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

Washington Monthly, March, 1991 by Scott Shuger

What was missing from the coverage was any sense that there are some important things that generals do besides dealing with the press. (A mistake the Pentagon itself encourages. All those Desert Storm briefings make it clear that you don't get serious stars without mastering the art of the information-free press conference.) So, finding fault with Dugan's press performance, the press jumped straight to the conclusion that he had to go.

If some attention had been paid to a rather well-known historical episode, there could have been a more sophisticated discussion. Within one week in the late summer of 1943, at a time when General George Patton was making dramatic breakthroughs against the Germans in Sicily, the hotheaded general twice struck soldiers suffering from combat fatigue. The incidents came to the attention of Eisenhower and top officials in Washington, including President Roosevelt, and eventually led to an outcry among the general public when it was leaked by Drew Pearson. Although Patton's actions were recognized to be inexcusable by his superiors, he wasn't kicked out of the Army or relieved of his command. Instead, he was reprimanded by Eisenhower and required to apologize to the men he hit and witnesses. After the successful conclusion of his Sicily campaign, Patton was transferred to England, where he was made to cool his heels (while at the same time put at the head of a phony invasion army that was used quite effectively to divert the German defenses away from the real invasion's target, Normandy). That's where Patton remained until his skills were needed again in the field. He responded by scorching across France and Germany. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who had risked his own standing to approve all these arrangements, later wrote, "Perhaps no decision of the war was more triumphantly vindicated by events than this one."

What is remarkable about the press's handling of the Dugan case is not that no one in the media defended Dugan, but that no one asked if he was a good general and if it was a good idea to fire a good general for the mistakes Dugan made. It occurred to no one to wonder about the wisdom of firing the top air planner in the midst of preparing the largest U.S. air operation since World War 11 for actions that had nothing to do with his ability to conceive and execute those plans. What if Dugan was just the man to craft an air campaign that would make Saddam surrender without ground fighting? Wouldn't that make it absurd to fire him for speaking on the record, for lacking "decorum"? It would have been different if someone in the press had, by investigating Dugan's record as a commander, argued that Dugan was no Patton. But the need to make that point stick escaped the media completely. (Actually, during the Dugan flap, the distinction between politically astute generals and fighting generals did creep into The Washington Post once-in a letter to the editor from a retired Air Force general.)

The press's handling of the Waller case was similarly deficient. Most of the coverage focused on Waller's surprising candor, the impact his comments would have on diplomacy, and on the Pentagon's attempts to put a different spin on them. A number of reports went on to indicate that Waller, like Dugan, was saying on the record what a lot of other senior commanders thought. (Mary McGrory of the Post was almost alone in wondering why, in light of this, Waller could stay while Dugan had to go.) But there was scarcely anyone in the press wondering on the basis of Waller's comments if he (and his fellow senior commanders too, if the stories about how Waller spoke for them as well were true) would be disastrously sluggish in any war against Iraq.