Dechert's Sitreps News Page

http://www.defendamerica.mil/fallen.html

Louis T Dechert

Text Box:

UPDATED 11.06.2006: I have had inquiries asking about the Daily Reality Brief. Other responsibilities require too much of my time and abilities at the present time. I still support The President, I still support the World Wide War on Terror until we achieve unconditional victory over or annihilation of the enemy. As long-time readers know I do not and never have supported the Secretary of Defense. The liberal press which owns the Army Times, Air Force Times, and six or seven more service and government related weeklies is publishing editorials this week calling for the firing of Sec of Def Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld should have been fired the hour that he presumed to violate the Principles of War and fired the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army, before the war in IRAQ began, because they would not accept the substitute Principles of Rumsfeld. I have stated it thusly for all these years.

The war in IRAQ, and around the world against terrorists was lost at that time. Only the valor of our men and women, Active, National Guard, and Reservists, trying to salvage victory in spite of that self-inflicted wound at the highest national level defeat, has maintained us to this point. They and the generals who lead them have been fighting with their hands tied. Firing Rumsfeld will do not good now--he has used up all the manpower available because he--and his anti-personnel aide, Dr. Chu, supposedly the Deputy Sec for personnel matters--ignored the Principles of War and mocked their betters who insisted that such military matters were vital in the conduct of war.

Mr. Rumsfeld was a man of ability who was wrong. He admits that for years, and dating before his appointment as Secretary, he had been advocate of (misapplied) transformation. The War on Terror coupled with the Vietnam War, lost under the management of another self confident Sec of Def--another war run from the Pentagon in absolute violation of the reasons and controls for establishing the Department of Defense to begin with-- proves that trans-formation is required: transformation needs to take place at the Department of Defense and among civilians, not among our valiant forces which, when given the resources and freedom to do so, have never ceased from transforming themselves to meet the demands which THEY (not civilians in Washington, DC) encounter daily on the battlefields of the world.

Please read Cobra II--it is the truth. Please read the tribute to Special Forces which follows the proposed Army Times editorial below.

Louis T Dechert, November 6, 2006.

EDITORIAL REPORTEDLY FORTHCOMING ATTEMPTING TO INFLUENCE US ELECTION (WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS?)

According to sources, the Army Times is about to run an astonishing editorial, openly calling for Rumsfeld to resign mere days before an election. That's how desperate the military now is. Here it is in full:

Time for Rumsfeld to go

"So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."

That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

But until recently, the "hard bruising" truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "mission accomplished," the insurgency is "in its last throes," and "back off," we know what we're doing, are a few choice examples.

Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.

Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war's planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it ... and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war."

Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on "critical" and has been sliding toward "chaos" for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.

But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.

For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don't show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.

Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.

And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.

Now, the president says he'll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.

This is a mistake.

It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

And although that tradition, and the officers' deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

STUDYING WAR

SPECIAL FORCES: HOME FROM THE WAR -
AND HEADED BACK

Lt Col Ralph Peters, US Army, Retired, is a former Military Intelligence officer. His latest book is "Never Quit the Fight.”

September 24, 2006 -- WHEN politicians get big things wrong, they still get re- elected. When academics get big things wrong, they get tenure. When Special Forces officers get even the smallest thing wrong, people die.

That gives SF leaders a seriousness you rarely encounter elsewhere - unless it's among others in uniform.

Once a year, I have the privilege of speaking to the SF and other special operations students at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. The questions from those officers are by far the toughest - the most intelligent and earnest - I hear anywhere.

Why? The rest of us just read. Those officers do the things we read about.

Fresh from combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan or in one of the world's dark crevices, they don't argue for any party line or popular prejudice in the classroom. Their fighting's deadly, not a game of political oneupsmanship. With candor and moral courage, they struggle to understand the world in which they work.

According to the media, that world's black and white. But special operators deal with reality, not cant or spin. Their world has countless shades of gray. It isn't a universe of perishable headlines, but one in which you struggle to read between an infinite number of lines.

THE rest of us simplify things to get a grip on them. For these men (and women, too, in Psychological Operations and other special-ops fields), every minor complexity has to be faced. They serve and fight in environments where each gesture has nuance, where life can depend upon tone of voice, and where physical stamina is ultimately less important than strength of will.

Many will never receive public credit for the risks they've taken and the victories they've achieved to keep the rest of us safe and free. You won't always know precisely what their awards for valor represent. Their personnel files have gaps that measure operations so secret that senior officers can't access the reports. Often, their families know only that their soldier's gone, with no idea where he is and when - or if - he'll return.

Think about that. In this Internet age of instant communications, when troops in Iraq jump on-line at the end of a mission to assure the folks back home that they're OK, special operators disappear into a black hole for months.

On a military post, the other spouses might talk to their distant warrior regularly. The family of the special operator waits. And waits. Even the wives and kids have it tougher in special ops.

EACH year, my feeling grows stronger that I should be listening to these soldiers, not lecturing to them. No matter how much experience we think we have of the world, it doesn't begin to rival that of special operators - or of regular soldiers and Marines, for that matter. They haven't just been to a war. They've been to wars. And each one knows he or she is going back.

The only thing you can do with officers like that is to try to help them gain a greater perspective on the ordeals they've recently left behind, to assemble their individual experiences into a coherent grasp of deeper issues, and to get at the purpose of their sacrifices in a way that goes beyond pablum generalities.

LAST week, in a classroom in a wretched building slated for demolition, we talked about Islam and its relation to other religions, about the power of culture, the reassertion of local identities and unorthodox strategies. We discussed the tactical lessons of recent wars and the lifespans of civilizations.

One major spoke cogently of the lessons he drew from interacting with Arab officers. Another stressed the criticality of education for women in breaking the chain of societal failure (and this guy was an aviator, a category of officer better known for fly-by targeting of the human female - tell Ms. Steinem we're making progress). A Navy SEAL raised the lessons medieval Europe offers for analyzing the Middle East today.

Not exactly The New Yorker's snitty view of military officers. There was no bluster or swagger, no trace of close-mindedness (for that, you have to go to a liberal arts faculty). No matter how controversial the discussion became, no one raised his or her voice.

The quality of their questions and observations was signally higher than those on any campus I've ever visited. It's the same story every year at Ft. Leavenworth. If the readers of this paper only could meet these magnificent Americans, you'd be immeasurably proud of them.

They have their concerns, of course. In off-line discussions, there was never a diminished sense of duty, but their optimism was more subdued than in previous years. Repeatedly, I encountered a sense that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's policies failed our military badly, undercutting our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The officers didn't complain. They just offered sober observations on what they'd been through, what they'd seen, and what we could do better. Each one was mentally prepared to go back into the fight.

AND they will go back. Their time in Kansas is a brief respite, a chance to hold their families close for a few months, to study and think. They'll soon go out again to routinely do the impossible, to track down terrorists and train potential allies, to right at least a small portion of the world's wrongs and to redeem the damage done by unscrupulous foreign leaders, hate-mongering demagogues and, yes, irresponsible politicians here at home.

The bottom line? Some of the men and women I spoke to last week are going to die. For you.