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Eric Shinseki
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Eric Ken Shinseki (born November 28, 1942) is a retired U.S. Army four-star general who is currently serving as the 7th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. His final U.S. Army post was as the 34th Chief of Staff of the Army (1998-2003). He is a veteran of combat in Vietnam, having been left with a maimed foot. During his tenure as Army Chief of Staff, Shinseki initiated an innovative but controversial plan to make the Army more strategically deployable and mobile in urban terrain by creating Stryker Interim-Force Brigade Combat Teams.
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Eric Ken Shinseki (born November 28, 1942) is a retired U.S. Army four-star general who is currently serving as the 7th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. His final U.S. Army post was as the 34th Chief of Staff of the Army (1998-2003). He is a veteran of combat in Vietnam, having been left with a maimed foot. During his tenure as Army Chief of Staff, Shinseki initiated an innovative but controversial plan to make the Army more strategically deployable and mobile in urban terrain by creating Stryker Interim-Force Brigade Combat Teams. He conceived a long term strategic plan for the Army dubbed Objective Force, which included a program he designed, Future Combat Systems.
Shinseki publicly clashed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraq over how many troops the U.S. would need to keep in Iraq for the postwar occupation of that country. As Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation.
From then on, Shinseki's influence on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly waned. The end of his term of Army Chief of Staff came in June 2003, just three months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and at that time General Shinseki retired from the Army after 38 years of military service.
When the insurgency took hold in postwar Iraq, Shinseki's comments and their public rejection by the civilian leadership were often cited by those who felt the Bush administration deployed too few troops to Iraq. On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said that General Shinseki had been correct that more troops were needed.
Education and military service
Shinseki was born in Lihue, Kauai in the then Territory of Hawaii, to a Japanese American family. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree and a commission as a second lieutenant. He earned a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Duke University. He was also educated at the Armor Officer Advanced Course, the United States Army Command and General Staff College, and the National War College.
Shinseki served in a variety of command and staff assignments in the Continental United States and overseas, including two combat tours with the 9th and 25th Infantry Divisions in the Republic of Vietnam as an artillery forward observer and as commander of Troop A, 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry Regiment. During one of those tours, he stepped on a land mine, which blew off the front of one of his feet.
He has served at Schofield Barracks, Hawai'i with Headquarters, United States Army Hawaii, and Fort Shafter with Headquarters, United States Army Pacific. He has taught at the U.S. Military Academy’s Department of English. During duty with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss, Texas, he served as the regimental adjutant and as the executive officer of its 1st Squadron.
Shinseki’s ten-plus years of service in Europe included assignments as Commander, 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 3rd Infantry Division (Schweinfurt); Commander, 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Kitzingen); Assistant Chief of Staff, G3, 3rd Infantry Division (Operations, Plans and Training) (Würzburg); and Assistant Division Commander for Maneuver, 3rd Infantry Division (Schweinfurt). The 3rd ID was organized at that time as a heavy mechanized division. He also served as Assistant Chief of Staff, G3 (Operations, Plans and Training), VII Corps (Stuttgart). Shinseki served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Support, Allied Land Forces Southern Europe (Verona), an element of the Allied Command Europe.
From March 1994 to July 1995, Shinseki commanded the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. In July 1996, he was promoted to lieutenant general and became Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, United States Army. In June 1997, Shinseki was appointed to the rank of general before assuming duties as Commanding General, Seventh United States Army; Commander, Allied Land Forces Central Europe; and Commander, NATO Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Shinseki became the Army's 28th Vice Chief of Staff on 24 November 1998, then became its 34th Chief of Staff on 22 June 1999.
Shinseki retired on 11 June 2003 at the end of his four-year term. His Farewell Memo contained some of his ideas regarding the future of the military.
Shinseki is the only Japanese American and Asian American to be promoted to the Army's top position and is the first four star general of Asian descent in the US military.
