The Automatons and the Raw Meat: Rumsfeld's View of US Armed Forces

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Saturday November 26, 2005 · 6:16 PM PST

2005/11/26 · 18:16

I have a friend who's back from two tours and about to do a third. His term for the PNAC civilian yes-men Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have used to replace actual experienced, war-tested Pentagon brass: "The Automatons".

These are the special ones, the privileged ones, and almost none of them have been in combat situations. Indeed, many of them had no military experience before Rummy raised them from the dust.

Barring a bloodletting by whoever replaces Bush in office, the Automatons are the ones who will guide Pentagon policy for decades. And that's very bad news for America and its troops.

More on that after the jump.

As I mentioned up to, the Automatons are (unless they are replaced wholesale, and within the next decade) going to be the ones who will guide Pentagon policy for decades. Even as the rest of our armed forces are downsized as per Rumsfeld's policy (he believes that high-tech gizmos can do all our fighting for us, plus they don't need to be paid salaries, much less pensions), they will remain unless they are actually sent into combat (and Heaven help the troops they are sent to command).

You see, my friend sees Rumsfeld's current policy as designed to ensure that nobody -- aside from the well-bred, monied, PNAC-vetted, and/or lickspittlish drones destined to be new Automatons -- stays in the armed services long enough to draw a pension. That's why the VA is being gutted. That's why soldiers' pay is so low that many military families need to go onto food stamps or other kinds of public assistance. It's the Wal-Mart-ing of the US military, and it's destroying it from within.

Time was when the military tried to keep people on for as long as they could. They valued the concept of institutional memory. Rumsfeld, in his quest to remake the armed forces, is actively and deliberately destroying this institutional memory, just so it's easier for him to install his Automatons. Everyone else is just so much raw meat as far as Rummy's concerned. Which is why he has no problem with them getting used up in Iraq's meat grinder.
(Crossposted at Mercury Rising.)

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