We Need Another George Marshall

An email from the George Marshall Foundation says:

In his new book The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, Tom Ricks says that accountability among our highest military leaders has gone missing. Generals are rarely fired today for poor performance, and he thinks the new standards for evaluating generalships have changed in a disturbing fashion. "During World War II, top officials expected some generals to fail in combat, and were prepared to remove them when they did. The personalities of these generals mattered enormously, and the Army's chief of staff, George C. Marshall, worked hard to find the right men for the jobs at hand," he writes. But not so today, he says.

 

Gen. Petraeus personal failures are a devastating blow to the American military.   The general officer/flag officer corps is hollow.  The military usually varies between peacetime generals and wartime generals.  In the past, when a war started, the peacetime generals who were good at pushing paper and politicking failed and were removed, replaced by generals who could fight wars.  Today because of the new structure of the military, that has not happened. The paper-pushing generals have gone on the lead troops in war, with poor results, documented by Tom Ricks. 

The American military suffered a similar decline after World War I.  Marshall was able to assemble a group of war-fighting generals, such as Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton, who were ready to step in and replace the peace-time generals when World War II came.  Petraeus appeared to be a possibility to fill the George Marshall role, but not now. 

Colin Powell has been the closest to following in Marshall's footsteps, including by serving as Secretary of State, but while he was able to serve President George H.W. Bush well during the first Iraq war, he was shabbily treated by George W. Bush during Iraq war II, especially by being sent to present a false report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations, as well as by Bush's ignoring Powell's advice on how to fight the second Iraq war. 

Powell and Gen. Schwarzkopf worked well together to fight the first Iraq war in a workmanlike way, but the bloodthirsty Republicans wanted to kill Saddam Hussein, and were upset that Bush I, Powell, and Schwarzkopf had not done so.  They got their bloodthirsty wish from Bush II, Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, and company, but ended up strengthening the anti-American regime of the Iranian mullahs. 

Bush II not only failed to win the second Iraq war, he also destroyed the general officer/flag officer corps, leaving the US military in dire shape. 

Petraeus and the Trouble with Generals

Tom Ricks has an article in the current Atlantic Magazine on the widespread failure of American generals.  I am surprised that there has not been more discussion of it along with all the gossip about General Petraeus's romantic peccadillo's.  Ricks does not list Petraeus as one of his failed generals; Petraeus does not come in for the same criticism as Generals Franks and Sanchez, but by pulling himself down, Petraeus undercuts the status of the whole general officer corps.  In addition to Ricks deep criticism that many generals are incompetent to lead troops and fight a war, others are pointing to the perks that generals enjoy. 

Petraeus became an intellectual darling because of the success of his counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.  But yesterday on one of the Sunday talk shows, some revisionist historian pointed out that his surge in Iraq happened to coincide with a Sunni tribe's decision to ally with the US and oppose the more radical Sunnis, that may have done more to quell the violence than the surge.  See this article in the Washington Quarterly. 

If the leading American general has no clothes (referring to the emperor tale, not his personal conduct) or feet of clay, what does that say about the rest of the generals and the American military establishment? 

Republican Senate Is The Problem

It's not clear who is responsible for the gridlock in Washington.  No doubt there is blame for all involved -- House, Senate, President, Republicans, and Democrats.  From my point of view, however, the main culprit is the Republican minority in the Senate.  This is because they are thwarting the will of the Democratic majority.  They are using parliamentary tricks, mainly the filibuster, to block majority rule, which I think goes against the Constitution.  If the Constitution wanted to require a 60% majority to pass any legislation in the Senate, it would have said so.  It already says that it requires a two-thirds majority to start the process to amend the Constitution.  It could have spelled out other times when a super majority was required; the fact that it did not, indicates that the founding fathers did not intend to require a super majority for conducting the ordinary business of the Senate. 

The Senate has imposed this new super majority requirement on itself.  The Democrats and the Republicans have both used it, but the Republicans have used it much more than the Democrats. 

The Republican use of he filibuster super majority bodes ill for the "fiscal cliff."  The Republicans can block any attempt to resolve the crisis that they do not like.  In a recent "60 Minutes" interview, Mitch McConnell indicated that he was not inclined to compromise.  He said that what the Democrats were doing in terms of running up debt, etc., was bad, and he would try to stop it.  That may be, but the problem is that doing nothing may be worse than doing what the Democrats want.  McConnell can try to limit tax increases and expand budget cuts, but that requires some kind of compromise.  If he lets the nation slide off the fiscal cliff, very few will benefit.  His extremely wealthy friends and supporters will suffer less than most; some will probably figure out how to make money from the disaster, but most people will suffer.  He is very short sighted to destroy America just to enrich a few of his friends and supporters. 

Private Equity Acquires the U.S.

I am somewhat worried that Romney's plan for America is similar to Bain Capital's private equity strategy.  He and his Republican partners will take over America, suck all the money out, and leave her a fragile, empty shell of what she used to be.  That's why Romney won't spell out his plan for how he will cut taxes 20% without reducing revenue.  He doesn't care about revenue to run the government; he just wants his money, along with that of his wealthy colleagues.  Big corporations benefit from government largess as much as, or maybe more than, the poor 47% that Romney despises as worthless, such as active duty soldiers who pay no taxes.  The rich get government subsidies both for their companies (e.g., government insurance for too-big-to-fail banks), and for themselves as executives (e.g., capital gains taxes), not to mention their companies that are almost entirely dependent on government funding (e.g., defense contractors). 

So Romney gets elected. cuts taxes, and privatizes everything now performed by the government, That's why he and the Republicans are so concerned about maintaining defense spending.  They don't care about the troops; it's the defense contractors that they are worried about.  They will privatize everything from air traffic control to diplomacy, and pay their fat-cat contractors much more than they pay government employees to provide the same services.  The government will go broke, but they will become richer in the bargain and move on to China or Africa, or wherever the next market victim is perceived to be. 

Since I am concerned about how influential Jews have become in the last 50 or so years, I anticipate that many will leave and go to Israel, taking their profits from America with them.  The Asians, another successful immigrant group, may do the same, taking their winnings back home to Asia.