Reply #66: About Hackworth [View All]

Yes, he's justly renowned for championing the welfare of foot soldiers and devotion to the first principle of war: winning. But his measure of a man is strictly military. His scorn for those who ascend the ranks through bureaucracy instead of on the battlefield doesn't necessarily mean they're unfit for the oval office.

In any case, Hackworth's character assessments can be really flighty:

Hackworth LOVES Rumsfeld:

The Perfumed Princes are on a new campaign -- carpet-bombing SecDef Donald Rumsfeld. They fear that his military revolution designed to prepare our armed forces for the threats ahead might ruin their sweet deal. But the Pentagon's never had anyone in charge as smart and as tough as Rumsfeld. If anyone can take on the top brass and blow them away, it's The Donald.

http://www.hackworth.com/30jul01.html

Hackworth HATES Rumsfeld

In mid April, I wrote a piece that asks for Rumsfeld to be fired, to be relieved. I took enormous heat for that. He went in light, on the cheap, he has misunderstood the whole war, he should go ... Rumsfeld is an arrogant asshole. That's a quote, by the way.

http://newsoutpost.com/article512.html

Hackworth nudges Powell into the PERFUMED PRINCES column:

Most Americans would regard two well-known former officers, Norman Schwartzkopf and Colin Powell, as heroes. But you don't think very much of them.

Colin Powell is a typical example of where the myth has just taken over. There was talk a few months back that the only way to save America was to make Colin Powell, this great war-fighter, the President. The New York Post said that Powell, a "Gulf War hero," may be a member of Clinton's cabinet. The guy wasn't even in the Gulf War during the war. How could he become a Gulf War hero? The heroes of the Gulf War were the grunts that were down on the ground. For the record, Colin Powell has never led American fighting men in battle. But most Americans don't realize this.

You are particularly critical of the decisions Powell made in the Gulf War.

We had to go for national security reasons — oil. But we should have gone in to win. We could have taken out Republican Guard without putting one grunt on the ground. We had incredible air-striking power in the form of A-10 aircraft, F18s, and Apache gunships. We could have done it. But this is not the advice that Colin Powell gave. He caved in, instead of standing tall and advising his Commander in Chief that we should fight this war to win.

http://www.salon.com/news/news961115.html

Real leadership would have taken Saddam Hussein out in 1991...

Just when it was time to finish him and win, the president says, "I think we should back off now; the war is getting a little bloody." Not that war is not always bloody.

The president turned to Colin Powell, his military adviser - Powell is not a warrior but a military and politically correct individual. Powell chose to go along with the president. Powell called Schwarzkopf up and said, "Let's end the show." A hundred- hour show is a good logo. It has a certain resonance to it. The Hundred-Hour War. Schwarzkopf, instead of saying, "To hell with this; Let me talk to the boss and tell him we have gone to all this effort," and said, This guy Saddam Hussein is another Adolf Hitler. He has mass weapons of destruction that he will use. He has used them against the Iranians and the Kurds. He is one bad hombre with the fourth largest army in the world. We have got to take him." Then, if the president refused what "Stormin Norman" used as a good argument, had I been the Commander, I would have just unplugged the phone and gone in and kicked his ass and finished him off. That is the kind of leadership we need in America.

http://www.lawac.org/speech/hackworth96.html

Hackworth deems Powell a NATIONAL SAVIOR:

Dubya's first pick out of the Cabinet box was a winner. Colin Powell as Secretary of State is like holding a royal flush in a no-limit poker game. Few Americans have his unique qualifications in war and peace; he has the right stuff to steer our nation with a steady hand through the dangerous shoals and violent storms we'll face.

http://www.hackworth.com/18dec00.html

Hackworth GOES WOBBLY on Powell:

A tap-dancing Colin Powell told the nation early last week that the situation with North Korea was "not yet a crisis."

Powell and I both attended the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, where they beat into our heads the essential military lesson for making an "Estimate of the Situation." And my school reading of the Korean tea leaves is 180 degrees from Powell: I think we've triggered a crisis with global consequences that could well be on its way to meltdown.

...

The past 40 years certainly testify to the secretary of state's savvy. So maybe Powell has been spewing the party line – going along to get along with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and other New World Order neoconservatives who have the president's ear – until he can convince Bush to cool the "High Noon" act and talk to the looney-tunes from Pyongyang.

...

Powell needs to access his Sun Tzu: "You should not press a desperate foe too hard."

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30487