Washington Post "Arkinizes" the Army Again: Claims Army and FEMA Synonymous with Disaster

Washington Post National and Homeland Security columnist William Arkin, recently and appropriately condemned for claiming that U.S. military personnel in Iraq are mercenaries, has fired another salvo across the Army’s bow, with stray rounds directed at FEMA for good measure. Arkin’s scathing columns consistently contain sheer venomous criticism, declaring only disaster in every government and military enterprise, but never offer constructive suggestions for improvement. He has become one of the media’s primary Monday Morning Quarterbacks, whining about what the Army, or in this case the Army and FEMA, should have done differently, always after the fact when the results are obvious for everyone to observe.

Yesterday’s column, another attempt to depict the Army as incompetent, included what Arkin apparently viewed as the ultimate insult he could heap upon the Army: likening the Army to FEMA, the federal agency that was blamed by Louisiana’s inept leaders for their own failures to evacuate and assist storm victims. With the help of willing media who seized upon haphazard rescue efforts as somehow being President Bush’s fault, blame for all Katrina-related tragedies and failures was directed at FEMA, which continues to wear, unfairly, the labels of “gross neglect,” “incompetence,” “disaster,” and “bureaucratic tragedy,” to name only a few terms Arkin associated with FEMA. Army personnel should closely observe what Arkin wrote about FEMA, because he painted the Army with the same unfairly tainted brush, implying that whenever FEMA or the Army are involved, disaster is sure to follow.

Arkin refers to FEMA trailers and mobile homes that could have helped the homeless in Louisiana but were under-utilized which are now being sold at auction, and cites this as an example of FEMA’s incompetence. What Arkin conveniently omits, however, is that the trailers were available and in the process of shipping to New Orleans, but the New Orleans City Council, over Ray “chocolate city” Nagin’s objections, REFUSED to allow the trailers into areas FEMA had determined were suitable for their installation. The fact that Nagin, who did absolutely nothing to prepare his city for such a storm despite numerous FEMA and National Weather Service warnings, was literally pleading with his own city council and stubborn New Orleans residents who didn’t want trailers in their neighborhoods, is a clear refutation of Arkin’s condemnation of FEMA. Were the trailers a perfect solution? No, but what would have been? It is true that many of the trailers later developed maintenance problems due to excessive usage. The ideal solution would have been the city of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana utilizing school buses and other available resources days in advance to evacuate those at most risk. Instead, images of school buses submerged in Katrina floodwaters demonstrated where the real incompetence occurred: in the New Orleans city government and the Louisiana governor’s office.

For a true account of why the trailers, which FEMA spent $2.6 billion to acquire, turned into a fiasco, read NBC correspondent Ron Mott’s report from December 2005 titled “Empty Trailers, Reluctant Neighbors: FEMA has the mobile homes, but no one can agree where they should go.” As this report from a network that Arkin surely considers credible confirmed, “500 trailers are arriving every day, but they just sit there because no one wants them in his backyard.” Racial prejudice and fears of crime and traffic, all exhibited by suburban residents (not the Bush administration, despite Spike Lee’s film), kept the trailers out of New Orleans, not FEMA neglect.

It is unfortunate but not surprising that Arkin ignores the only actual valid comparison that can be made between FEMA and the Army: neither can deploy nor utilize its resources to benefit others without executive orders to do so. FEMA could not provide the mobile homes to those who needed them because the New Orleans City government refused to permit it. Likewise, the Army could not prepare for or deploy in Iraq in the manner it preferred because elected and appointed civilian executives chose otherwise. Arkin compares FEMA “incompetence” and lack of preparedness for future disasters with the Army’s alleged lack of preparedness for fighting wars in the Middle East, citing inadequate Arabic language training, and failure to understand Iraqi Army dynamics as reasons “the mess we are in.” According to Arkin:

But the Army, the "professionals," the military men with experience and doctrine and integrity, are not only supposed to have the backbone to speak up, but also the ability to see the right way.

