To go or not to go?

The last few days have seen growing calls for Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to resign, especially after 6 retired Generals came out talking about missed opportunities and failures in leadership.

Rumsfeld was put into the Defense position with a mandate to clean out the Pentagon, to fix the bureaucracy. He has worked diligently at that for the past 6 years. The fruits of that effort can be seen in the manner in which the Pentagon is trying to reform, and getting the services to handle the issues of introducing new defensive and offensive strategies; fighting asymmetric warfare, unmanned aerial vehicle use, network centric war fighting, etc.

The Iraq war also has been under his oversight. Militarily the war has been fought well, but the policing of Iraq has lead to the current schnozzle.

It is the policing issue that is setting off the retired Generals. They don't think there are enough troops on the ground. They say that estimates of 300,000 to 400,000 troops were more like the numbers required to win the peace in Iraq, not the current 130,000.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. It ain't happening.

Generals lead sheltered lives. They have to react to requirements and follow orders, occasionally they have to be inventive. They don't, as a rule, have to set social policy. And that is a good thing.

To mount an army of 300,000 troops would require either the most amazing recruiting drive the military has ever entered into, or conscription. And that is where Rumsfeld and Bush are really on the same page - they don't want conscription, it's a political dead horse, or more likely political suicide. No General since McArthur has openly engaged a politician in a move to commit political suicide.

Rumsfeld will not go yet, because Bush doesn't want conscription, and doesn't want to be forced into making a decision in any direction on that subject. Rumsfeld won't instigate a conscription movement as he has been against conscription for years. Conscription would destroy the current military, it would make it a large unwieldy force, poorly equipped and ill trained for the campaigns that will follow Iraq. An Army of the 1970's. All the things Rumsfeld has fought so hard to fix.