Gen. Tommy R. Franks suddenly
has a lot to say. In his new 590-page memoir, American
Soldier, the usually tight-lipped Texan unburdens himself
about war in Southwest Asia. Along the way, he throws
some sharp elbows, some of which are aimed at former senior uniformed colleagues.
Franks, now retired, was commander of US Central Command
from mid-2000 to mid-2003, where he orchestrated US operations
in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was a fierce
advocate of high-intensity warfare. His words carry considerable weight.
In one respect, that is unfortunate, because those words
paint a most unflattering portrait of the services and
the Chiefs of Staff. They come off as nitpicking
meddlers, scrambling for advantage. Anyone reading his book would think General
Franks was up against a pretty “un-Joint” bunch.
Page 207: “Regional combatant commands depended on
the ‘Title
10 Community’—the
separate armed service branches. ... The Title 10 Service Chiefs could be
inflexible bean counters.”
Page 207: “Each of the services was focused on winning wars—alone.
They ... had no real inclination to fight together as part of a joint team.”
Page 274: When the Chiefs critiqued his Afghan War plan
at a Sept. 20, 2001,
Pentagon meeting, all General Franks heard was “parochial bull****.”
Page 440: General Franks says his Afghan War plan “had been
nitpicked by
the Service Chiefs and the Joint Staff,” but, in Iraq, “Tommy Franks
wasn’t about to be treed by Chihuahuas.”
Page 441: General Franks says he asked that the Chiefs
be excluded from daily
Iraq War conferences because “they do not have sufficient Joint background
or understanding to be operationally useful.”
Coming from a warrior of General Franks’ stature, such commentary
is strange. Bean counters? Chihuahuas? Please. Some of the senior officers
to which he refers—sometimes
by name, but frequently not—have been among the most distinguished and innovative
military men of recent decades.
Moreover, these uniformed leaders all have been active
public proponents of joint warfare, even as they have
worked to strengthen their own branches. They have
served at one time or another in key joint assignments. Some of them also directed
joint combat operations.
General Franks himself, in other venues, seems to concede
that things weren’t
quite as out of joint as he made them out to be in his book. On Aug. 4, he told
an interviewer: “The evolution of technological capability and state of
training in armed forces for multiservice warfare ... advanced a lot over the
previous 10 years.” He is right about that.
General Franks appreciates the power contributed by the
services. He is a huge fan of airpower. American Soldier
justifiably heaps praise on two USAF officers
who served as his air bosses—Gen. Charles F. Wald, now deputy commander
of US European Command, and Gen. T. Michael Moseley, now vice chief of staff
of the Air Force.
General Franks’ remarks do, however, underscore a broader problem:
It has become fashionable and acceptable to discount the contributions
of the individual
services—as institutions—to the nation’s defense.
Frequently, the services are perceived as impediments to
some idealized state of Joint Force harmony. The basic
idea is that there are good Joint “warfighters” and
narrow-minded Title 10 “services,” as if the two can be separated.
In his book (page 531), General Franks himself, perhaps
inadvertently, promotes
that view: “I’m a warfighter,” he quotes himself as telling Secretary
of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, “not a manager. I wouldn’t do well in
the Title 10 community.”
Jointness has been growing steadily stronger since the
Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, by which each of
the services ceded operational control of forces
to commands organized on geographic and functional lines.
Each service now organizes, trains, and equips forces for
basic “core competencies” related
to air, space, land, sea, or amphibious power. When Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols
Act of 1986, unified theater commanders gained authority, with a corresponding
decline in service power.
This, however, does not mean that the services and their
leaders have become incidental factors in defense. The
opposite is true.
It is unwise to emphasize acquisition of “joint” items—common
communications and other types of systems—without giving equally strong
support to “core” systems—aircraft, warships, vehicles, and satellites.
Instructive words are offered by Gen. Hal M. Hornburg,
commander of Air Combat
Command. He is a self-declared “believer” in jointness. He probably
has had as much “joint” time as any Air Force general. He has served
on the Joint Staff, run a combined air operations center in Italy, commanded
the Joint Warfighting Center, and headed the air component of US Central Command.
“Joint warfare works best with strong service components,” Hornburg
told a June 23 session of the Defense Writers Group in Washington,
D.C. “Let’s
not get so joint so fast ... that we dilute the core competencies of the Army,
Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.” True jointness, he said, requires
the United States to “bring the best Army and the best Air Force and the
best Navy” to the battlespace.
In a presentation some years ago, retired Maj. Gen. Charles
D. Link, then USAF assistant deputy chief of staff for
plans and operations, described the services
as the nation’s “keepers of operational art.” This is still
true.
Diligence in the pursuit of strong service competence is
a virtue, not a vice. It is definitely not “parochial” or “un-joint.” There
can be no powerful Joint Force without strong services, and the Chiefs,
in pressing
to maximize such strengths, are doing their duty to the nation.
