Highlighted Major Speeches
Military Competence
Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco
Hon. James H. Webb Jr.,
Asst. Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs
August 28, 1986
On March 21, the members of the Commonwealth Club received
a presentation by Dr. Richard Gabriel on the subject of "Military
Incompetence."
It is fair to say that I am speaking today as a result of Dr.
Gabriel's presentation, although I wish to make it clear from the
outset that I am not here for the purpose of directly responding to
it.
I wish also to say that although I presently serve as an
assistant secretary of defense, my involvement with the American
military has been continuous throughout my life, first as the son of
a career officer, then as a Naval Academy midshipman and a Marine
Corps infantry officer, and after that as a writer and journalist
who frequently covers the military. Consequently, much of what I am
going to say is based on personal observation.
I am conscious of the time limitations on my remarks, but I believe
it is necessary to correct a number of serious misstatements made by
Dr. Gabriel when he appeared before your club, since these remarks
may have led many of you to some erroneous conclusions about the
state of our military today. I will take them in the order outlined
in your bulletin.
That the United States Army can put only 13 divisions into the
field, and that it would take us 120 days to do so. The United
States Army has 28 divisions, 18 active and 10 in the National
Guard. The Marine Corps has an additional four, three active and one
Reserve. This gives us a total of 32 divisions, some already in the
field, some available immediately and some upon mobilization.
Mobilization schedules vary, but it obviously takes more time to
mobilize and deploy a division to Europe or Asia than it does to
place it 20 miles from its doorstep.
That "39 percent of the American Army is black, another 40 percent
is identifiable ethnic minorities." As of June 1 986, 26.9 percent
of our Army soldiers were black, and another 7.3 percent were almost
equally divided between Hispanics and "other" minorities. This
equals 34.2 percent, not 79 percent. The overall figure for all four
military services is 26.7 percent minority.
That "less than 2 percent of the U.S. Army has any college at all,
never mind a college degree." Ninety seven and seven-tenths percent
of the commissioned officers in the United States military have a
college degree. Ninety five and five-tenths percent of the enlisted
force has graduated from high school ' as compared to 74 percent of
their civilian peers. More than 24 percent of the enlisted force has
successfully attended some level of college, and 2.4 percent of our
enlisted force has graduated from college. These figures are better
than they have ever been in the history of the U.S. military.
That "most West Point graduates are the sons of sergeants, majors
and enlisted men. Their contact with civil society is minimal."
Officials at West Point indicate that from 8 to 12 percent of each
class is comprised of the sons and daughters of career military
personnel. Air Force Academy figures are somewhat higher, at about
20 percent. The Naval Academy has no such data. Two points come to
mind. First, Dr. Gabriel does not understand the service academy
selection process: Selection procedures for service academies are
national in scope, depending for the most part on the nominations
from members of Congress. And second, he wrongly degrades the
opportunities that military offspring have to interact with what he
terms "civil society." As the son of a career military man, by the
time I finished high school I had sat in the back of the bus with
blacks in Alabama, sold newspapers on street corners in California,
hitchhiked through Florida, packed groceries in a Nebraska farm
town, fought under the lights against blacks, Indians and Hispanics,
lived also in Missouri, Texas, Illinois, Arkansas and for two years
in England as an exchange family with the Royal Air Force. Quite
frankly, I had been exposed to more civil society than I could
digest, and the typical military son or daughter of today is no
different.
"Over a thousand officers in Vietnam were assassinated by their own
men." It appears that Dr. Gabriel's sense of hyperbole has grown
over the years, like a man telling a fond fish story. The allegation
in his presentation to your club is an expansion of the claim in his
book, "Military Incompetency," that "In the U.S. Army alone, over
one thousand officers and NCOs were killed or wounded by their own
men." The footnote for this unlikely statistic was a table in his
first book, "Crisis in Command."
This table shows 554 actual and 234 possible assaults with
the intent to kill, do bodily harm or to intimidate. These 788
incidents covered all services, not just the Army, and were
spread-among officers, NCOS, enlisted men and Vietnamese targets.
Four hundred and thirteen of them had as an intended victim an
officer or NCO. There were 86 deaths out of these 788 incidents. We
put 2.7 million young men through military training, gave each of
them a weapon, and put them into a war zone. That some small number
of them would commit crimes directed at authority is to be expected
and was not unique to the Vietnam war. I will address this matter
shortly. For now, suffice it to say that 86 deaths from a multitude
of categories does not add up to a thousand officers being
assassinated by their own men.
I took some time with those rather unbelievable misstatements
because, unfortunately, it is not unusual to see such remarks made
by people who claim to be experts in the area of military reform. in
fact, such distortions are central to the problem that military
professionals face when trying to articulate their competence on the
one hand and the need for improvement in the U.S. military on the
other. One of the most dismaying legacies of our failure to win the
Vietnam war has been the sprouting of a coterie of people without
combat experience or service in operating units, and in many cases
without military experience at all, who have been accepted as
experts on such issues as leadership, unit cohesion and ground
combat by an unwitting public.
