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Seasoned Vet
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June 11, 2003
Shinseki bids farewell, retires
By Robert Burns
Associated Press
FORT MYER, Va. — “And so I say one last time, my name is Shinseki and I am a soldier — proud of it.”
With those words, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki on Wednesday bade farewell to an Army career that spanned five decades, from the jungles of Vietnam, where combat cost him part of a foot, to the halls of the Pentagon, where he fought bureaucratic wars until his final hours as chief of staff.
The White House has not nominated a Shinseki successor, but officials let it be known the day before his retirement ceremony that it would be Peter Schoomaker, who retired from the Army in 2000. Never before has an Army chief of staff been chosen from the ranks of the retired.
In his parting remarks at Fort Myer’s Summerall Field, Shinseki made no mention of his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, with whom he had a sometimes tense relationship. Rumsfeld, who was traveling in Europe, did not send a high-level representative from his office.
Shinseki alluded to the tensions, which some have attributed to a belief by Rumsfeld that Army leaders resisted a basic principle of democracy: that they must answer to civilian authority.
“We understand that leadership is not an exclusive function of the uniformed services,” Shinseki said to an audience that included members of Congress and military officers from countries across the globe. “So when some suggest that we in the Army don’t understand the importance of civilian control of the military, well, that’s just not helpful — and it isn’t true.
“The Army has always understood the primacy of civilian control,” he added. “In fact we are the ones who reinforce that principle with those other armies with whom we train all around the world. So to muddy the waters when important issues are at stake — issues of life and death — is a disservice to all those in and out of uniform who serve and lead so well.”
Shinseki, a native of Hawaii, is the only officer of Japanese descent to rise to the top post in the Army. His career almost came to a tragic early end. On his second tour of duty in Vietnam, as a cavalry troop commander in 1970, he was wounded in action and lost part of a foot.
He was so severely hurt that doctors tried to get him to leave the service, according to Les Brownlee, the acting Army secretary who officiated at Shinseki’s retirement ceremony.
“His love of soldiers — soldiers who had carried him out of combat on their backs, twice — and his love of our Army was so deep that he persevered,” Brownlee said, with Shinseki in dress uniform at his side, looking across Fort Myer’s green parade field toward Arlington National Cemetery.
Shinseki spent 11 months recuperating in a hospital in Hawaii, and it would be another decade before he returned to the field. In the intervening years he earned a master’s degree in English at Duke University, taught English for two years at West Point, attended the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and was a staff officer in the Pentagon.
He went on to hold a variety of commands with Army units in Germany during the 1980s, and in 1994 he became commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. In 1997 he took command of U.S. Army Europe and headed the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general who was the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe from 1993-97, said in an interview that Shinseki was an exemplary leader and should get some of the credit for the combat effectiveness the Army showed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“A lot of that has to do with Shinseki and those who preceded him,” Joulwan said.
When he became Army chief of staff on June 22, 1999, Shinseki identified a major problem — heavy forces that were too heavy and immobile, and light forces that were too light and vulnerable. He spent the next four years pushing an Army “transformation” — coining a term that became the watchword of the Bush administration’s Pentagon once Rumsfeld took office in 2001.
Rumsfeld seemed unconvinced by Shinseki’s approach, and he killed one of the Army’s prized projects, the Crusader artillery system. Shinseki also ran afoul of Rumsfeld by telling Congress he thought it would take several hundred thousand soldiers to keep the peace in postwar Iraq.
In April, Rumsfeld fired Army Secretary Thomas White, who had sided with Shinseki on the Crusader and Iraq.
------------------------------------------------------------ Out of every 100 men, ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are just targets, Nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." - Hericletus, circa 500 BC ----------------------------------------------------------- 
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Regular Joe
 
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| Don't let the door knob hit you where the good lord split you.....
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Seasoned Vet
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quote:
Originally posted by eyesbehindthelines
Here's You hat (BLACK BERET), And here's your coat...
And here's your sign:[iws]
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Still here since July 2000
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Good riddance to bad rubbish. You'd better get out of town, now, Ric.
“When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.”-Gen. George Washington
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Seasoned Vet
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That's Shinseki's ultimate character flaw that caused his fall. He thought he was sooooo much smarter than everyone else that he didn't have to listen to ANYONE else, except his 'yesmen' that he surrounded himself with, and felt himself to be ABOVE the law. Witness his illegal Chineese beret procurement.
As the good book says, "Pride goeth before the fall". The same thing happened to an angel named Lucifer I believe.
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Strac Trooper
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The SecDef, with tongue firmly in cheek:
"I want to make a brief salute to an Army man who began the transformation of the Army from the Cold War to a 21st century fighting force," Rumsfeld said in remarks at an Army birthday celebration in the center courtyard of the Pentagon.
"One of Eric Shinseki's predecessors, Gen. John Wickham, wrote about his job as chief of staff," Rumsfeld said. "He said, `Make a difference. The time each of us is in charge is short.' Well, with his energy and drive, Gen. Shinseki has made a difference."
Shinseki was not in attendance.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/6082995.htm
Welcome to another Red Devil rehersal, only this time it's for real
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Seasoned Vet
Group: Past PNET Supporter
Last Login: 9/7/2005 7:22 PM
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quote:
"I want to make a brief salute to an Army man who began the transformation of the Army from the Cold War to a 21st century fighting force
I think those two words say it all.
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