A Candid General's Parting Shot
The Army boss on the rising cost of the war-and the necessity of not giving up
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are looking at options in case the surge does not turn the tide. "There are a bunch of them under consideration," Schoomaker says, "but I for one do not believe an option is giving up in Iraq." One option debated in the chiefs' policy review late last year was dubbed "go small, go long": reducing the U.S. role to an advisory effort that would last for years. That counterinsurgency approach worked in El Salvador in the 1980s, but it took 12 years. The general admits that patience is wearing thin. "I think it is right for us to be concerned about the staying power of the American people," he says. "As leaders, we have a responsibility to educate and share our views about what is at risk here."
Asked if he considered resigning when his advice on Iraq was not followed, Schoomaker said no. "We had lots of opportunity to be very candid. ... I don't think it's useful for people to always be holding out that 'I'm going to quit over something,' because then what? Somebody else is going to have to pick it up." The U.S. military does not have a tradition of officer resignations to protest policy decisions. Doing so would undermine civilian control of the military, says historian Richard Kohn, who argues that the role of officers is to offer advice and implement decisions. But what is a senior officer to do if, in his professional military judgment, he believes his civilian superior's decision is disastrously wrong? This weighty issued is pondered in the book Dereliction of Duty by Col. H. R. McMaster, which examines how the Joint Chiefs of Staff were sidelined during the Vietnam War by Robert McNamara and the Kennedy White House. Schoomaker put the book on his list of recommended reading for officers. Schoomaker believes he threaded the needle as best he could and offered his candid counsel to his superiors. But, he says, "I will not participate in criticism of Secretary Rumsfeld."
As Army chief, Schoomaker has been focused on transforming a division-based force that had been largely a deterrent army-a task started by his predecessor, Eric Shinseki. The Army's overhaul mirrors many of the changes that Schoomaker had lived through decades before in the fledgling special-operations community after its disastrous first mission, the abortive operation to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980. Schoomaker participated as a young Delta Force commando. By the end of the 1980s, the counterterrorism units had become far more proficient, adaptable, and agile. By then Schoomaker was a commander (his unit was then referred to as CAG, or Combat Applications Group) in a successful mission to rescue hostages in El Salvador during a guerrilla offensive. He also led the commandos in Just Cause, the 1989 operation to oust Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega; they carried out 14 missions in one night.
Covert expansion. Since the 9/11 attacks, however, the secret counterterrorism forces of the Joint Special Operations Command that Schoomaker once led have been deployed almost constantly in Afghanistan and Iraq, although their exploits are rarely publicized. They captured Saddam Hussein and called in the airstrike that killed Abu Musab Zarqawi last summer, and two task forces are still hunting Osama bin Laden and targets in Iraq.
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