--- Lileks rarely, if ever,

--- Lileks rarely, if ever, pisses me off. The last time he did was back in May, when he denounced Matrix: Reloaded.
I could, however, understand his complaints, grudgingly allowed him his
opinion while muttering to myself, “he just doesn’t get it,” and
moved on with my life. But today he hit my anger button. He really
hit it. I’m livid. It’s not like he’s going to ever read this, so
I don’t know why I’m bothering to rip him a new one, but he needs
to be corrected and damnit, I’m just the girl to do it. The only
other blogger I’ve been reading longer than Lileks is Andrew
Sullivan. I was one of Sullivan’s first readers, from way back in the
day when you could email Andrew and he’d actually take the time to
answer back. I’m choosy when it comes to blog reading: I don’t
bookmark pages just because someone, at one time, had something amusing
on their blog: you have to earn my respect to get a bookmark, but when
you do, I’m a loyal reader. I’ll come back on a daily basis and
will voraciously devour whatever content you put out. Sullivan linked
Lileks one fine December day, I laughed my ass off and I’ve been
coming back ever since. I live in the Twin Cities. I subscribe to the
Strib and I’d honestly never made the connection between the
Backfence, which is Lileks’ column in the Strib, and the Bleat until
one Sunday in January. I was thrilled. I was finding all sorts of
outlets to feed my new obsession with his writing. I like his outlook
on life. I like his opinions: they’re generally consistent with my
worldview. I like the way he smithies his words. He makes me want to be
a better writer. He’s brilliant, to put it simply. He’s an
underrated writer who’s been basking in obscurity for entirely too
long. I’ve been of the opinion of late that when he hits it big,
I’ll be able to brag that I’ve been reading him forever.
But, all that aside, I particularly enjoy the fact he’s not lazy: he
does not oversimplify issues for the sake of supporting the popular
rhetoric of the day. He produces worthwhile, thought-provoking
commentary.
For the most part. Today, however, I just have to wonder what the hell
he was thinking when he wrote this about Rumsfeld’s memo: “But in another respect, the memo gives you a sick sinking
feeling. Why do we need to be asking these questions now? Shouldn’t
these things be obvious? And of course they are to Rumsfeld, but not to
many in the great immovable bureaucracy that apparently regards
national defense as a 9 to 5 job whose purpose is a pension, not the
survival of liberal democracy. You’d like to think that everyone in
the Defense establishment has walked at a quicker pace in the last two
years. Taken shorter lunches. Cut to the chase. You’d like to think
that from the janitor to the Joint Chiefs, the mood was simple to
describe: urgency.
You want to talk about what we can do when things seem urgent?
Remember: they built the Pentagon during the war. That’s gearing up.
That’s focus. At a congressional hearing on July 17, 1941, the
chairman of the House Subcommittee on Appropriations suggested that the
War Department might solve the problem of its scattered offices by
building, you know, one building. That was a Thursday. A request was
made for plans to be delivered to the War Department on Monday morning.
Tuesday morning the plans were presented to Congress; they were
approved by the House on July 28, and by the Senate two weeks later.
(Typical.) The bill authorizing construction was signed on August 25.
Construction began in September, 1941.
September 11, to be exact. Construction took sixteen months. So let’s
make this the new standard for national defense: any change in the way
the Pentagon does business should take no longer than the time it took
to build the Pentagon itself.”
{Calming breath. Exhale. Calming breath. Exhale.}
I’ve mentioned before that my cousin is career military, but I never
really expanded on precisely what he did for the branch he belongs to,
which is the Army. D., until recently, was stationed at MacDill Air
Force Base in Tampa. Yes, that’s right, kids, MacDill Air Force Base.
His e-mail address ended with .centcom.mil.
The CO he reported to directly was General Franks, and D. had one star
on his shoulder at the time. He now has two and you will address him,
please, as Major General. He is now stationed at the Pentagon. D. is a
brilliant guy, and I say this with no bias whatsoever. I’d think him
brilliant if I just happened to meet him on the street and struck up a
conversation with him. The fact our mothers were sisters bears no
weight. He was encouraged early on by his father to join ROTC at
college as a way of easing the financial burden; D. liked the military
and stuck with it. He’s been posted far and wide and he’s climbed
the ladder rather quickly in the scheme of things, considering he’s
on the easy side of fifty. I know he has the capability to go higher in
the ranks, but I don’t know that this will be possible because he’s
been in for quite some time and the military now has mandatory
retirement rules.
