by Tom Clancy
Today, of course, we are seeing a stream of apologetic books by the policymakers and military leaders of that era—as though saying mea culpa enough will absolve them of the terrible responsibility they still bear.
The third major test we went through was the challenge of the ’70s. It was the toughest time for me in my four decades of Marine Corps service—racial problems, drug problems, generational problems, authority problems . . . flower children, peace marches, demonstrations (some of them violent), the loss of trust in the military by a large portion of the American people. But in passing through that tumultuous cauldron, our military has, in my view, put together its greatest achievement during that forty-year period. To name just one example, it is the one segment of society where integration of the races has fully taken hold. Sure, we still run into problems, but nowhere else in American society can a person of color find the kind of opportunity he or she can find in our military. And we in the military are far better off for their presence. I am proud of them. We want the best and the brightest, and we get them.
The fourth challenge that affected my generation was the Cold War—which was actually a forty-year commitment to refight World War Two, if ever the need arose. Once again, we were energized to engage in global conflict, but this time against the evil “Red Menace.” Problem was, we could never figure just how this particular war would actually start. After playing a bazillion war games at the Naval War College and other places, I still could not come up with a logical or convincing way such a war would kick off. It was just too hard to show why the Soviets would want to conquer a burning, devastated Europe, or how that could possibly benefit the communists in any way. So we would just gloss over the way the miserable war got started, jump into the middle of things, and play on. The Cold War was ever-present, and it was great for justifying programs, systems, and force structure—but, deep down inside, no one seriously believed that it would actually happen.
Still, it necessarily drove things. It drove the way we thought; it drove the way we organized and equipped; and it drove the way we developed our concepts of fighting. It totally shaped us. It totally defined who we were. And when it was all over, we achieved our aim. The war didn’t happen. This was not a dog that didn’t bark. The readiness we worked so hard to achieve for so many years was apparent to the Soviets and their surrogates. They could see the level of our commitment. They didn’t want to take us on. Our readiness and commitment acted as a deterrent—exactly what we wanted them to do.
That taught us one other vital lesson: How to contain and how to deter—the use of the military to prevent wars. This was the first time in history, to my knowledge, that a great power has taken that course. It’s a course we will have to take again and again in the twenty-first century.
Then suddenly, at the end of the 1980s, the Berlin Wall came down, the Evil Empire collapsed, and we found ourselves in the New World Order. It would require a major adjustment. We didn’t do that right.
The next influential event was Desert Storm, which, as far as I am concerned, was an aberration. Though it seemed to work out okay for us—indeed proved beyond doubt how enormously powerful our Cold War military really was—it was the final salute of the Cold War military. It left the impression that the terrible mess that awaits us abroad can somehow be overcome by good, clean soldiering, just like in World War Two. In reality, the only reason Desert Storm worked was because we managed to go up against the only jerk on the planet who was stupid enough to challenge us to refight World War Two—with less of everything that counted, including the moral right to do what he did to Kuwait. In the top-level war colleges, we still fight this type of adversary, so we always can win. I rebelled at this notion, thinking there would be nobody out there so stupid to fight us that way. But then along came Saddam Hussein, and “good soldiering” was vindicated once again.
Worse yet, the end of any conflict often brings into professional circles the heartfelt belief that “Now that the war is over, we can get back to real soldiering.” So we merrily backtrack in that direction. Scary, isn’t it? Still trying to fight our kind of war—be it World War Two, Desert Storm, or Operation Iraqi Freedom—we ignore the real war-fighting requirements of today. We want to fight the services’ conventional doctrines. We want to find a real adversarial demon—a composite of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini—so we can drive on to his capital city and crush him there. Unconditional surrender. Then we’ll put in place a Marshall Plan, embrace the long-suffering vanquished, and help them regain entry into the community of nations. Everybody wants to do that. But it ain’t gonna happen.
Today, we are stuck with the likes of a wiser Kim Jong Il and a still-elusive Osama bin Laden—just a couple of those charmers out there who will no longer take us on in a symmetric force matchup. And we’re going to be doing things like humanitarian operations, consequence management, peacekeeping, and peace enforcement. Somewhere along the line, we’ll have to respond to some kind of environmental disaster. And somewhere else along the line we may get stuck with putting a U.S. battalion in place on some demarcation line between two adversaries, embedded in a weird, screwed-up chain of command. And do you know what? We’re going to bitch and moan about it. We’re going to dust off the Weinberger Doctrine and the Powell Doctrine and throw them in the face of our civilian leadership.
The truth is that military conflict has changed and we have been reluctant to recognize it. Defeating nation-state forces in conventional battle is not the task for the twenty-first century. Odd missions to defeat transnational threats or rebuild nations are the order of the day, but we haven’t as yet adapted. We all know it, but we won’t acknowledge it.
