General failure; what the press doesn't tell you about America's military leaders

Washington Monthly, March, 1991 by Scott Shuger

Scott Shuger is an editor of The Washington Monthly. Research assistance was provided by Elliott Beard, John Gould, and Joshua Ray Levin.

What the press doesn't tell you about America's military leaders

Like everybody else, I started out the Persian Gulf war head-over-hardware, riveted by direct hit videos, awash in bomb damage assessments, living from one Scud alert to the next. When I wasn't watching Anthony Cordesman wax wondrous over Tomahawk missiles, it's because I had switched to Wolf Blitzer waxing wondrous over Patriot missiles. It got to the point where the hold-up in the line at the Safeway was a heated discussion between two check out clerks about the maximum effective range of a laser-guided bomb.

But gradually it dawned on me that something was missing in all this. Something very central to national defense that is now getting only the feeblest of attention, something that before war was imminent got virtually none at all. Here's a quick fill-in-the-blank quiz: At the height of World War 11, General Eisenhower referred to as "indispensable to the war effort, one of the guarantors of our victory."

He was speaking of:

a) the B - 17 bomber

b) the Sherman tank

c) the P-51 fighter

The answer is "none of the above"-Ike was talking about General George Patton. A country that's now thoroughly obsessed with weapons has forgotten that an essential component of success in war is generalship (and admiralship). A crafty general is the ultimate smart weapon, and a dull-witted one makes for the biggest possible dud. We've been helped to this state of amnesia by a press that simply makes no real effort to evaluate military commanders by name. Sadly, this is true even of the minority of journalists who cover national defense with reform in mind. You could have read every page of an excellent issue of The Atlantic (June 1989) given over mostly to articles on how to fix the Pentagon, without picking up the faintest clue about our generals-about how they think about the next war or about what they've done in their commands to win it. Instead, all the while the next war was becoming this war, the press put its focus on metal and overlooked mettle.

Suppose there's enough of a lull in the fighting to allow tomorrow's papers to squeeze in the following story:

WASHINGTON-The Pentagon announced today that it deplored the unauthorized disclosure of information about the highly classified B-3 bomber in yesterday's editions of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Although a senior defense official would not deny the substance of the newspapers' stories, he did announce that "strong corrective measures" would be taken. And within an hour, after consulting with President Bush and other Pentagon officials, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney announced that because the revelations were contrary to sound practice" and inappropriate," he was immediately canceling the airplane.

Maybe it'll be an especially slow day and they'll be able to get this one in too:

WASHINGTON-There was a flurry of activity at the Department of Defense today in the wake of yesterday's surprising news that the much ballyhooed M-2 battle tank is considerably slower and has less firepower than the Pentagon had expected. Attempting to limit any political damage, Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said that Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney would not draw any conclusions about American military readiness from this development, and that no consideration has been given to canceling the M-2.

Absurd, you say? Episodes like these could never happen? Well, actually, with one minor change each, they did happen. For the minor change, think of the B-3 as the "Dugan" bomber and the M-2 as the "Waller" tank. Last fall, Secretary of Defense Cheney fired the Air Force's top officer, General Michael Dugan, within hours after The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times published remarks by Dugan about the Pentagon's plans in case of war with Iraq. The quotes attributed to Cheney in the B-3 story above were actually said by him in connection with Dugan. On the other hand, firing wasn't even discussed last December when the deputy commander of Desert Shield, Lt. General Calvin Waller, told reporters that U.S. forces in the Gulf would "not be ready for combat activities" by January 15th, the date that signified the possible beginning of military action against Iraq. The Williams statement about Cheney in the M-2 story above was actually said by him in connection with Waller.

In other words, what strikes us as absurd in the case of weapons readily passes muster in the case of generals. This means that America doesn't understand a fundamental military fact: Generals are weapons too. And like any other weapon, they should be evaluated for what they would bring to a war effort.

The Dugan and Waller cases make it clear that not even the best of the press has taken this task of evaluation seriously enough. In its editorial on Dugan's firing, The New York Times said Cheney was right to sack the general primarily because of his remark that when it came to picking Iraqi targets, he didn't "expect to be concerned" about political constraints. The Times's R. W. Apple observed that Dugan had "few defenders ... at the Pentagon or elsewhere in Washington," and explained that what cost him his job was that he "was unguarded, speaking on the record ... at a moment when the situation was delicately poised." The Washington Post called the firing a "courageous" act required because Dugan's "gross threats" left an impression of an administration anxious to go to war. Richard Cohen, in his Post column, declared that Dugan deserved to get sacked because he lacked "decorum." The Los Angeles Times's John Broder--one of the reporters to whom Dugan gave his ill-starred interview-reasoned that Dugan "had forced Cheney and other administration officials to respond" because the general had "squandered the precious quantity of deniability'." Broder's paper took the editorial stance that although the firing was "worrisome," it was also "inevitable."