CNN’s McIntyre disputes Shinseki record
CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre today disputes much of what brought Shinseki into the national spotlight, calling it “an appealing narrative,” but that the “facts as we know them are not nearly so complimentary to the retired Army chief.”
McIntyre asserts that Shinseki never recommended more troops for Iraq, but that “as Army chief of staff, it wasn’t really part of his job to take part in direct war planning.”
“According to senior military officers who were in the pre-war meetings, Shinseki never objected to the war plans, and he didn’t press for any changes.”
McIntyre thinks that Shinseki owed it to the president to give his “best military advice. And if he felt strongly enough that the advice was not being taken, he could have resigned.”
As a fan of Shinseki’s with an admitted bias towards him, reading pieces like McIntyre’s and the one by TIME’s Mark Thompson (previous post) makes me defensive. It also made me wonder if I should even post negative articles on this site. But let’s take the bad with the good and consider some structural explanations for the criticism.
First, it comes off as simplistic that Shinseki should have resigned if the president wasn’t listening. In a complex organization, a champion for change doesn’t simply resign because his advice isn’t heeded. A leader must consider the most responsible choices that benefit the people he or she serves, in this case the soldiers and the American people.
On this point, I have faith that Gen. Shinseki knew what he was doing in reserving his criticism of the Bush military strategy. And on issues related to life and death, between an Army Chief of Staff and a military correspondent, I’ll take the chief.
