Boots on the Ground, Family Back Home - New York Times op-ed page, 9/21/03
Not a day after my Talking Point on the significance of the volunteer army as a constituency, Mark L. Kimmey, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve, addresses concerns apparently ignored by the Defense Department, despite the assertions of Don Rumsfeld below. Col. Kimmey is a systems engineer in civilian life presently serving a tour in Iraq. Though his analysis is thoroughly non-political, as behooves an active officer, the facts as he sees them reveal the administration's bewildering failure to address the needs of our citizens who serve under arms. The tone of anger underlying his dignified complaint is palpable. But then given the failure of Bush Inc. to honor and support a commitment to first-responders at home, the bleakness of Col. Kimmey's outlook will come as no surprise.
He writes: The Army's decision to keep its Reserve forces in Iraq on duty for a full year from their arrival may have profound consequences for both the Army and the war in Iraq. While the Army will gain increased flexibility with its "boots on the ground," the long deployments may demoralize reservists. When mobilization and demobilization are included, 12 months on duty in Iraq will mean a 14- to 16-month separation from family and career for reservists.
. . . the message to reservists is unmistakable: the Army no longer takes into account sacrifices made to maintain two careers and lives. . . . For a reservist, every day in uniform is a day away from what might be (or might have been) a promising career. . . . Hardships on Reserve families have increased with longer and more frequent deployments. Reservists don't always have ready access to a military base and its support programs. Left to fend for themselves, Reserve families are becoming more vocal about their unhappiness with the situation. Politicians may not be listening to their complaints, but you can bet we husbands and wives overseas are hearing their pain.
The Army is fond of bragging about the advantages of the all-volunteer force. But reservists are volunteers, too. We sign up for the Reserve when we leave the Army because we want to continue to serve with people we respect. . . . The problem in Iraq is that the Army doesn't seem to know what to do with us. . . . In the case of my brigade, we've had nothing to do for almost a month. . . . The feeling throughout the ranks is that we are being held in place while someone tries to think of something for us to do. We've been assured that new orders will be published "any day now," but we've heard that before.
The advantage of experienced reservists to a unit is immeasurable. But here in Iraq, I am hearing more soldiers talk about calling it quits when they return to the States. Even though some soldiers are only four or five years from qualifying for retirement pay and benefits, they're getting out. The constant deployments are difficult for families and careers, they say, and waiting around for retirement benefits is no longer worth it.
The evidence I see in other units around me is the same: the United States Army is about to see a mass exodus from its Reserve. . . . If the Army continues its policy of year-plus tours for its Reserve forces in Iraq and elsewhere, it will soon find those ranks empty.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that we need to be fair to reservists, their families and their employers. If reservists are forced to spend too much time on active duty, he said, "we're going to end up losing them, and we can't afford to lose them."
From my perspective, however, we're already losing them. The real impact of the Army's policy on Reserve deployments won't be felt until long after his watch. But because everything bad that happens is the commander's fault, Mr. Rumsfeld's tenure may be remembered less for its battlefield victories than for the damage it caused to the morale of the Army.
Given a choice between arrogance and incompetence or arrogance and an honorable peace, the self-assurance based on experience of a Wesley Clark should be encourgaged rather than despised. Col. Kimmey, with all his ability, loyalty, and patience, has been reduced to another date rape victim of Bush Inc. If you're old enough you remember the 4F's: "Find 'em, feel 'em, f*k 'em, forget 'em."
Karl Rove should go right after Rumsfeld if he thinks the volunteer army isn't a political minefield. And then there's New York City, my home town, characterized by the White House travel bureau as "a nice place to hold a convention, but I wouldn't want to live there."
Talking point: It's a volunteer army!
We've heard a lot about these silly resume comparison polls which favor Clark by a broad margin over the president. That's good. It speaks to electability, but not about leadership. We live in a political world and so leadership for better or worse is defined periodically by the commitment of constituencies to a candidate. Commitment is obviously a lightning-rod value in the American cultural dialogue, to the extent that the administration permits dialogue. And commitment is important to every constituency, depending on how it's framed. The evangelical unwed mother of a teenage daughter may be committing her faith, her powers of communication, and her lifestyle to ensuring her loved one never needs an abortion due to unwed pregnancy. OTOH, the latest hip-hop artist out on parole may be equally committed: to a curious re-distribution of wealth, that takes the rights of others into account no more than our single mom, whether it be by the occasional armed robbery or the illicit sample. Discouraging the daughter from seeking an abortion or preventing the parolee from carrying a weapon may require more than the passage of a law. It might require a re-definition of commitment across the society.