The U.S. military consists of some 2.16 million, active duty men and
women and another 1.6 million ready reservists, operating
intricately complex equipment And weapon systems throughout the
world. Our political commitments and our strategic posture demand
readiness for almost any contingency, almost anywhere. Militarily,
we operate from what might be called a worldwide "mobile defense."
Our forces are consolidated in a few "interior positions," with the
requirement to be vastly maneuverable on short notice.
No other country faces such a difficult task. We must
develop costly, innovative strategic deterrents at the same time we
are prepared to fight in such short-notice contingencies as we faced
in Grenada. Certainly this causes us problems, and I have never
hesitated to write or speak about them. But I would suggest that
they are in the main not the problems that the large body of
so-called military reformists attribute to the military, and in fact
they are not solely military problems.
Two central themes seem to surface repeatedly in the analysis of our
military by the reformists. The first is that things worked well in
World War II, but that the system fell apart in Vietnam and has
never recovered. The second is a largely uninformed adoration of the
military of a few other countries.
Those who harken to World War II and lament our military
performance in Vietnam claim that we fought better in that war, that
in Vietnam the officer corps had become top-heavy and career
oriented, leaving the enlisted men to do the dying, that the
military was grossly over decorated, and that poor leadership
allowed discipline to break down, as evidenced by fraggings and drug
use among troops in Vietnam. The argument goes further to allege
that these deficiencies have not been corrected and that a reform of
the U.S. officer corps is needed.
I have a great appreciation for the service of those who fought in
World-War II, but I believe the men in Vietnam were at least as good
as those who fought in that war. Two-thirds of our World War II
veterans were draftees. Two-thirds of our Vietnam veterans were
volunteers, and three-quarters of those who died were volunteers.
Mistakes were made on the battlefields in both wars. Consider the
Navy gunners who shot down 23 of our own aircraft during the
invasion of Sicily, killing 410 of our own airmen, or the Marines
who were slaughtered on the invasion beach at Tarawa because
reconnaissance had been conducted on the wrong island. And those who
are not convinced that our soldiers did their job in Vietnam should
ask the North Vietnamese how they lost 900,000 soldiers dead. Better
yet, they might go to Hanoi and try to find someone my age.
It is alleged that Army efficiency decreased because the officer
percentage of the force increased as the war went on. This is
nonsense. The higher percentage of officers in the Army as the
Vietnam war expanded has a very simple answer: helicopter doctrine.
Helicopter pilots were, for the most part, warrant officers, and as
the war progressed, so did the expansion of the helicopter fleet.
Nor is it true that the officer corps held back and let the enlisted
men do the dying in Vietnam.
Warrant officers had a casualty rate 30 times higher in
Vietnam than - in World War II. West Point's Class of 1966 lost 34
men killed in action out of a I graduating class of 579. In fact,
with the exception of second lieutenants,Army officers-had a higher
casualty rate in Vietnam than in World War II in every rank up to
and including lieutenant colonel. For ranks above lieutenant
colonel, which was the rank of a battalion commander, it should be
noted that Vietnam was a war fought at the company and platoon
levels. The lower casualty rate among colonels and generals was a
function of the war, not of the courage and dedication of those at
that rank.
I have already mentioned assaults against authority, which have
occurred in virtually every combat environment' In fact, I was
raised on stories told by World War II veterans to the effect that a
bad lieutenant had a 10-second window once an assault began before
someone was going to remove him from action to save their own hide.
Arthur Hadley makes a similar point in his current book, "The Straw
Giant," where he describes lying in a hospital ward in France toward
the end of World War II and watching officers who had been assaulted
by enlisted men being admitted to the ward. One of them was a winner
of the Medal of Honor who had been jumped by rear-area troops who
simply did not like officers. Such incidents became a focal point of
attention in Vietnam for reasons more related to discrediting the
war than analyzing the performance of the military.
The same point holds for drug use. Drugs were used in varying
degrees by our soldiers in Vietnam, particularly toward the end of
the war. Drugs were used by those in the same age group at home,
also. My wife has some knowledge of this correlation, since she
spent part of her tour in Vietnam as a nurse on a drug ward.
Virtually every patient she treated had used drugs prior to joining
the Army. I saw far more extensive drug use as a student at the
Georgetown Law Center after I left the Marine Corps than I ever did
in the military. The question is the means available to the military
to control drug use, and again I will address that shortly.
