20 October 2009
 
Pipe Down

(Bosun’s Pipe from the Age of Sail)
 
I am one of several admirers in town of the current Defense Secretary, Mr. Bob Gates.
 
I don’t think anyone really expected that a Air Force Reserve officer and career CIA analyst would turn out to be one of the most effective leaders in the history of DoD. Maybe it is his collective experience in government, and the fact that he knows that when it works, it works very slowly.
 
The fact that he was kept on by the Obama Administration was another surprise. There are a couple SECDEFs in waiting around town, Defense Democrats with excellent credentials from the Clinton era, and even they  must be holding off on pushing Mr. Gates out.
 
It wouldn’t take much. Mr. Gates is “taking one for the country,” and would rather be headed back down to Texas and his dream job at A&M.
 
Imagine. No politics, or rather the more focused ones that surround football programs.
 
I think he is committed to maintained an even hand on the two wars, the one winding down in Iraq and the one that is flaring in AFPAK.
 
The times being what they are, I am glad he is a man of principal, and he has stuck around. The military needs him, and that has become more apparent than ever over the last month as the Oval Office teeters on strategy and resources that should be allotted to the war that will have Mr. Obama’s name tattooed on it, one way or the other.
 
The relationship between the Pentagon and the White House is not something that goes back to the founding of the Republic. It dates to the dizzying new world of 1947, and the days of the demobilization from the great struggle against fascism.
 
During 1945, it became apparent that the requirement to conduct two entirely separate wars in the Pacific (one specially tailored for General MacAthur and the other to actually defeat the Japanese) was  probably inefficient. Specific plans for the unification of the Departments of War and the Navy into one were bandied about; nearly everyone agreed that something had to be done.
 
The Army, Navy, and the toothless Joint Chiefs of Staff were all sampled. The Army Air Corps was chomping at the bit to become independent. As Mr. Gates knows, though, things move slowly here when they move at all. A unification proposal went to Congress in April of 1946, but became hung up in the Naval Affairs Committee.
 
President Truman, an unpopular man in his day, sent new legislation back to the Hill in February 1947, where it was debated and amended for several months just as the health care reform is being created like Frankenstein’s Monster right now.
 
The Department of Defense was created in 1947 as a national military establishment with a single secretary as its head to preside over the former Department of War (founded in 1789) and Department of the Navy (founded in 1798; formerly the Board of Admiralty, founded in 1780). The Department of the Air Force was created as a new service at the same time. The Marine Corps and Coast Guard were left alone as independent components of the Navy Department and Treasury, respectively.
 
The National Security Act of 1947 set up the “National Military Establishment “ to commence operations on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense.
 
The Establishment had the unfortunate abbreviation "NME" (the obvious pronunciation being "enemy," with the alternate soft “e” being a treatment of the lower bowel), and was renamed the "Department of Defense" on August 10, 1949.
 
The Secretary also received additional authority at that time. He needed it. The Navy was in open revolt against him. Senior Navy officers, unhappy with new austerity measures imposed by SECDEF Louis Johnson, publicly attacked him for his reliance on the smug assurance of the new Air Force that air-atomic power was the country's only necessary line of defense.
 
When people bitch about the Department of Homeland Security, I like to recall that it took DoD nearly fifty years to get comfortable with its component parts, and still has some trouble.
 
Dwight Eisenhower did not have much trouble with his Pentagon. John Kennedy did, but did not last long enough to make an imprint. Lyndon Johnson cowed his generals with brute cruelty; Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford brought it home, unvanquished in the field and defeated in public opinion. Jimmy Carter first starved it then stoked it, and Ronald Reagan lavished it with resources.
 
I started out as an officer in Mr. Carter’s Dod, exulted  in better pay under Mr. Reagan, and watched first hand as the elder Bush met with Secretary Gorbachev at Malta and the calculus that had ruled the stars since 1947 abruptly changed.
 
With the arrival of the Clintons in Washington, the Pentagon was wary. The immediate debacle of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” convinced the young administration not to mess with things they did not understand. With the exception of directing us to periodically throw missiles around, Mr. Clinton pretty much left us alone.
 
That is all a gross oversimplification, but close enough for government work.
 
The arrival of the younger Bush, and his swaggering and serenely self-confident Secretary Rumsfeld, was awaited with much anticipation, though the results were quite the opposite of what you might think. Mr. Rumsfeld seemed to believe we were all Clintonistas, and surrounded himself with apparatchiks who were as arrogant as they were often wrong. The war in Iraq is the case in point.
 
Secretary Gates is a breath of fresh air. He has had his brush wars, often with the Air Force over the balance between the mind-numbingly expensive F-22 and lack of attention to intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance platforms that will help win the wars of today, not tomorrow.
 
Of late, however, the Secretary has had to deal with a growing tide of resentment from the forces in the field. Once he realized how badly he had managed the Iraq war, Mr. Bush generally deferred to the wishes of his commanders in the field.
 
Mr. Obama does not. A couple weeks ago, General Stanley McCrystal followed up his formerly secret recommendations to sharply ramp up troop strength in Afghanistan by nearly 40,000 troops. During a speech in London, the General rejected the notion of scaling back the war effort.
 
Mr. Gates had to tell the general, and the whole leadership at DoD to pipe down and keep quiet in public as the policy debate progresses.
 
It is an interesting nautical term, “piping down.” In the days of sail, the bo'sun's pipe was blown to signal 'piping down the hammocks,' or the command for the ship’s company to go below decks and retire for the night. When an officer wanted a sailor to be dismissed below, he would order him 'piped down.'
 
So far, the command has worked for Mr. Gates, though it is still not clear who leaked the original classified report from General McCrystal on the requirement for a steep ramp-up or face defeat.
 
The Administration is also reported to be weighing some additional social policy measures for the military. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is just one of them.
With the recession, and recruiting numbers up despite the wars, maybe they figure it is time.
 
Secretary Gates addressed the big Army convention I attended around the time General McCrystal talked to the reporters in London.
 
Mr. Gates told the Association of the US Army that: “It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilian and military alike, provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately.”
 
It will be interesting to see if his admonition to “pipe down” keeps everyone below decks, don’t you think?

It is no wonder that the Administration wants to keep Mr. Gates at the helm, particularly if they ever make up their minds on anything.
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com