So commitment is a good thing, even if its definition is not necessarily universally agreed upon. In the popular culture, whether we are talking about Eminem or Britney, commitment equates with intensity. Popular entertainment values are intentionally relative, satirical, and situational. We may not hold it against the single mom if she feels that every street-wise pop star is a potential Saddam Hussein (gives me something to talk about at parties with Don Rumsfeld.) We'll leave which of our odd couple is least likely to vote aside for now. So commitment is a pretty twisted sister at this point, and we don't need a government to cynically exploit it.
Getting back to commitment and the volunteer army. The "See Spot run" version is this:
1) We're at war
2) There seems to be momentum for keeping us at war for some time
3) The army is comprised of volunteers, who are professionals in a truly 21st Century sense, in that most will by preference and circumstance career-change out of the army and need to be replaced. The fluid workplace is a fact of the coming economy, yes?
4) We need a lot of warriors now and we will need more in the future. A draft will be on no one's platform in our lifetime.
So: let's take care of the armed forces. America's grown up: you can't make the argument anymore that if you're against the war, you're against the boys and girls , and that's great. No more can anybody accuse a soldier of being a capitalist tool and not appear a fool. Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee. Thankfully, though nobody is all that all over commitment in their own lives (divorce rate? Beniffer?), now we can start to think more about the boys and girls than about "The War." That's revolutionary, but it's what the general is suggesting by basing his candidacy on his incredibly important analysis of the Iraq war as "elective." What Clark won't say but I will say for him is: it's one thing to deal with an imminent threat and lose thousands of citizens committed to the safety of their fellow man. Mistakes will be made. But how dare you commit the armed forces of this great country to an elective, yet open-ended confrontation, without taking the dignity of these human beings into account. The president's agenda ultimately degrades our dignity while increasing our vulnerability and discontent. It is antithetical to a broadly based commitment. Put another way, we all need insurance and we realize, whatever our level of education, that the price of insurance is determined to some extent by the odds of the pay out. But for the president of the United States to ask his armed forces to accept actuarial odds against their death that his administration has arbitrarily set could be criminal. Not to speak of taking our social security trust to Las Vegas for a bachelor party/prayer breakfast. (Hopefully my anger is evolving into commitment.)
There is so much greater in the general's favor than the uniform gap with the president. The initiative Clark must seize is support from the first responders, the reservists who must be mighty uncomfortable with current events, the troops in the field, the guys who are a lot like he was 20 years ago, who know they will stick with their commitment to service, but hate to think that when they get home, their brother-in-law is still going to be living in the guest room. (Give Kerry props for his recent endorsement from the national fireman's union. Too bad nobody gives a damn.)
But that gets us to a another, and very delicate point, about the similarity between various contemporary violent professions. Mercenaries, professional security, intelligence officers, criminals, conspirators, frauds, sociopaths, drug dealers, arms brokers, industrial spies, general officers, and big city detectives all have in common that they have committed to living with the threat of violence because they live with the enemy. We pay a lot of guys to shoot at each other rather than us, either with our taxes or our consumer purchases.
Wesley Clark views the phenomenon of the first-person shooter game and its impact on crime from the perspective of a space station. That's the irony of the nickname his less-than-enamored subordinates allegedly gave him: "The Supreme Being." Napoleon has a resonance here as well, which is why DeLay's olboquy, Clark's a "blow-dried Napoleon" rings ironically true. The base of Napoleon's early support was due to his brilliance as an artillery strategist, but the foundation of his mission was his troops' embodiment of his physical, moral, emotional, and intellectual commitment. All good soldiers must love the study of history and that study is broader and richer than the mere employment of best practices.
No matter how Wesley Clark runs, he is a campaigning civics lesson. He has run a gauntlet already and made some enemies. Yet once more, he has re-enlisted. Faced with a potential adversary who has Air Force One at his command, the general is traveling in borrowed planes. If Wesley Clark fully connects with his inner citizen, the man who knew he was only borrowing the chateau in Belgium, we cannot all help but benefit. One of his colleagues called him "a national treasure." It seems unlikely that encomium was prompted by Gen. Clark's tipping him to an inside stock trade.
If we need the Army more than ever, it follows that Wesley Clark's mission is to support it. Wouldn't it be ironic if fifty years out the General's reformation of what it means to serve our country under arms resulted in an overall decline in the misuse of firearms, without special legislation to dictate it.