Another allegation regarding the collapse of the military was that
our soldiers were over decorated during the Vietnam War. This
misstatement has been repeated so often, and in so many forums, as
to have taken on a life of its own. James Fallows mentioned in his
book, "National Defense," that by 1971, we had given out almost 1.3
million medals for bravery in Vietnam, as opposed to some 1.7
million for all of World War II. Others have repeated the figure,
including the British historian Richard Holmes in his recent book,
"Acts of War."
This comparison is incorrect for a number of important
reasons. The first is that these totals included air medals, which
were not medals for bravery. We awarded more than a million air
medals to Army soldiers during Vietnam. Air medals were given on a
points basis, for missions flown, and it was not unusual to see a
helicopter pilot with 40 air medals because of the nature of his
job. If we compare actual gallantry awards, the Army awarded 289
Medals of Honor in World War II and 155 in Vietnam, 4,434
Distinguished Service Crosses in World War II and 846 in Vietnam,
and 73,651 Silver Star Medals in World War II as against 21,630 in
Vietnam. The Marine Corps, which lost 102,000 killed or wounded out
of some 400,000 sent to Vietnam, awarded 47 Medals of Honor (34
posthumously), 362 Navy Crosses (I 39 posthumously) and 2,592 Silver
Star Medals.
Second, although the Army awarded another 1.3 million meritorious
Bronze Stars and Army Commendation Medals in Vietnam, upon
completion of World War II it authorized every single soldier who
had received either a Combat Infantryman's Badge or a Combat Medical
Badge to also be awarded a meritorious Bronze Star. I have a copy of
Army Regulation 600-45 to this effect. The Army has no data
whatsoever regarding how many million soldiers received Bronze Stars
through this blanket procedure.
The point, from all of the foregoing evidence, is that our
military services did not collapse on the battlefield in Vietnam,
either through performance or lack of adherence to traditional
standards. Something else happened in the conduct of that war, which
wounded the military and which, in the end, prevented it from doing
its job.
Another favorite pastime of the military reformists is the adoration
of other countries' military systems as superior to our own. The
British are continuously praised for their regimental system, their
many military victories and, most recently, their victory in the
Falklands. The Israelis are often mentioned as a near-perfect
military system. The German performance in World War II is recalled
as the best example of the leadership of the officer corps and a
tactical style known as maneuver warfare.
With all due respect to our allies, and I do respect them, one need
only put them under the same microscope the critics use for our own
military to understand the injustice done to the American military
performance of the past several decades.
The British have produced excellent soldiers for centuries,
but they often have proved to be less than able military planners.
In all due respect, the American military has never conceived any
attack so fruitless as the first day on the Somme, when 56,000
British soldiers were killed or wounded at almost no cost to the
Germans. Or an operation so boggled as Gallipoli, where as many
British soldiers fell in one year as we lost in the entire Vietnam
war. Or the senseless slaughter of the Passchendaele campaigns. Or
the debacle at Dunkirk, where only Hitler's personal intervention
prevented the destruction of the entire British Army. Or the quick
defeat at Hong Kong and the humiliation at Singapore, where the
British outnumbered their attackers three to one and yet
surrendered. Or the early North African Campaign, where they
outnumbered Rommel four to one in men and 10 to one tanks, and were
unable to defeat him.
And quite frankly, if the Americans had conducted the Falklands
campaign in the exact same manner as the British, our press would
still be criticizing us. British military planners had predicted
that any future naval engagement would be conducted in the North
Atlantic, and thus would be protected by land-based aircraft. The
land-based air was not available in the Falklands. The carrier
Invincible had been sold to the Australians and was only available
by a stroke of luck. Harrier aircraft were forced to conduct an air
defense of the naval task force, and their small flight radius cost
the British dearly. Six ships went to the bottom of the sea. Another
18 were damaged by air attacks. 37 aircraft were lost, 12 of them
due to non-combat operational mishaps. If one American carrier task
force had been operating with its sophisticated aircraft and
weaponry in this campaign, the Argentines would have been
hard-pressed even to come within range of the ships they sank and
damaged.
Most American commentators saw none of this. They wrote of the
glowing traditions of the various British units. The Harrier made
the cover of "Time" and "Newsweek."
Similar reticence accompanies analysis of the Israeli Defense Force.
They are good, and in fact their pilots are among the best in the
world. But no American ground unit has suffered the percentage of
friendly fire casualties that the Israelis did in the 1982 invasion
of Lebanon. And I can think of no American unit that has lost such a
large percentage of its tanks in one attack, either. Nor are Israeli
ground commanders trained in the use of close air support, or even
the use of artillery, to the same level as virtually every American
infantry lieutenant, Army and Marine. In fact, Marines are capable
of calling close air support and artillery, and even naval guns,
down to the level of squad leader.
