General (Ret.) Hugh Shelton was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Clinton and Bush, now devotes his considerable energy and intellect as chairman of Red Hat, Inc., and director of L-3 Communications. In a candid interview near his home in North Carolina, Shelton shared his views on the military and its culture, foreign affairs in Afghanistan, Iraq, as well as his thoughts on the state of risk in Iran and Pakistan, and what military flag officers need to do to prepare themselves for board director duty. Here is an excerpt from the interview that will be published in the January/February issue of NACD Directorship.
In your book, Without Hesitation, you were deeply critical of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq war planning. What was wrong with his thinking?
General (Ret.) Hugh Shelton
In Iraq, we have seen that while you can extrapolate lessons from other military engagements, you can’t take a cookie cutter approach. We had a very successful operation going into Afghanistan and it was successful because on the ground in Afghanistan was the Northern Alliance, the indigenous fighters, and they had been at war for years. They could get close to winning against the Taliban but they could never quite get over the hump, so the idea [Former CIA Director] George Tenet and I had was take our special ops guys who were the only troops in the world trained to go in and take over an indigenous force and fight with them, and bring the high-tech pieces of the battle to them.
When we went into Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took some of that logic but applied it to a very different set of circumstances when he said in effect, “We don’t need all these troops so we’ll pare down this war plan that’s on the shelf and get it down to almost nothing and go in and we’ll kick Saddam [Hussein] out.” But as King Abdullah of Jordan told me, ”what you need in order to stabilize Iraq is an individual that has some of Saddam Hussein’s ability to manage these different religious and cultural factions but who is a good leader who doesn’t abuse his people—if you can find someone like that. But you’ve got to have a strong man to keep them apart because if you don’t, they’ll go to war with each other.” Rumsfeld just didn’t want to hear that, he had a different mission and that was to prove to the world that he could go in and win this war with a small force. As he and [General] Tommy Franks [Commander of the United States Central Command] both found out, it fell apart days after we beat Saddam because no one could keep these factions apart. We also took out their police, dismantled their military, and now we wonder who runs the country? If you break it you own it!
You were critical of the detainee program in Guantanamo. The flip side says the federal courts will tie it up forever. What’s the right way to deal with this?
It’s not a simple issue but the problem I have with Guantanamo is we should not bring people, terrorists or anyone else, into Guantanamo and let them serve the rest of their life there without some kind of due process. I fully agree with bringing prisoners, of bringing individuals that have been captured like in Afghanistan that we think are terrorists, into Guantanamo, try them and dispose of them in a just manner, whether it’s to the gallows or whether it’s to freedom, but not keep them there for five or ten years without some kind of process. That bothers me. I picture myself, for example, being thrown into an Iranian prison…
Meaning what happens when the tables are turned…
Yes. And I think it’s the same thing when it comes to water boarding. I don’t want to see our own troops water boarded. I think we need to comply with the Geneva Convention and the rules of land warfare.
Jeff Cunningham writes about leadership and business, boards and corporate governance. He is the founder of Directorship magazine and currently serves as managing director and senior advisor to NACD. Previously, he was president of the Internet venture firm CMGI, publisher of Forbes and managing partner of the U.K. private equity firm Schroders. He has served as an independent board chair or director of 10 public companies.
Great comments, General. Thank you for your service.