And now it's six

Six recently retired generals who want Rummy gone.

Richard Holbrooke in Sunday's Washington Post says:

First, it is clear that the retired generals -- six so far, with more likely to come -- surely are speaking for many of their former colleagues, friends and subordinates who are still inside. In the tight world of senior active and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue. Recent retirees stay in close touch with old friends, who were often their subordinates; they help each other, they know what is going on and a conventional wisdom is formed. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who was director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the planning period for the war in Iraq, made this clear in an extraordinary, at times emotional, article in Time magazine this past week when he said he was writing "with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership." He went on to "challenge those still in uniform . . . to give voice to those who can't -- or don't have the opportunity to -- speak."

...

They are career men, each with more than 30 years in service, who swore after Vietnam that, as Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs, "when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons." Yet, as Newbold admits, it happened again. In the public comments of the retired generals one can hear a faint sense of guilt that, having been taught as young officers that the Vietnam-era generals failed to stand up to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson, they did the same thing.

So - better late than never. And of course, Shinseki got fired when he spoke up before the war. (That's the problem so many places: people more interested in keeping their jobs than doing them. Samuel Goldwyn summed it up neatly: "I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs." Very true, that.)

True - Michael DeLong, a retired Marine lieutenant general who worked for Rummy until recently (and I mean worked for him; he was, in his own words, "the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war. ... I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years.") insists that "the people who needed to" get access to Rumsfeld "got it". He says Rumsfeld "carefully listened to our arguments", but even he has to add that " if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day" and that "Mr. Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either". Of course, DeLong then says this makes for a better army - it makes the commanders tougher.

Does it? Or does it make them decide not to get fired? DeLong doesn't address that issue.

But let's say that maybe DeLong is kinda sorta right, and maybe the other six just didn't understand that Rummy would in fact give in if they just fought him hard enough. And maybe not.

Either way, the man at the top is ultimately responsible, isn't he? He sets the tone for the whole organization. And in this case, that organization - the US war on terror - is fatally flawed. Doesn't Rumsfeld have to take at least some of the blame for it?

Not in this administration, apparently. In this administration, you get medals and kudos and DoD memos defending your piss-poor performance.

Because here, loyalty trumps competence.

If nothing else, it's time for Rumsfeld to go because he's lost the confidence of the people. They say in Washington that he's offered to resign and W won't accept the offer. That's typical of a president who is only comfortable with cronies.

Some might say, why not surround yourself with your friends? Don't most of us do the same thing? Sure. But most of us aren't the President of the United States. And most of us can't lead lives insulated from the incompetence of our cronies - and most of us don't have cronies whose incompetence leads to the deaths of thousands.

But Rummy isn't Brownie. He actually was qualified for the position when he got it, wasn't he?

As they say, that was then...

In the NYT today Frank Rich takes a look at Rumsfeld's past and concludes he's the wrong (kind of) man to be in charge of an actual war:

Unfortunately, we've learned that though Rumsfeld is a perfect warrior for peaceful times, his virtues turn into vices during wartime. War is nothing but a catalog of errors, and in fluid, unpredictable circumstances, the redundancies of the World War II style of organization actually make sense. When you don't know what you will need, sometimes it is best just to throw gigantic resources at a problem. You can adapt later on.

Rumsfeld the reformer never adjusted to the circumstances of wartime. Once the initiator of new ideas, he now strangles ideas. Once the modernizer, he's now the dinosaur. Amid the war on terror, he has unleashed a reign of terror on his subordinates.

If you just looked at his résumé, you might think he was the best person to lead the Pentagon in time of war, but in reality he was the worst because his whole life had misprepared him for what was to come. He was prepared to fight organizations. He was not prepared to fight enemies.

Now the bureaucracy he assaulted is rising up against him. In other times their enmity would be a mark of accomplishment, but now it's a symptom of failure. He has become a past-tense man.