The German officer corps during World War II, and to this day, has
been superb. But our military reform movement has elevated maneuver
warfare doctrine to the level of a cult. Mr. William Lind, a
military theorist who had the opportunity to serve during Vietnam
and declined, has written a "Maneuver Warfare Handbook," analyzing
different World War II battles. The matters, and through sheer
tenure can become a "military expert."
And so, even the best military unit, led by the best leaders, can
become paralyzed from above. Our experience in Beirut is a classic
example. The Marines on the ground were superb. I can personally
testify to that, and I have been around military units of all
services and numerous nations since the day I was born. The wisdom
of their presence was debated from the outset, as was their mission.
Because of the delicate, many-sided political environment, the
Marines were not even allowed to construct defenses until they began
to be attacked: our diplomats viewed foxholes and bunkers as
provocative. When they did come under attack, the rules of
engagement dictated by the political process were extraordinarily
narrow. Congressional delegations constantly appeared, some members
calling for more Marines and others calling for their withdrawal.
Hundreds of reporters inundated the Marine positions, questioning
every shot fired and whether the American role was going to
escalate. DaNang, 1965, was the popular analogy among the reporters.
The ground commander, who answered to a half-dozen different chains
of command, recommended that we not support the Lebanese army with
naval gunfire because his men were sitting ducks and would be the
target of retaliation.
We did, and they were, as were the French and as were the Israelis
two weeks later. So was it the military that caused all of those
casualties, or were some superb infantrymen inhibited in their
military functions because they were held hostage to an ongoing
debate among the Congress, the administration, and the media?
The Army's force structure problem in Europe is another example. in
the 1970s, a number of military commentators, joined by several key
senators and congressmen, claimed that the "tooth-to-tail" ratio of
troops in Europe was out of balance, with too much support structure
supporting too few combat troops. A common cry was that there were
more communicators than infantrymen in Europe, although few were
counting artillerymen and tankers as well. Under pressure, and
constrained by a congressional end-strength cap which precluded
additional soldiers being assigned to Europe, the Army adjusted its
balance by taking out combat support units and replacing them with
combat units.
This has resulted in a force structure dislocation where the combat
units now do not have sufficient combat service support
units-medical, maintenance and key logistics units-to sustain them
in a conventional encounter. in effect, we now have a
"tail-to-tooth" imbalance. This is operational paralysis, forced
down the throat of the commanding general who would be required to
fight a European war. But there should be no mistake about who will
be blamed if things go wrong.
And so it is with manpower policy. The power centers that fund,
shape and govern our military decided more than a decade ago to
abandon the draft. Although the quality of our personnel is now
quite good, our manpower is highly expensive and as a result, our
active forces have shrunk to a level lower than anyone dreamed when
the all-volunteer system was created.
We have serious manpower demands and problems with manpower flow if
we should be required to commit our forces in a conventional
encounter. The Soviet Union has an active force that is two and a
half times the size of our own, a Ready Reserve that is five times
the size of ours, and a Standby reserve that is 50 times the size of
ours.
The typical Soviet recruit is paid $5 a month. The average American
enlisted man makes more than $24,000 a year, and that does not
include the value of his retirement. Half of our enlisted soldiers
are married, as opposed to 19 percent when the draft was in place.
Costs for infrastructure, housing and "quality of life" programs are
increasing, as are costs of recruitment in a dwindling manpower
pool. The same political forces that supported the volunteer concept
are now attempting to reduce further the size of the active force
and to alter the retirement system, because it costs too much for
manpower. But who will receive the blame if manpower quality
declines and recruiting quotas are not met?
These are the sorts of issues that the military reform movement
should be addressing, and they should be addressed from the umbrella
of national policy, not solely from the narrow perspective of the
implementers of that policy.
None of this implies for a moment that we should cease our focus on
those intangibles that are so unique to the military environment:
such things as duty, discipline, leadership and tactics. But I have
just mentioned the interplay of political forces that can affect an
officer's ability to act in these matters, and I believe that those
who have criticized the military for its failures in these areas
should focus on the inhibitors of excellence that a military leader
cannot control. It is patronizing,-and indeed foolish, to suggest
that people who have never served in an operating unit should be the
arbiters of excellence regarding these key points, and yet that is
what has too frequently occurred in the aftermath of the Vietnam
war.
Our political system should encourage the military to pick its
leaders according to their dedication to such military intangibles
as duty, discipline and leadership, rather than their ability to
deal with the political system itself, and then trust their
recommendations and actions. It should also make them ultimately
responsible for their programs, allowing them to succeed or be
replaced.
Today's leaders, the ones now coming to the rank of general, are
unusually well qualified. Many have spent two and three tours in
combat and then years after that in introspection, examining the
very issues the military reform movement has been raising. They
performed in Vietnam. They have performed far better than most
Americans comprehend since Vietnam. They can do the job, and they
should be given the opportunity to succeed without the
micromanagement of individuals who do not fully understand the
military environment.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS