Revolt of the Wimpy Generals Explained

books:

	• Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander Rowan Scarborough Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004 - 276 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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Why is he still the Defense Sect.?

I have not finished it yet as it is a lot to digest

Revolt of the Wimpy Generals Explained

Though Rowan Scarborough wrote this book a good two years before a half dozen retired generals decided to publicly reveal their lack of the necessary intestinal fortitude to bandy sharp words with a septuagenarian, his book makes the reason for their incessant whining crystal clear: as a boss, Donald Rumsfeld is a real hard-ass.

He doesn't suffer fools, he won't tolerate public disloyalty, he figures that anyone younger than he is can work his hours, and if he doesn't think you know what you are talking about, he will call you on it. Now one doesn't have to universally endorse this style of management (I doubt that I'd enjoy working for him, and he'd clearly be a disaster managing a bunch of sensitivity trainers) to realize that if it can work anywhere, it ought to work at the Pentagon. Rummy's direct reports are people whose job description involves sending people out to fight and kill and die; if they're too intimidated to defend their positions in a meeting, why should we believe them capable of defending their country on a battlefield?

To his credit if you think Rumsfeld is wrong and are willing to stick to your guns and show him where he is wrong, he'll not only back off, but he'll respect you for it. As Scarborough quotes Newt Gingrich saying, "I think that one thing that made Tommy Franks so successful was that Franks figured out in the second or third meeting that we just got to go toe-to-toe and disagree or I'll never get anywhere with this guy. And as a result they developed a very good relationship."

All in all a fascinating read. Defects? If you take away the Acknowledgements, the Index, the blank pages, and the 65 pages of blatant padding labeled Appendix, you have a total of 164 pages of fairly large type laid out in such a way that there are about 10 less lines per page than in books of comparable size. I don't remember if there were any prepublication excerpts printed in newspapers like Scarborough's Washington Times, but if they weren't careful, they could have accidentally printed the entire book in less than a week! Frankly there is more biographical material about Rumsfeld in James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet despite the fact that it covers five more people than this slim volume! Maybe sometime in the future, Mr. Scarborough will get around to expanding this glorified feature article into a full biography of arguably the most influential SECDEF in US history.

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Ótimo livro. Merece ser lido.

Ótimo livro. Merece ser lido. É um livro abrangente, pois aborda fatos históricos acontecidos com o protagonista, deixando de somente preocupar-se com os fatos atuais. Mostra claramente o emaranhado do poder existente no Capitol e também na Casa Branca. Desconsidera qualquer tipo de importância latente, atual ou mesmo futura, da América Latina. Resume a abordar tendências estratégicas dos EUA e potenciais interesses nas áreas críticas do mundo atual. Recomendo a leitura.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Here is the untold story of how Rumsfeld shookup the military brass and outmaneuvered national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other administration officals to remake America's military into Special Forces-driven institution.

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