PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE
Thomas E. Ricks
War Reporter Has Fighting Words For Obama, Military to Shape Up by Michael Coleman
T
homas E. Ricks, the Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and author of five books on American warfare, is a self-proclaimed fan of President Obama, but ask him about Obama’s performance as commander-inchief and you’ll get an earful.
Ricks, author of the 2006 bestseller “Fiasco,” which named names while scorching the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq, isn’t impressed with Obama as a wartime president, either. Now a senior advisor in the New America Foundation’s National Security Program, Ricks told The Diplomat that many of Obama’s military advisors are political “hacks” who don’t understand that generals aren’t political pawns. He blatantly says that former National Security Advisor Thomas E. Donilon, a longtime Washington operative and lawyer who served Obama from 2010 until June of this year, was “awful.” “I still am a fan of Obama, but I think he’s handled the military establishment very poorly,” Ricks said in a wideranging interview.“I have been bothered for a long time by the very narrowness of the background of Obama’s national security people. To a surprising degree, they are political hacks and [Capitol] Hill rats — former congressional staffers who see the world though a political lens and probably think Congress is much more important in national security affairs than it really is,” complained Ricks, who has reported on U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. “I don’t see diversity in the national security people and I see a highly politicized lens through which these people look at national security issues,” he continued. “You have domestic advisors — hacks out of [Obama’s hometown of] Chicago — much more involved in national security issues than in the past. “I think that Obama has been quite disappointing in national security issues,” Ricks said. The former Washington Post reporter isn’t optimistic about Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s tenure either. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, was narrowly confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February, but only after a bruising and embarrassing confirmation hearing that left him fumbling for answers on Iran, Israel and other subjects. Ricks called Hagel “a weak secretary of defense who had a horrible confirmation hearing” and said his nomination reflected ambivalence about the job from the Obama administration. “The signal it sent is basically we don’t really care,” Ricks argued.“I was surprised at how rough Senate Republicans were on Hagel. It showed a lack of thoughtfulness — [Obama advisors] weren’t talking to enough people to find out how Hagel would be received on the Hill.” Ricks doesn’t mince words or serve up political niceties. The reporter recently grabbed his own headlines during a Fox News interview in which he said the U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi had been “hyped” for political purposes, especially by Fox News, which he called “a wing of the Republican Party.” However, the old-school former newspaper reporter doesn’t seem to take sides in Washington’s partisan warfare. He told Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post that MSNBC had invited him to speak but
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Photo: The Penguin Press
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We owe it to the enlisted men to give them good leadership, but we don’t necessarily give it to them these days. — Thomas E. Ricks
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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author
he declined, telling them, “You’re just like Fox, but not as good at it.” Ricks’s no-nonsense writing has propelled him to the top of the media echelons. In addition to covering the Pentagon for the Washington Post from 2000 to 2008, Ricks wrote about defense for the Wall Street Journal for 17 years. When The Diplomat caught up with Ricks by phone, he was holed up in his “writing house” in Maine, where he is working on his sixth book, an analysis of the ways Winston Churchill and George Orwell helped shape the 20th century.The book, tentatively titled “Churchill, Orwell and the Making of the 20th Century,” is a departure for Ricks, whose previous books all focused on military affairs. “One’s on the right, one is on the left — they’re very different people — but they agree that there must be a way beside fascism and communism,” he said of the two subjects in his latest book. “They helped preserve liberal democracy.” Ricks also maintains a regular and award-winning online presence, penning the popular blog “The Best Defense” on Foreign Policy’s website.The blog is a compelling compendium of his thoughts on U.S. military policy, links to articles he finds interesting, and contributions from guest bloggers, including current combat veterans. The book that catapulted Ricks to literary fame was “Fiasco:The American Military Adventure in Iraq.” Published in 2006, at the height of the Iraq War,“Fiasco” was a devas-
tating indictment of the U.S. military’s handling of the conflict, and especially its failure to anticipate the Iraqi insurgency while using conventional warfare that actually fueled escalating hostility and bloodshed. “Fiasco” was particularly noteworthy for its slew of on-the-record interviews with military officials and use of thousands of government documents to show that the United States had planned poorly for the war and its aftermath. The book reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list and was widely credited for helping to transform public opinion about the war. Last year, Ricks released his latest book,“The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today.” The tome takes aim at a U.S. military culture that Ricks says tolerates, and even rewards, mediocrity in its leadership ranks. In the book, Ricks examines why more U.S. military generals aren’t fired or demoted for poor performance. His research led him to the policies of revered military icon Gen. George C. Marshall Jr., who served as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, secretary of state and secretary of defense and is widely credited for the Allied victory in World War II. Ricks found that of 155 men who commanded Army combat divisions in World War II, 16 were fired for their job performance under Marshall. “You had a removal rate of better than 10 percent,” Ricks pointed out. After the Vietnam War, only one U.S. general was fired for subpar performance. “The tradition was lost and didn’t come back,” Ricks said, lamenting that poor planning and bad decisions should have resulted in multiple firings during and after the Iraq War. “Coming out of Iraq, nobody got fired for anything and mediocrity was kind of a core value among American generals,” Ricks charged. “If you believe the U.S. Army, it’s like Lake Wobegon — all of our generals are above average.We know that’s not true. We’ve just fought two endless wars — our longest wars go on forever. They don’t seem to be
The Washington Diplomat
See Ricks, page 6 January 2014