A Candid General's Parting Shot
The Army boss on the rising cost of the war-and the necessity of not giving up
As head of the U.S. Army, Gen. Peter Schoomaker has voiced increasingly blunt warnings over the past year as the strain of ongoing deployments to Iraq has mounted. "I'm very concerned about the stress on the force," he told U.S. Newsduring a wide-ranging farewell interview before he returns to civilian life on April 10. To those who wish he had been even more outspoken earlier, he says: "I am very confident that my conduct, my performance, my advice, my candor throughout this entire process will stand the test of history. ... I am not saying I'm perfect," he adds, "but I have done the best that I can do-and everybody knows the candid nature of my personality."
In an unusual move, General Schoomaker came out of retirement in August 2003 to lead the Army at the request of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Schoomaker had retired in 2000 as the head of the Special Operations Command after a career spent largely in the counterterrorism unit commonly known as Delta Force. He was reluctant to accept the offer, but coming from an Army family with a father who served in three wars, he felt duty bound to put his Army greens back on. So he abandoned an incipient ranching venture and turned his pickup truck toward Washington.
The plain-spoken, powerfully built, 61-year-old general has broken a lot of crockery over the past year. In June, he decided to fight his civilian superiors over the guidelines he'd been given for preparing the next Army budget. "In good conscience I could not go forth and continue to do this," he says. Arguing his case before Rumsfeld and White House Budget Director Rob Portman, he came away with a $130 billion budget request that is now before Congress. After Rumsfeld resigned in November, Schoomaker also won a permanent increase in the Army's manpower of 65,000 additional troops. And early this year he won a controversial policy change to mobilize the Reserves more frequently to ease the pressure on active-duty troops, who are getting only a year off between deployments to Iraq and elsewhere.
Army's price. "We have increased the capacity of the Army," Schoomaker says, "but it is being consumed as we build it." He likens what is happening to "dropping coins in the top of the piggy bank and at the same time taking them out of the bottom and using them." The end result is more wear and tear on the Army. "Who pays the price? The price is paid in personal recuperation and time with families," he says. There are also shortages of equipment, which is shipped to Iraq and not available for troops to train on at home, and the ever present danger that recruitment and retention rates could seriously erode. Schoomaker also worries about what he calls the lack of "strategic depth"-the risk that another major crisis could find the United States without sufficient troops ready, rested, and fully equipped.
The one battle that Schoomaker lost was over the decision to "surge" 21,500 more troops into Iraq this year. He expressed concerns over the proposal, but once the decision was made, he saluted and went forward. Schoomaker says the surge can be sustained, "but there's a price." If it is continued next year, the next rotation will have to be drawn largely from Reserve and National Guard units, which make up 55 percent of the Army's total manpower. Of the debate over Iraq, Schoomaker says: "This is not academic for us. This is personal." The children of 140 Army generals are currently serving in uniform. His own daughter, a former all-state volleyball player, is en route to one of the combat zones this year. His son-in-law, nephew, and brother are also in the Army.
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.
The Army's predicament predates Iraq. After the Cold War, it shrank by 40 percent and was underfunded by some $100 billion, Schoomaker calculates. By the time the Iraq war started, that deficit had narrowed to $56 billion. Now, with the Army's slated increase, the cost of recruiting, training, equipping, and housing will also grow. And replacing war-damaged equipment will cost an additional $13 billion to $18 billion per year for several years after U.S. combat troops leave Iraq.
As Congress begins debating a $100 billion supplemental bill for Iraq, Schoomaker notes that it is a coequal branch of government with the power of the purse. But he is also using his last weeks as Army chief to argue that the country's $13 trillion economy can afford to spend 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense [chart above]. A man of decidedly Spartan outlook, he decries Americans' love affair with consumer spending and lack of attention to the new and diverse dangers of this era. As he recently told the Dallas World Affairs Council: "It is not a question of affordability; it is a question of priorities."
This story appears in the March 26, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.