Tensions with Rumsfeld while Army Chief of Staff
Shinseki's tenure as Chief of Staff was marked by tensions with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As incoming secretary, Rumsfeld publicly addressed and ultimately supported Shinseki's controversial decision on March 16, 2001 to issue all Army troops black berets, previously worn only by United States Army Rangers.
In 2001, Shinseki reportedly staved off suggestions by Rumsfeld and his aides that the Army be reduced in size. According to one source, at their first meeting Shinseki told Rumsfeld that his orders would not be implemented. The Quadrennial Defense Review issued in 2001 maintained the existing size of the Army. Another fight ensued in 2002, when Rumsfeld cancelled the XM2001 Crusader, an artillery system supported by Shinseki and members of Congress.
On at least one occasion, Rumsfeld praised Shinseki
General Keane [and] General Shinseki, they're outstanding Army officers. There's just no question about it. And they say what they believe, and they tell the truth. And they're honorable people and talented people.
Defense strategist Thomas P. M. Barnett, in a 2005 piece for Esquire magazine, captured the thoughts of Rumsfeld's aides in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Aides felt Shinseki became "too fixated on improving the Army's efficiency in combat without questioning the relevance of the capabilities he was developing, as in, Great force, wrong war." Rumsfeld and his aides believed systems like Crusader, while superb for a Cold War-era fight, were not relevant to 21st-century threats that required speed and precision.
In April 2002, 14 months before Shinseki was due to retire, The Washington Post reported, quoting "Pentagon officials", that his replacement had already been selected. "In another unusual move, Rumsfeld has tapped Army Gen. Jack Keane, the No. 2 officer in the Army, to succeed the current chief of that service, Gen. Eric Shinseki, whose term runs out next year. Selecting a successor for the current chief so far in advance is highly unusual."
This reported departure from precedent somewhat undercut Shinseki's authority within the Army. However, it has never been established where this report came from, or whether it had any basis in fact; in the event, Shinseki's successor was not Keane, but Peter Schoomaker.
The personality clash between Shinseki and Rumsfeld was well known. Shinseki had a reputation as a quiet, reserved officer, while Rumsfeld had a history of subjecting senior officers to tough questioning and "wire-brushing." (Barnett describes wire-brushing as, "Chewing them out, typically in a public way that's demeaning to their stature. It's pinning their ears back, throwing out question after question you know they can't answer correctly and then attacking every single syllable they toss up from their defensive crouch.") Shinseki and other army officers resented Rumsfeld's rough treatment of officers, while Rumsfeld and his aides felt the military had to be challenged vigorously for the civilians to exercise effective control of the department and steer it in the direction in which they wanted it to go.
Commenting on the personality clash on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews , General Tommy Franks (ret.) said, "I think, Chris, you will find personalities that get along and you find personalities that do not get along...It was sort of like oil and water...there certainly was friction there". Franks also said that the media had blown Shinseki's comments and his treatment out of proportion. He said Shinseki's concerns about the war plan focused on the logistics support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Regarding the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
Personality clashes apart, Shinseki and Rumsfeld had significantly different approaches to military doctrine. For example, following September 11, 2001, Rumsfeld was in a meeting whose subject was the review of the Department of Defense's (Contingency) Plan in the event of a war with Iraq (U.S. Central Command OPLAN 1003-98). The plan (as it was then conceived) contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld opined was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:
As [General] Newbold outlined the plan … it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated. For Rumsfeld, the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute. It was, Rumsfeld declared, the "product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military."
* * *
[T]he Plan . . . reflected long-standing military principles about the force levels that were needed to defeat Iraq, control a population of more than 24 million, and secure a nation the size of California with porous borders. Rumsfeld's numbers, in contrast, seemed to be pulled out of thin air. He had dismissed one of the military's long-standing plans, and suggested his own force level without any of the generals raising a cautionary flag.
Id.
