The Generals' Complaints -- A Context

British military historian, Max Hastings, makes some excellent points regarding the much ballyhooed Generals' attacks on SecDef Rumsfeld.

The first point is to note that kind of criticism has emerged in every modern conflict:

[R]etired soldiers have always been outspoken about the alleged blunders of successor warlords, uniformed and otherwise. During Britain's colonial conflicts and in both world wars, through Korea and Vietnam, hoary old American and British warriors wrote frequently to newspapers, deploring this decision or that, exploiting their credentials to criticize governments and commanders.

During the Iraq campaigns of 1991 and 2003, I heard British chiefs of staff express their fervent desire for veterans to get themselves off television screens. We may assume that, as chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff today, Gen. Peter Pace feels the same way.

Indeed, but Hastings larger point, one that I have noted in other posts, is far more important:

The great progressive change since 1945 is that the conduct of limited wars has become intensely political. The interventions of civilian leaders are ever more detailed and explicit in matters that were once deemed military turf. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was sacked in Korea in 1951 for conduct no more imperious than his World War II norm in the Pacific. The general failed to understand that the principle on which he had always justified his own mandate -- when wars start, politicians must leave soldiers to run them -- was a dead letter in the nuclear age.

Yet how far should the process go of political engagement in military operations? This issue lies at the heart of the tensions between senior U.S. soldiers and Rumsfeld, and it will persist through all wars.

The interaction of military and civilian officials is inevitably frustrating to both and has fundamentally changed the ends of war. Military officers seek victory; civilians seek a satisfactory outcome that may or may not involve military victory. And in a democratic system the political and economic goals of the civilian participants must always trump the military's desire for effective and decisive action. Naturally military leaders grumble and fret and rail against interference and succumb to the temptation to take their gripes before the public. What few of them recognize is that, in doing so, they make vastly more difficult the tasks of their former colleagues who are still fighting the good fight.

Yet Hastings notes that to some extent the Generals are motivated by a sense of injustice. They are the product of a post-Vietnam military establishment that is notoriously and justifiably risk-averse. Hastings writes:

Once, generals were notoriously gung-ho. Today they are haunted by fear of failure. By a notable historical irony, enthusiasm for using troops is far more prevalent among civilian ideologues than among professional warriors.

A major reason for this reluctance to fight is the fact that in the modern politico/military environment Generals are unable to fight wars as they would like to, but are apportioned the major part of the blame when things go wrong. Outspoken criticism of civilian "interference" in the conduct of wars is their attempt to fix blame where they feel it should be placed -- on the civilians.

Read Hastings' piece here.