“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.”
That infamous quote by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, absent of the context in which it was spoken, is actually brilliant in its simplicity and reflects the reality of modern combat, or really, modern combat logistics.
Secretary Rumsfeld, of course, was chided for making the comment, which was in response to a Specialist who asked why his unit has to rummage through trash heaps to find scrap metal to weld onto old humvees. The more palatable answer would have been to mumble something about resourcing the Greatest Army in the World and that the process takes time. Instead, Secretary Rumsfeld spoke the truth, which came out as insensitive. Context matters, and in this case, the Iraq War was wildly unpopular at the time, and Secretary Rumsfeld was under fire for (mis)managing the war. The quip came off as another one of his dodges in the same vein of his famously fiery press conferences.
It’s unfortunate, because the statement is both true and can be used on an almost daily basis in military life. It can hardly be said today, though, without a chuckle or raised eyebrow.
The truth is, as former Secretary Gates would say, the American public, and by extension, the American military, often has a “cartoonish” view of what our own military capabilities are. We can land a man on the moon, so of course, ipso facto, we can outfit an entire expeditionary Army with the correct armor to defeat a growing and adapting threat, right?
An interesting challenge for modern military leaders is the fact that we know that there are capabilities and resources out there that we would absolutley love to have on every mission. Someone can send me a picture with their iPhone of the exact part I need for one of my Strykers that’s sitting in a shed somewhere on the otherside of the world. It’s exactly what I need, but it’s still on the other side of the world. If the mission calls for me to roll out now, then I have to roll out right now.
Assets that may have been available for one mission or one conflict or one deployment might not be available for another, even though they are indeed “available” in the grand context of that meaning – they exist. If they exist, then to the modern military leader who is accustomed to being in the Greatest Army in the World, they should be available for use, at all times.
When I originally joined the Army, that myth existed pretty strongly in my imagination. I remember rolling my eyes (figuratively, not literally) at my Sergeants who were telling me that we would have to make sure we stow away our magazines when we change them under fire; we would not have the luxury of resupply. My thinking was, if I was in a firefight, screw trying to fiddle with stuffing a magainze in my cargo pocket, I’m concentrating on shooting, there would be more magazines in the supply office after the mission. That imagination was smashed by the reality of actual combat service, to include running out of food for a couple of days during the initial invasion of Iraq. I remember actually saying to my Squad Leader in the middle of the desert: “Out of food? This is America! This is 2003! How the hell do we run out of food?” Yet, we did.
We went to war with the Army we had.
All the gizmos and gadgets and assets that flood the modern battlefield are great. But if they’re not there (for whatever reason), then the assumption should not be that the mission should be scratched. Same for training.
Transportation got nixed? Walking is an option, you know.
Anyway, the point of all this is that it is actually hard to stand up in front of soldiers and say to them “you go to war with the Army you have,” probably because of Secretary Rumsfeld’s gaffe.
With that said, the Army I need includes a 900’ REAPER.
Maybe he should have said, “You go to war with the war you have.” If the Bush Administration had followed that advice, we would have stayed out of Iraq, at least then, and focused on Afghanistan. Not sure we would have been much better off in Afghanistan or Iraq than we are. But I think maybe we would be. Often you only get one opportunity.
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I think that you bring up some great points. Improvisation is an important survival skill, and the Army definitely makes you use that skill from time to time! I really enjoyed your post and am going to enjoy perusing some of your other blogs.
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Thanks!
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Great post here Don, really enjoyed this.
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Although it’s true in general (and the clamoring for bullet-proof body armor was really disproportionate to the types of wounds soldiers were actually receiving – far more were wounded by blasts and shrapnel than by bullets), in this case, this is still one of the things that boils my blood to this day.
And it’s not that I even agree with the soldier complaining to him. I rolled up from Kuwait in 03 with a flak vest and soft-skin Humvee. I got shot at, I realized that -Hey, it’s a war, you’re going to get shot at- and didn’t shit my pants about it or cry that I didn’t have enough armor. None of the war vets in my family had any in Vietnam, Korea or WW2. (Not to mention, in WW2 if you were shot with any round up to and including 25mm, you had a better than 75% survival rate. These days that’s in the high 90s.)
But it’s the political side of it that really upsets me. The same lack of planning that led to our not having facilities or TTPs for POWs/Detainees, or actual Arab speakers at the brigade level, resulting in every single capture or detainment being shuttled off to Abu Ghraib for interrogation, and subsequently forgotten until certain pictures came out.
See, in general, War is a last resort and you make do with what you have. But the Iraq war was special. For the first time in our history, we fought a Pre-emptive war. You go to war with the Army you have when you don’t pick the time and place. If you’re starting a war, one in which you get to pick all of the conditions up to and including the time and place it starts, you’d damn well better take the Army you want and not the “Army you have”.
Of course, if Rumsfeld had listened to every military member over the rank of Full Colonel in the Pentagon, he might have done that. Instead he found some Lt. Col. who won a few fights at NTC and had a plan to do Iraq with only 50K soldiers. So the reality is that we did take the Army he wanted, because we all thought we’d be home by June.
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I am a historian of the Vietnam War, and I am often startled at the contrast, from a logistical support standpoint, between the 1960s US Army and the US Army of the 2010s.
In South Vietnam in the 1960s, Army logisticians performed miracles. From June to December 1965, they moved 200,000 troops from the States to Vietnam. In a theater with no land lines of communication, very few jet-capable airfields, and only one deep-water port, the Army never failed to support combat troops with beans and bullets. An Army Transportation Corps general once dryly remarked, “It was the first war I’ve ever seen in which the troops got tired of being served roast beef.”
In the 2000s, with a force FAR FAR smaller in an area of operations FAR FAR closer to the US, the Army struggled to provide even the most basic support to its troops, like adequate body armor.
I would suggest that Rumsfeld would have been more correct had he said, “You go to war with the Army you’re willing to pay for….”
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Great post and great comments!
I’m reminded of a story of my brother’s from Vietnam… they’d been out in the “boonies” for several days (maybe it was weeks) and received some morale-building in the form of a barbecue, with t-bone steaks to grill and beer on ICE, flown in via helicopter. Think of that…
He was with the 11th Armored Cav-
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Rummy was villified and criticized, but he was right. He streamlined the military, which was needed, and may still be needed, but not under the sensibilities of the current administration. You go to war with what you have because your enemy won’t give you notice of the date of the engagement. Likewise, you don’t tell your enemies when you intend to withdraw (hello). Rummy got us out of the main battle plan of massive armor engagement with land based armored forces, which is passe. He moved us to mobility and small strike force. It is obviously what is de jour. Besides making our forces more mobile and modern, he took a stand against critics on the war with what you have vs what you want. I would take the same stand, and so would our best generals. Rummy was wrongly criticized. I have no stake in this discussion. But any one of you was wrong to fault Rumsfield in this issue.
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I think most people didn’t really treat his statement at face value and instead saw it as callous.
But your point is spot on. The way you see our forces operating in many parts of the world today is similar to what Sec. Rumsfeld wanted – small American footprint aided by technology and air power.
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