Throughout the 1990's up until today, instead of preparing the institution - training and equipping - to fight in the Middle East and then specifically in Iraq, the Army's mind seems to have been elsewhere. . . .

As current Iraq commander Gen. David H. Petraeus said in his own confirmation hearings, "We took too long to develop the concepts and structures needed to build effective Iraqi Security Forces..."

The "we" here is the Army. These are Army decisions.

Arkin makes cursory reference to former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Ambassador Bremer as having made poor decisions, but he places most of the blame on the Army for not having “the backbone to speak up.” Unfortunately, merely speaking up rarely convinces civilian executive leadership to follow the advice given. This lesson is perhaps the only comparison that may be valid between Vietnam and the Iraq War. Military leaders, including Senator John McCain’s father, were well acquainted with and loudly advocated effective strategies but were routinely denied permission to wage a full war because civilian leadership was determined to fight a limited war while grappling with anti-war elements on the political front. There is wisdom in our constitutional division of military command authority, with an elected official as Commander in Chief, but there is also much opportunity for political goals to interfere with and ultimately prevent victory.

Military leaders during the Vietnam War, for example, viewed arms and supply shipments from Russia and China into North Vietnam as intolerable and warned that the war could not be won without stemming the flow from those nations. The civilian leadership in Washington feared that destroying weapons shipments would incite Russia and China into joining the war, and refused to permit any actions against the shipments. As a result, the North Vietnamese received a steady supply of advanced anti-aircraft systems and other important weapons which assured the successful air and land defenses of Hanoi and other major cities. Senator McCain was shot down by those advanced air defenses and suffered 5 years of beatings in POW camps because of that civilian leadership decision. Arkin seems to believe that the military needs to “speak up” and is responsible for not doing so, but clearly when the ultimate decision making power rests in the civilian authority, that is also where ultimate responsibility for the result should rest.

I wrote extensively in a previous post about military strategy decisions in Iraq made largely for political reasons by civilian leadership, specifically the Civilian Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Ambassador Bremer. Most of these decisions were not the preferred strategy of the Army. Apparently it is difficult for an anti-military journalist like Arkin to accept the idea that our military rarely is permitted to engage enemies on the terms and with the level of force our military recommends. The Army has one goal: victory, with whatever force is necessary to achieve it. Civilian leadership, elected or appointed usually possesses entirely separate political goals, with victory defined by very narrow political accomplishments.

As is evident in one of our major parties, among elected officials victory in Iraq is neither expected nor apparently even desired. No amount of “speaking up” by the Army will convince the current Democrats in Congress that this war can be won. They voted unanimously to approve General David Petraeus to take command of the war and days later were working to pass a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush’s troop surge that General Patraeus recommended and was selected specifically to implement. They are simply too heavily invested politically in making sure this war ends in failure while pinning that failure on President Bush and the Republican Party to listen to any “speaking up” from the Army.

While journalists like Arkin make factually incorrect comparisons between FEMA and the Army, ascribing disaster to both entities, it is important to remember that both are restricted to act only when ordered to do so by civilians. They are also similar in that both rely on elected officials to determine their budgets, and therefore their ability to improve equipment, train personnel, or expand duties. Criticism from without and within is important to the improvement of any government agency or armed services branch. However, Arkin’s attempt to blame the Army for decisions made by civilian leaders, or as he called it, to “FEMA-ize” the Army, offers nothing constructive to efforts to improve FEMA or the Army.

Arkin’s well publicized and roundly criticized statement that our military personnel in Iraq are “mercenaries” because they volunteer, are paid, and receive extensive benefits has its parallel in the media. Arkin and his ilk are propagandists rather than journalists because they volunteer to work in their field, are paid to bash the military and the Bush administration regardless of facts, and receive extensive benefits from their employers for doing so. Perhaps the U.S. military should replace “criticized” with “Arkinized” when referring to inaccurate and venomous media reporting of its personnel or actions.