Lost Professionalism: The Firing of Pace Tramples Civil-Military Relations

26 June 2007

The decision by US Defense Secretary Robert gates not to renominate Gen Peter Pace to a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) may have spared the Bush administration short-term political pains, but the cost is in long-term damage to civil-military relations and military professionalism.

CDI Senior Adviser Lawrence Korb's article, "Lost Professionalism: The Firing of Pace Tramples Civil-Military Relations," first appeared in Defense News on June 26, 2007.

The decision by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates not to renominate Gen. Peter Pace to a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) because of the possibility of a difficult confirmation hearing may have some short-term benefits for the Bush administration by sparing it another re-examination of its failed policies in Iraq. But the long-term damage to civil-military relations and military professionalism will be substantial.

Career military officers are expected to give their civilian superiors their best professional advice on how to implement the policies that these elected or appointed civilians pursue. And once these civilians decide upon a policy, the military professionals must support the policy or resign.

The failure of the Bush policies in Iraq in particular and in the Middle East in general are numerous. But the president's strategy has failed not because of tactical mistakes made by the military but because of fundamental strategy flaws. To put it bluntly, the invasion of Iraq has failed not because it was a good policy poorly implemented. Rather, it was a flawed policy that was based upon an unrealistic appraisal of the situation.

For the past six years as vice chairman and then chairman of the JCS, Gen. Pace has supported this policy before Congress and the public. If anything, he has been too deferential to his civilian superiors, particularly former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

It is now clear that the former secretary of defense meddled too much in military matters and that he should have given more deference to military professional advice in the tactical and operational realms.

If Secretary Gates had said that he wanted his own person as chairman, rather than the one he inherited from Rumsfeld, that would have been perfectly appropriate. Indeed, that is one of the reasons that the chairman and vice chairman of the JCS, unlike the service chiefs, are appointed for two years instead of four. But Gates said he intended to give Pace the customary two-year reappointment but changed his mind when it became clear that the Marine general would face a contentious reconfirmation hearing.

And why would the hearings become contentious? Not because of anything Pace said or did but because of the misrepresentations of the president and his appointees. Moreover, Pace was confirmed unanimously as chairman in September 2005, after four years as vice chairman, some 36 months after the invasion of Iraq. By then it was already clear that the administration had cherry-picked the intelligence and had underestimated how long and difficult the war would be.

Gates claims that he is throwing Pace overboard for the good of the country. Nonsense. Pace is being sacrificed to spare the administration further embarrassment.

The president and his top advisers no doubt saw what a difficult time Gen. George Casey had before the Senate when he was promoted from commander of the forces in Iraq to Army chief of staff.

Many members of Congress also share blame for this undermining of military professionalism. If the Senate is upset at the Bush administration's mishandling of the war, it should hold the civilians making those decisions accountable. Who is more responsible for the debacle in Iraq, Condoleezza Rice or Gen. Pace? Yet Dr. Rice was confirmed for what will most likely be a four-year stint as secretary of state after botching the job of national security adviser and making several misleading comments about the threat that Saddam posed. Remember the mushroom cloud?

Pace will be the first chairman since Maxwell Taylor in 1964 not to receive the second two-year appointment. But Gen. Taylor was not fired. After serving 21 months as chairman, Taylor reluctantly agreed to President Johnson's request that he become U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam when Henry Cabot Lodge left the post to run for president.

None of Bush's predecessors in the Oval Office have used the excuse of difficult confirmation hearings to spare themselves political embarrassment at the expense of undermining military professionalism. Gen. Earl Wheeler, who replaced Taylor in 1964, was renominated twice by Lyndon Johnson and once by Richard Nixon despite raging debate in Congress about our policies in Vietnam.

President George H.W. Bush renominated Gen. Colin Powell as chairman in 1991 despite the fact that Bob Woodward's book, "The Commanders," guaranteed that hearings would be contentious. Woodward indicated that Powell had been less than forthcoming with the Senate about the advice he gave to the president about the necessity of expelling Iraq from Kuwait by force of arms as opposed to sanctions.

The Bush administration will soon be history. But its treatment of Gen. Pace will affect military professionalism for decades to come and weaken the willingness of the best and brightest officers of the officer corps to take on the post of JCS chairman.

Moreover, it will also make it difficult for Adm. Michael Mullen, who has been nominated for the chairmanship, to be effective, knowing he was the second choice.

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information, is the author of The Joint Chiefs of Staff: The First Twenty-Five Years.