OK, continuing my current trend of supporting our troops and pointing out how shoddily they have been treated by president "Bring them on." I showcase this latest editorial and please pay close attention to the section on the corporate "partners" that are helping rebuild Iraq. See them bitch and moan about sleeping on the floor and *GASP* eating field rations.July 18, 2003 -- SOLDIERS complain. God knows, I did when I was a private. Fighting men have been bitching since the first semi-organized bands of cave-dwelling warriors went at each other with sticks, rocks and beer bottles.
You have to take what you hear with a grain of salt.
Sometimes, though, a soldier's complaints are justified. When the men and women of our Army's 3rd Infantry Division — who did the heaviest lifting during the war — were told first that they were coming home, then, hardly a week later, that they would have to stay on indefinitely, and then that some of them might start coming home at the summer's end, after all, it was a classic example of how to mismanage personnel, hurt morale and break the hearts of thousands of military families.
Make no mistake: Our soldiers will continue to do what must be done, and they'll do it better than any other troops on earth could do it. Media reports about the "demoralization" of our service members in Iraq are nonsense. They're disappointed, and angry, and resentful at being treated like nothing more than numbers and statistics. But they're still out kicking the butts that need to be kicked.
Our troops are doing a magnificent job in a miserable environment — despite the lack of support from Pentagon civilians who never paid any dues except to their country clubs. The Rummycrats who insisted we could occupy Iraq with two Boy Scout troops and a repainted pickup truck would not listen to any common-sense warnings from those in uniform, or in the intelligence agencies, or in the State Department, or anywhere else.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's button-down hit men, each a champion of arrogance, saw what they wanted to see. And they paid far more attention to working political spin and handing out reconstruction contracts to favored corporations than they did to assessing what our soldiers might really need in the aftermath of war — or how many soldiers might be needed.
Now, their cherished contractors are lagging badly — to the outrage of our military in Baghdad. Underpaid, overworked soldiers are picking up the slack for Bechtel, Halliburton and the rest of the corporate vultures.
Yesterday, a friend quietly forwarded a letter written by a senior contractor in Iraq. Alternating between self-praise and self-pity, this big-bucks huckster whined that he and his employees sometimes had to eat military rations and even had to sleep on the floor a couple of times.
Hell, I did that for much of my adult life. Welcome to the Outward Bound vacation that never ends, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Of course, I was paid a lot less while in uniform than a top manager for Bechtel or Halliburton takes home.
Want to know how far off the rails things have slid at the Pentagon? Recently, the Army wanted to tally up how much money it had been forced to divert to private contractors as part of Rumsfeld's rush to privatize military tasks. The Rummycrats forbid it. They refused to let the Army balance its own books — because the privatization mafia knew what they would find: Contractors cost more, not less, than soldiers.
When honest budget managers in the services calculate the transition of any uniformed job to a private contractor, their working assumption is that the contract employee will cost the Pentagon $100,000 a year. A sergeant barely makes a quarter of that, and a private hardly a fifth — including benefits.
You, the taxpayer, are being cheated outrageously in the name of an ideologically driven crusade to reduce the size of government. This is corporate welfare that has nothing to do with the welfare of our troops. And guess what? Most of those contractors disappear when the bullets start flying.
The occupation and the reconstruction efforts are going well in Iraq — much better than the media reports imply — but our soldiers are making progress despite the lies, incompetence, greed, favoritism and wishful thinking on the part of the Rummycrats.
When Gen. John P. Abizaid, the recently appointed commander of American forces in the Middle East, remarked on Wednesday that some of our troops in Iraq do, indeed, face guerrilla warfare, his remarks were aimed squarely at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which has tried to cover up or simply deny any mistakes. Abizaid, a soldier's soldier trusted by the troops, was making the point that realism, not political hackwork, are in order. Real threats require real solutions, not denials and evasions.
Our troops will do as well in the occupation as they did in the war. But they need — and deserve — selfless support and integrity from the civilian leadership appointed above them.
Over the past few weeks, we heard Secretary Rumsfeld insist that troop levels in Iraq could be reduced, only to listen to one general after another contradict him. Then we heard Lord Donald declare that there was no organized resistance, only to hear Gen. Abizaid insist that we must face up to reality.
Soldiers value straight talk. If the troops of the 3ID had been told from the outset that they would be in-theater for a year — or even longer — morale would not have suffered. Families could have prepared themselves psychologically. Instead, they were treated like trash by bureaucrats who, at the end of each working day, return safely to their families and homes in Northwest Washington, D.C., or Bethesda, Md., or Great Falls, Va. — homes not a single soldier could afford.
Unlike some of the men he mistakenly appointed, President Bush supports and values our troops. Now he needs to demonstrate that support by cleaning house at OSD. Rumsfeld needs to go, and all his key subordinates need to go with him — with the single exception of Paul Wolfowitz, who may be the only strategic visionary in Washington.
Then the president needs to appoint a retired general or admiral known for his integrity to be our new secretary of defense. The president needs to work with Congress to give our over-stretched Army at least two more divisions, even if it means canceling lobbyists' dream systems, such as the useless F-22 fighter. The Marine Corps has to bulk up, too. And the president needs to admit that downsizing our military, in any manner, during our global War Against Terror endangers our security — no matter how many contractors may benefit.
Soldiers will always complain. But honest leadership at the Pentagon would give them far less to complain about.
Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