THE OBLIGATION TO SPEAK THE TRUTH
In April of 2003, I was invited by the U.S. Naval Academy to address the midshipmen in a lecture hosted by their Center for the Study of Military Ethics. I chose as my topic “The Obligation to Speak the Truth.” I told these future leaders that speaking the truth could be painful and costly, but it was a duty. Often those who need to hear it won’t like it and may even punish you for it; but you owed the truth to your country, your leaders, and your troops.
I have been amazed that men who bravely faced death on the battlefield are later, as senior officers, cowed and unwilling to stand up for what is right or to point out what is wrong. There are many reasons for this, from careerism and the hope of personal gain, to political expediency, to a false sense of obedience, to a kind of “Charge of the Light Brigade” mentality: As long as guys are dying out there, it is morally reprehensible to criticize the flawed policies and tactics that put them in that predicament. Bullshit.
I vowed long ago to a wounded young lance corporal in Vietnam that I would never shrink from speaking out. If it required an end to my career, so be it. Later, I was blessed to serve under great leaders who allowed me to speak and welcomed and encouraged my input, even when it was contrary to their views. These men taught me more about courage than I learned on any battlefield—people like Hugh Shelton, who, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, required all of us four-star commanders (CINCs and service chiefs) to read a book by H. R. McMaster, then a bright young Army major and a celebrated armor officer in Desert Storm (as a captain he commanded Eagle Troop of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment during the Battle of 73 Easting, the biggest tank clash since 1973 in the Sinai). The book, Dereliction of Duty, details the failures of the Joint Chiefs to speak out during the Vietnam War; they knew they were building a military campaign on lies, but they pressed forward anyway into the Valley of Death. At a breakfast meeting on January 29, 1998, which was led by Major McMaster, the chairman’s message was clear: He expected us to speak out. I experienced the same sort of encouragement under exceptional commanders like Generals Al Gray, Bob Barrow, Jack Galvin, Mick Trainor, Fred Haynes, Jim McCarthy, Joe Hoar, Binnie Peay, Bob Johnston, and Admiral Snuffy Smith. We need more leaders such as these.
Moral courage is often more difficult than physical courage. There are times when y
ou disagree and you have to suck it in and say, “Yes, sir,” and go do what you’re told. There are also times when you disagree and you have to speak out, even at the cost of your career. If you’re a general, you might have to throw your stars on the table, as they say, and resign for the sake of some principle or truth from which you can’t back away.
Careerism is corrosive to the principle of truth telling. So is political expediency. In both cases, the hope of personal gain outweighs personal integrity and honor. “Don’t rock the boat” leads to moral blindness about threats to the mission or the lives and welfare of the troops and of their families. The troops are interested in more from their leaders back home than statements such as, “We back them one hundred percent.” That’s the mentality of the château generals in World War One who sent hundreds of thousands of fine young men to useless deaths. If you make a political mistake, the troops have to pay for it with their blood. Our political and military leaders must be held accountable for their mistakes. Somebody has to tell them that the measures of success they’re selling are not what is really happening on the ground.
The troops want leaders who understand them, fight for them, and appreciate what they’re going through. Credibility is lost in their eyes if their leaders are silent when things are not right. To them that silence is either incompetence or careerism. It is not a demonstration of support.
I have often been called “outspoken.” I am. Too many of our senior commanders have been “Stepford Generals and Stepford Admirals.” They fail in their obligation to speak the truth. And when they do, they’re vilified. Recently, the Army chief of staff testified that we would need 300,000 troops to pacify Iraq. Everybody in the military knew he was right. But the party line down from the Pentagon decreed that the number was half that, and he was pilloried.
Incidents like that are not lost on our subordinates. Many are disgusted and disillusioned, and leave the service of their country. Others learn that following the party line is the course to high rank.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption. False rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military, all of these caused me to speak out. I did it before the war as a caution, and as an attempt to voice concern over situations I knew would be dangers, where the outcomes would likely mean real harm to our nation’s interests. I was called a traitor and a turncoat by Pentagon officials. The personal attacks are painful, as I told those young midshipmen, but the photos of the casualties I see every day in the papers and on TV convince me not to shrink from the obligation to speak the truth.
OUR OBLIGATION to tell the truth extends even to the media.
Over the past forty years, we have seen strange things happen with regard to the media. To be sure, there are few Ernie Pyles out there—great journalists who make combat come alive the way that the boots on the ground experience it—but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the media. It has the same percentages of good guys and bad guys as other fields.
Yet technology has changed things. The media are on the battlefield; the media are in your headquarters; the media are everywhere. And the media report everything—good and bad, warts and all. And everyone knows that the warts tend to make better stories. As a CINC, I was chewed out by seniors maybe five times; four of the five were about statements I’d made to the media. At that stage of my life, it didn’t really bother me—because where in hell did I go from there? But if you are a lieutenant or a captain and you see another officer get fried, you have a different reaction. The message is clear: “Avoid the media.” And the message hardens into a code: “They are the enemy. Don’t be straight with them.”
