Iraq has unfolded, the word of U.S. generals has become almost sacrosanct. Discredited and dishonest civilian leaders such as Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are now practically synonymous with “failure,” but generals have consistently managed to avoid criticism. Indeed, political leaders in the White House are often criticized for not paying the generals greater heed.
But there’s an open secret just below the surface. Lt. Col. Paul Yingling has put his career on the line to highlight the divisions between mid-career officers and the top brass. Put simply, Yingling sees the generals as guilty of “intellectual and moral failures.” (thanks to D.D. and C.H. for the tip)
An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there.
“America’s generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq,” charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. “The intellectual and moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals.”
Yingling’s comments are especially striking because his unit’s performance in securing the northwestern Iraqi city of Tall Afar was cited by President Bush in a March 2006 speech and provided the model for the new security plan underway in Baghdad.
He also holds a high profile for a lieutenant colonel: He attended the Army’s elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has written for one of the Army’s top professional journals, Military Review.
In “General Failure,” Yingling doesn’t hold back. In private, as Thomas Ricks noted, majors and lieutenant colonels will privately complain about top commanders in the war, including Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, accusing them of making the same myopic mistakes Bush and Cheney have made (slow to accept reality, overly optimistic, etc.).
But Yingling is attaching his name to a sweeping criticism of a system problem. He was particularly poignant in describing what he sees as “moral failures,” that compound the strategic ones.
While the physical courage of America’s generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty regarding their moral courage. In almost surreal language, professional military men blame their recent lack of candor on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters. Now that the public is immediately concerned with the crisis in Iraq, some of our generals are finding their voices. They may have waited too long.
The system that produces our generals does little to reward creativity and moral courage. Officers rise to flag rank by following remarkably similar career patterns. Senior generals, both active and retired, are the most important figures in determining an officer’s potential for flag rank. The views of subordinates and peers play no role in an officer’s advancement; to move up he must only please his superiors. In a system in which senior officers select for promotion those like themselves, there are powerful incentives for conformity.
He also holds them largely responsible for failures in Iraq.
After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America’s generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency….After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America’s general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public….The intellectual and moral failures common to America’s general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship.
These kinds of condemnations are unprecedented. Civilians don’t criticize the generals because they’d be characterized as anti-military. Majors and lieutenant colonels usually don’t do so publicly because their careers would quickly come to a screeching halt.
But Yingling is pointing to a real problem within the ranks. As Kevin Drum noted, it needs to be taken seriously.
Among other things, Iraq has made clear not just that our military isn’t equipped to effectively fight non-conventional wars, but that even now it continues to be largely uninterested in fighting non-conventional wars. It would rather have its toys, and in this it’s aided and abetted as it always has been by a Congress more interested in military pork for constituents and contributors than it is in figuring out what our military really ought to look like ten years from now. Yingling’s article is a wakeup call.
Will any of Yingling’s colleagues stand with him and endorse his criticisms?