Martin Dempsey leaves the stage

Chief Tango sends us a link to Politico that pays tribute to the 40 years of service of Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who retired last week;

At the end of a long and storied career in uniform Dempsey was in a reflective mood, and the one reality he could not escape was just how much war and conflict there still was to be fought, and how many memorials to the fallen had yet to be erected.

I supported Dempsey up until he started blaming US troops’ lack of cultural sensitivities towards Afghans for the green-on-blue attacks of 2012. Folks in Afghanistan were telling me that their commanders had been told that some US troops in the war zone weren’t allowed to arm themselves with live ammunition out of deference to their allies who they were supposed to trust, but obviously, couldn’t. He helped to make US troops targets for the Taliban sympathizers in the Afghanistan National Army and Police ranks. On top of making them targets, he wouldn’t blame the actual perpetrators – he blamed the victims.

Of course, since then, there have been a hundred reasons to condemn Dempsey’s service as the Chairman. As recently as a few months ago, he said that the fall of Ramadi, Iraq was inconsequential and would be taken back by the Iraqis. Well, the Iraqis have been trying to take it back and they’re bogged down – it’s much harder to attack than to properly defend a town. Every private knows that.

Forty long years of effort—and yet now at the end Dempsey is blunt in admitting that some things are actually worse than when he started his unusually long four-year tenure as a member of the Joint Chiefs

Typical of Dempsey, actually. Instead of doing the hard work to fight the war, Dempsey would much rather reminisce about his failures. I’m glad he’s gone, but I’m pretty sure his legacy will be the near-irreparable damage he did to the political structure at the Defense Department while he was there.

Category: Big Pentagon