Sound familiar?
[The Secretary of Defense] would dominate the policy-making process because of three mutually reinforcing factors: the [Joint] Chiefs’ ineffectiveness as an advisory group, [the president’s] profound insecurity, and the president’s related unwillingness to entertain divergent views on the subject… Above all [the president] needed reassurance. He wanted advisors who would tell him what he wanted to hear, who would find solutions even if there were none to be found. Bearers of bad news or those who expressed views that ran counter to his priorities would hold little sway. [The SecDef] could sense the president’s desires and determined to do all that he could to fulfill them.
Who, it’s apparently being asked among military thinkers, will be the H.R. McMaster of Iraq? Whoever it is, will he or she be capable of writing, and allowed to write, as honest a portrayal of governmental failings, both civilian and military, as that in Dereliction of Duty?
And will that person be passed over for promotion in the same fashion?
Take it from a retired army enlisted man. The smartest officers seldom make it beyond lieutenant colonel or colonel. Very rarely, brigadier general. I'm not talking book smart here. I'm talking men like Col. McMaster, who have the brains to see the world like it is and the character to tell it.
Posted by: Furber on January 31, 2008 12:16 PMFurber, your comments fit what I've read so far from McMaster (the first 150 pages or so) like a glove. The Joint Chiefs were all politicians of their services. Those that succeeded with LBJ, like Maxwell Taylor, knew how to transcend the politics of individual services and move to the next level, politics of the politicians.
That said, Vietnam did not start mainly through their failings. Interservice rivalry kept them from counseling the President clearly and honestly as the war was gearing up. But LBJ wasn't interested in hearing counsel he didn't already agree with, and McNamara did everything he could think of to keep such advice outside the Oval Office.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on February 1, 2008 1:51 AM