While Shinseki was not at the OPLAN 1003-98 review mentioned above, he no doubt hewed to the traditional military view concerning force levels necessary for an Iraq invasion. It is, however, unclear how strongly Shinseki communicated to the DOD head views which diverged from those which Rumsfeld had forcefully communicated to the military command structure. While Shinseki's reticence to publicly speak on the questions of possible conflicts between himself and the Bush administration is well-known, he is on record as stating that it is "probably fair" to say that he should have banged on the table and pushed harder to stop Rumsfeld from going into Iraq with too few troops.
On February 25, 2003, four months before the end of his term as Chief of Staff of the Army, Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thought an occupying force of several hundred thousand men would be needed to stabilize postwar Iraq. He was pressed to provide a range by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI). Below is an excerpt from the exchange:
Levin: General Shinseki, could you give us some idea as to the magnitude of the Army's force requirement for an occupation of Iraq following a successful completion of the war?
Shinseki: In specific numbers, I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements. But I think --
Levin: How about a range?
Shinseki: I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We're talking about posthostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground-force presence.
In a public rebuke to Shinseki, Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, called Shinseki's estimate "far off the mark"
and "wildly off the mark". Wolfowitz said it would be "hard to believe" more troops would be required for postwar Iraq than to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Specifically, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:
Wolfowitz: There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq's reconstruction. We can't be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators ... [but] I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.
On November 15, 2006, Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, acknowledged that in his view, and with hindsight, Shinseki had been correct in his view that a larger postwar force was needed. Abizaid noted that this force could have included Iraqi or international forces in addition to American force:
Graham: Was General Shinseki correct when you look backward that we needed more troops to secure the country, General Abizaid?
Abizaid: General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution, and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations.
Contrary to Democratic candidate John Kerry's claim, in the
first debate of the 2004 presidential election, Shinseki was not "retired" for his testimony before Congress. His official term as Chief of the Army ended four months later and he retired as scheduled.
However, the tension between the civilians in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Shinseki were apparent. No senior civilians attended Shinseki's retirement ceremony, which broke historical precedent. Most Army officers and Senior enlisted, such as Major General John Batiste (ret.) who called for Rumsfeld's resignation, saw this as an intentional slight and foremost sign of disrespect directed toward Shinseki by the civilian leadership.
Secretary Rumsfeld, on the other hand, suggests that Shinseki did not invite any civilians to his retirement ceremony, although that claim cannot be verified since Shinseki has not commented on the issue.
Douglas Feith, the former United States Under Secretary of Defense was interviewed by the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes in a segment that was aired on April 6, 2008. During his interview Feith conceded that he and his colleagues didn’t realize that sending a smaller, mobile force to topple Saddam would make it difficult to establish order after he fell. "The looting that arose in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam … was a problem that the coalition forces had to deal with. I think we paid a very large price for the fact that, you know, our forces did not get that problem under control." In his memoirs, Feith writes, "The small force strategy for major combat operations, while it saved American lives, limited the number of forces we had to deal with the looting.”
Postmilitary career
Shinseki has served as a director for several corporations: Honeywell International and Ducommun, military contractors; Grove Farm Corporation; First Hawaiian Bank; and
Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.
He is a member of the Advisory Boards at the Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and to the U.S. Comptroller General. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council of the United States, and the Association of the United States Army.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
On December 7, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced at a Chicago press conference that once in office, he would nominate Shinseki to become the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on January 20, 2009 and sworn in January 21, 2009.
Awards, Decorations and Badges
See also
Further reading
- Burlas, Joe. , ARNEWS, June 10, 2003.
- , September 14, 2001, published on ARNEWS. (URL retrieved May 28, 2006)
- Siemieniec, Jack. , ARNEWS, January 31, 2000. (URL retrieved May 27, 2006)
- Dickey, Connie. "Chief of Staff shares his concerns for the soldier and the Army"], ARNEWS, June 28, 1999. From media interview 3 days after becoming Army Chief of Staff. (URL retrieved May 27, 2006)
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