D.’s was CENTCOM’s Director of Command Control Communications and
Information Systems. D., was posted to CENTCOM around 1999, after a
posting at the White House. His job ramped up significantly after 9/11,
and Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were his babies. If
his title obfuscates what he actually does, let me simplify it for you:
if it had a wire, an email address, a web link, a satellite uplink or
just a frigging radio and it was attached to CENTCOM, he was in charge
of it. His team made every single bit of communication relayed during
both of those operations possible. And he did a bang up job, if you ask
me. And I say that with no bias whatsoever. But as brilliant as D. is,
his wife, C., is even more so. She also works at the Pentagon, but is
civilian. As D. likes to joke, “Her clearance is higher than mine.”
C., to quote an article from Signal,
---a military publication--- is in charge of, “…the secure protocol
router network, also known as SIPRNET, which is a major conduit for
information across the breadth of the military.” So, to again
simplify: if you’re looking for secure information on a server or a
database somewhere in the military, C. runs the portal to get you
there. A few years back the non-secure router network was hacked and
everyone was joking with her about it at a family gathering; she just
smiled cannily and said, “That’s not mine.” And just by the
determined look on her face, you knew hell would freeze over before her
work was taken down by some punk hacker. C. was in the Pentagon on
9/11. And she’s had it incredibly rough as a result. I don’t know
the entire tale, but she was to attend a meeting on the south side that
day, but she was busy and she sent one of her subordinates instead. The
subordinate never returned. So, C. knows exactly what was lost that day. And it’s not likely something she’s ever going to forget, either.

Why do we need to be asking these questions now? Shouldn’t these
things be obvious? And of course they are to Rumsfeld, but not to many
in the great immovable bureaucracy that apparently regards national
defense as a 9 to 5 job whose purpose is a pension, not the survival of
liberal democracy. You’d like to think that everyone in the Defense
establishment has walked at a quicker pace in the last two years. Taken
shorter lunches. Cut to the chase. You’d like to think that from the
janitor to the Joint Chiefs, the mood was simple to describe: urgency.
The military might have been twice the size in WWII than it is now, but
it is infinitely more complicated. It does not hurt anyone, with all of
this intertwined complexity, to keep taking a gander at the big
picture. I believe this is what Rummy was trying to do: forcing
everyone to see the forest for the trees. D. and C. have given up a
major portion of their lives, dedicating their considerable talents to
keeping this country safe. Their jobs are the type that no one in WWII,
when the Pentagon was so speedily constructed, would have ever imagined
could possibly exist. They work long, hard hours; they were separated
for over three years by D.’s posting in Florida and his overseas
deployments, so, on their behalf, I find it rather insulting that Mr.
Lileks would make the blanket statement that everyone associated with
the defense of our country should get their asses in gear and get
things done. Because, after all, if Lileks can see the big picture, why
can’t they? Why should they have to reassert the goals?
Grrrrr. Could it possibly be that, perhaps, after two very long, very
successful operations, the goals needed
to be reasserted? Have you never been in a situation where you could
lose sight of the overall picture when you have this, that and the
other hitting you from every conceivable angle known to mankind?
That’s what’s happened to the US Military, James. They’re
rebuilding two countries right now, not to mention the fact that there
are still US soldiers on the ground in places like Bosnia and Liberia.
The bosses are looking for more money to pay their troops with and to
pay for better armaments so the aforementioned troops don’t end up in
a body bag. And they’re doing pleading for this money from a Congress
that wants nothing to do with them. And as far as Iraq is concerned,
it’s a toss up to as to who is more hostile to their interests: the
media or Saddam’s loyalists. And you, James, want to know why they’re asking these questions now?

Hmmph.

So let’s make this the new standard for national defense: any
change in the way the Pentagon does business should take no longer than
the time it took to build the Pentagon itself.
Nice sentiment, and you know, there have been times in the past that I
would have agreed with him. Since Lileks used the WWII analogy to prove
his point, I’m going to follow his lead. It’s a different military
now than it was in WWII; it’s more complex, and if it takes more time
to get a carrier deployed to a certain region because it’s twice as
big as a WWII carrier, and is staffed by quadruple the number of
sailors, perhaps, just perhaps, Lileks should allow for the difference.
