Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [352]
Many conventional Army officers considered the Special Forces to be undisciplined cowboys. It was not uncommon in military circles to hear them described as “hotdogs” who took too many risks, got into trouble, and needed to be rescued. General Shinseki, a combat infantry officer who had been wounded in Vietnam, made it clear to me he was not enthusiastic about the Special Forces and their capabilities. “No Special Forces soldier ever pulled me off the battlefield,” he once said to me.
The mistrust ran both ways, and the Special Forces folks were less than enthusiastic about Shinseki. For years Army Special Forces had been distinguished by their traditional green berets, which became their nickname. In a break from the past, Shinseki had insisted on requiring all Army personnel to wear berets. His decision was seen by many in the Special Forces and Army Rangers as devaluing their proud symbol.
Since 2001, I had made a priority of increasing the size, capabilities, equipment, and authorities of the special operations forces. By 2006, we had boosted their funding over 107 percent, doubled the number of recruits, and improved their equipment substantially.21 I authorized the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as a lead command for war on terror planning and missions. We provided the CENTCOM combatant commander the authority to transfer special ops units anywhere he deemed necessary in his area of responsibility. We shifted some of the tasks that Special Forces had historically been responsible for, such as training foreign militaries, to allow regular forces to do them as well. This freed up special operators for more upper-tier tasks—reconnaissance and direct-action missions. I also urged the Marines to create a special operations contingent, and in 2005 we established the Marine Corps’ special Operations Command (MARSOC).22 Even though these were historic changes for the armed forces, they were resented by those wedded to the conventional, traditional Army.
Pete Schoomaker was bright, tough, and impatient. In addition to expanding special operations, he decided to implement an idea that had been kicking around for some time but, at least until he arrived on the scene, had met resistance. Schoomaker and I wanted to convert the Army from a force of ten active divisions (of fifteen thousand to twenty thousand troops each) into a force of forty highly capable brigade combat teams (of three thousand to five thousand troops each), with additional combat brigades in the National Guard.23 Divisions had been part of a centuries-long Army tradition—commemorated with proud banners and songs, each with its own culture, history, and ethos. Divisions also tended to be organized around a central purpose—light infantry or artillery, for example. Often our country’s need was for only a portion of the sizable capability of an entire division. It was for readily deployable, smaller, more agile units rather than the full division strength. But the way Army divisions were organized, a small cadre of troops deployed from a division left the rest of the division inoperable. Despite the respect that properly existed for the proud histories of the divisions, modern warfare often calls for relatively more deployable fighting units of a smaller scale.
The successful transition to the modular Army that exists today and that Schoomaker and a new generation of Army officers championed has made a truly historic difference in its capability. The changes created self-contained and interchangeable brigades with their own organic elements such as artillery and infantry. The brigades can be deployed rapidly and work effectively alongside the other services. Sustained deployment of ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq has been made possible by this innovation. The successful conversion of the central Army maneuver unit from division to brigade has been described by defense analyst Robert Kaplan as “one of the most significant