And that is bad. That is bad because we live in the Information Age. Battlefield reports are going to come back in real time, and they are going to be interpreted—with all sorts of subtle shadings and nuances—by the reporters and their news editors. But the relationship between the military and the media, which should be at its strongest right now, has bottomed out. It has begun to heal a little, but a lot more must be done. We need to rebuild a sense of mutual trust. My uncles in World War Two generally experienced a friendly press—with Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe cartoons and Ernie Pyle’s stories. The press then was part of the war effort. G.I. Joe was lionized and bad news was suppressed—if not by the military then by the media. The relationship generally remained positive through the Korean War, despite its ambiguities. But the relationship soured during and after Vietnam, for a number of reasons—not the least of which was mounting distrust of government by the media and the American people.
The military and the media need to regain the mutual trust that once existed. It will be hard, given the recent past and the speed and sophistication of today’s media technology, but it’s crucial to protecting one of our most cherished freedoms, while keeping vital operational information secure.
LEADERSHIP AND LIFE
You can’t lead unless you love those you lead. That’s principle number one. All other leadership principles flow out of it. Too much leadership training focuses on the leader and not enough on the led. Your charges are your family. In professions that are truly callings, you have to have that. In my profession, guys put everything on the line and can die for it. We have to care about these guys. They have to mean something to us. We must know what makes them tick; who they are; what they want and need; what motivates them.
I remember talking to Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia a few years ago. Before he became leader of his government, he was a fighting general in a twenty-year-long revolution. He knew his troops. They’d lived and fought together for two decades. One day during the fighting, his troops had to pass through a minefield, without any of the mechanical devices we use for our protection. He had no choice. He had to send troops ahead of everybody to find lanes. Many of them died, but his forces successfully made the passage.
When he told me the story, tears were in his eyes for the troops he’d lost. If you don’t or can’t feel that, then you shouldn’t lead.
The second principle is to know yourself. Few leaders are as good as they think they are. And commanders develop skills in finding measures of success that make them look good, such as body counts. What’s the real measure of success? You get it from truly understanding the conflict and by seeking feedback from the guys with boots on the ground. They’re there; they know. An ego can be bruised by feedback, but it’s critical truly to know how you stand as a leader. True leaders seek feedback regardless of the news. They learn from it.
All people come in three parts: body, mind, and spirit. No one is complete unless all three are developed and tended to. As a leader, you need to care for these in yourself and in those you lead.
Each leader needs a code to live by. That code can be formed by many factors. Our family, our schooling, our faith, our friends, and our calling in life can all be counted among those factors. My daughter once asked me what I would die for. I thought about that a lot before I answered her. I knew the answer would truly define me. I told her I would die for my faith, my family, my friends, my freedom, and my flag—the five “Fs,” a simplified expression of my code. But a code is worthless unless you live it. Words like integrity, ethics, honor, etc., need to be lived and not just uttered.
You never stop learning unless you decide to. I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It is an obsession for me. My sources for learning are all around me. When I make a mistake or fail, I have to know why. I need to know what makes things and people tick. I am amazed at how much people miss by not observing the world around them with an open curiosity.
I have learned more from sergeants than I have from generals. The troops relate to a leader by testing him or her to see i
f they relate to them, to see if they’re open to them and listen to them. They want to know if they’re fundamentally honest with them. This is not a “buddy” thing. Leaders can’t be buddies with the led. But the troops want to be able to say: “I can talk to this captain. He listens.” If you don’t listen, they will be polite, but you can forget about their respect . . . or about getting the truth where the rubber meets the road. You want them to tell you: “Sir, this is not working.” Or: “It is working.” Or: “Yeah, it’s working okay, but it could be better.” When you know such truths, and can do something about them, that’s when you have real success.
I love to teach. It is a principal function of leadership.
My teaching philosophy is based on two principles. The first has to do with the mission of the teacher. His role is to provide the students with the facts and with a clear articulation of the varying views, opinions, and options on a given subject. His purpose, after he has provided this framework, is to then teach the students how to think and not what to think about the subject. You want to teach the student how to ask the questions that really count and not how to give answers that satisfy conventional wisdom and long-fossilized received opinions. If you know how to ask the right questions, the best answers usually follow . . . though it may take time.
The second principle deals with the foundation of thinking. It must have a set of values at its base. This requires teachers to emphasize the importance of a values-based thinking process without imposing personal interpretations of those values. The values will be more powerful in a student’s life and in his way of thinking, his decision making, and in how he defines his ethical code if he has discovered and defined them on his own.