Armed With History
It was on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, that Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton sent a letter to President Bush. "There is no doubt that our forces will be victorious in any conflict," he wrote. "But there is great potential," he warned, "for a ragged ending to a war as we deal with the aftermath." He noted that then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "frequently talks about the list he keeps of things that could go wrong in an Iraq war." Added Skelton: "I have kept my own list."
He went on to outline some possibilities that would prove eerily prescient: Shiites attacking Sunnis, forcing U.S. troops to protect them. "Stabilization and reconstruction prove more difficult than expected," Skelton wrote. "This puts pressure on troop rotations, reservists, their families ... and requires a dramatic increase in end-strength."
Nearly four years later, it is just such an increase in end-strength, meaning the overall size of the military, as well as the strain of repeated rotations on the Army and Marine Corps, that Skelton will confront as the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. In that role, this Democratic moderate figures to be a major player in examining America's wars on two fronts. As President Bush presses his case for sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq and details surface about wasted reconstruction aid (including Olympic-size swimming pools ordered up by Iraqi officials), Skelton summarizes the goals for his tenure with a word that has become his mantra: "Oversight. Oversight. Oversight."
No nonsense. That mantra is both a top item on his to-do list and a reminder of a lack of congressional supervision during critical phases of the Iraq war-and of the responsibility that Americans feel Capitol Hill should take up now. In a recent survey, nearly two thirds of Americans said that Congress has not been assertive enough in challenging the Bush administration's conduct of the war. "Oversight was nil," says Skelton. To that end, he has announced plans to revive the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, disbanded when Republicans gained House control in 1994. Skelton's committee will take up topics including military readiness. "This causes me great heartburn, this chewing away at our armed forces," Skelton tells U.S. News. "Equipment is worn to a nubbin," he adds, noting that while Congress provided the military with $17 billion last year to make up for equipment wear and tear, units in America "still don't have a lot to train on-it's left over there for succeeding brigades. And what's left over there is often worn out."
A member of the committee since 1981-and its ranking Democrat since 1998-Skelton, 75, still describes himself as a simple country lawyer. Colleagues caution, however, that the moniker belies a gentle but no-nonsense questioning style that will set the committee's tone in the months to come.
Stricken with polio as a child, Skelton was unable to serve in combat but developed a voracious appetite for history books that he shares, he says, with military leaders. "That's my hobby. Some people bowl, some ski-I read history books." For that reason, says Robert Scales, the former president of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., "the strongest thing you can do when you talk with Ike is to come armed with those historical connections. He understands that for the military, the battlefield is our lab, our law library, our courtroom, our stock exchange. Soldiers do war so infrequently that if you're going to gain knowledge, you've got to go to the historical lab."
And Skelton has little patience for those who delve into military matters without that historical perspective, adds Richard Kohn, former chief of history for the Air Force, who has testified before the committee. Now a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he recalls Rumsfeld's comments last year that the rise of Nazism resulted from "cynicism and moral confusion" in the West. When Rumsfeld then added a salvo aimed at critics of the Iraq war-that "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lesson"-Skelton phoned Kohn: "He asked me for details about the general that George Marshall charged with crafting the occupation policies for American forces." He then took Rumsfeld to task for missing what he considered to be among World War II's most vital lessons. "The lesson he should have chosen to draw," he said, "is the lesson of the successful Allied occupation of Germany."
History buff. Skelton calls the choice of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus to lead U.S. troops in Iraq "excellent-just excellent." During the dedication of the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Mo., the two spent a good part of the morning touring the museum and discussing battles. Last year, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., named a chair for counterinsurgency after Skelton, an effort spearheaded by Petraeus, an expert in counterinsurgency himself. Skelton is "a true student and lover of history," Petraeus tells U.S. News. "He has had far and away the most significant impact on our professional military education institutions and programs."
Skelton's Capitol Hill office, too, is a small museum. Among the more prominent mementos on display is a telegram his father sent to Harry Truman, a note of support just after the president made the difficult decision to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur. "Those making political capital out of this incident will get nowhere," wrote the elder Skelton, who was a Missouri prosecutor at a time when Truman was a local judge in a neighboring county. Today, Skelton says military leadership does not bear chief responsibility for a botched war. The troops, he says, "are better than their mission."
Skelton has made five trips to Iraq. In 2005, he spent several days in a military hospital after his armored bus was sideswiped and flipped over. Just back from a visit to Baghdad led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Skelton returned discouraged: "The question is, have we run out of time?" Skelton notes that Congress has the power of the purse strings, but he will not support withholding funds for the war. "You can always limit funds, but at the end of the day it would harm the troops." Though in six months, he warns, circumstances could change.
Skelton adds that he remains concerned about the ratcheting up of tensions in the Middle East. He draws on another historical analogy, noting how the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand led to World War I and trench warfare in Europe. In the wake of saber rattling with Iran, he says, "you don't know what events will cause other events to happen." But you can glean clues, he adds.
"You get instincts that come with reading so much history," says Skelton, who returns to the example of his home state hero, whose wife, Bess, endorsed him in appreciation of the support Skelton's father had provided her husband in a tough race. "Harry Truman seemed to see around corners, but that's because he read history," says Skelton. "We just think he made the right decisions. At the time, they were horrendously difficult."
And so Skelton keeps reading-and hopes others will do the same. The book he most often returns to these days is Perils of Amateur Strategy, a 1926 account of the disastrous Allied campaign on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli during World War I. "I sometimes wonder," the soft-spoken country lawyer and seasoned political veteran says, "whether the administration isn't laying the groundwork for the sequel. It's that old saying: History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes a lot."
Born: Dec. 20, 1931. Family: Wife Susan (Susie) died in 2005, after 44 years of marriage. Three sons-two currently serving in the military. Education: Bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Public service: Eagle Scout, elder of the First Christian Church, Missouri state attorney general 1961-1963.
This story appears in the February 12, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.