The same goes for the decisions that are made by the command structure:
they’re dealing with a massive game of RISK that did not exist when
the US came into WWII: it takes time to arrange the pieces to make sure
they don’t lose this country while they’re taking this one over
here. It’s ridiculous to even say something like this because it’s
readily apparent that the military, whatever else it might be doing, is
not sitting on its collective ass. A little over a month after 9/11,
the US Military attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan. This fight used
every branch of the military: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Now,
while it’s rather easy to remember that the Twin Towers were hit on
9/11, we seem to have some sort of amnesia that prevents us from
remembering the Pentagon was hit as well. This is the building that
houses the command and control structure of the United States Military
and it was hit by a big jetliner on 9/11. This apparently didn’t matter, however. The military did
ramp up and do its job. And that’s no small feat. I, for one, was
thrilled to see footage from the deck of an air craft carrier during
Enduring Freedom because it meant that despite the fact the Navy was
the one branch who suffered the most during the attack on the Pentagon,
and people in command lost their lives, the Navy was able to function
as if their command structure hadn’t taken a massive hit; they did their jobs
and they did them well. Compare this to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It
took over a year to get CINCPAC back up to standards. I know, comparing
apples to oranges, but the Japanese succeeded on December 7, 1941 in
hampering the US Military. Look all at what happened specifically
as a result of hitting our fleet at Pearl Harbor. The next successful
battle in the Pacific was Midway, and that didn’t happen until June
4, 1942: almost seven months after Pearl Harbor was attacked. The lead
carriers for that battle included one hastily repaired ship, but of the
carriers that hadn’t been in dock at Pearl Harbor on December 7th,
the Lexington had been sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea a month earlier, and the Yorktown
had to be repaired in two days to get it ready to go back out again in
preparation for Midway. Now, you say, Pearl Harbor was honestly more
about taking out materiel than the command structure. Well, that is
true, I’ll grant you, but consider the changes the military has made
toward folding the command and control structures of the military
branches into the Pentagon offices and it becomes clear that the attack
on the Pentagon had the potential to be much worse than it was.
Al-Qaeda had the same goal in mind when they attacked the Pentagon as
the Japanese did when they attacked Pearl Harbor. I believe they
didn’t pick the Pentagon as a symbolic target. I don’t believe they
hit it because it’s a big freaking building and, dude, how could you
possibly miss it? I believe they slammed that jetliner into it because
they wanted to forestall any retaliation that would be forthcoming as a
result of their actions: it’s the logical answer to the question of why?.
They knew we wouldn’t stand for this sort of thing; they knew Bush
wouldn’t lob a few cruise missiles and pray he got the guys
responsible. They knew we’d want blood and they wanted to
keep us from having it. I truly believe the attacks are similar in
mindset, if not in the actual mission achieved. Our military is
different now than it was in WWII. It’s incredibly simple conclusion
to come to. From the way it is run to the machinery used to facilitate
the goals, the military is simply different than it was in WWII. It may
take time to get the pieces in place, but when you remember that
America was an isolationist country at that time and had few forces
stationed around the globe, and even fewer commitments than it has now,
it’s easy to account for the differences. Our military was not caught
with its pants down this time around: we retaliated quickly,
efficiently and effectively and the tone was set for the war on
terrorism. It surprises me that Lileks, who has been nothing but a
purveyor of the keep the faith
mentality in the war against terror, is suddenly finding it easy to
lose faith in the people running the show. To think that they’re
entrenched and just whistling the way through their lives, not doing
any real work, just thinking about the fat government pension they’re
earning as they count the days until they retire. I’m sure a few of
them are, and he is somewhat justified in describing them as such. But
they’re not all like that. I can tell you that for a fact, and to
lump them---even though he does qualify and use the words “not to
many”---into lazy, desk dwelling, bureaucratic cretins is beyond the
pale. I think it was an incredibly wise thing that Rummy did: it was
time to refocus and regroup, and I’m angry that Lileks thinks the
people on duty aren’t doing their jobs. I’m no great defender of
bureaucracies, and it does somewhat bother me to be defending this
massive bureaucracy, but Lileks’ statement was simplistic and
insulting given 9/11: the people who make up that fat cat bureaucracy
he disdains were there that day.
They felt that huge stone building they thought was imperious and
immovable shake and shiver and shimmy when the plane hit; they smelled
the smoke, they knew a stone building was---incredibly---on fire, and
they ran outside to help. I’m sure they get it; just as he claims
Rummy gets it. They’re working toward the goal of defeating
terrorism, and I’m sure they’re not doing it as quickly as Rummy
would like, as is apparent in the memo, but the point stands: they’re working on it nonetheless, because they, of all people, know the stakes if this war should fail.