Perspective: Will Gates Shake Up the Generals?

Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In October, he praised Rumsfeld as leading 'in a way that the good Lord tells him'

We are now at war, fighting for our lives, and we cannot afford to confine Army appointments to persons who have excited no hostile comment in their career," British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said during the early years of World War II. There are a growing number of U.S. senior military officers who hope there is a little Winston Churchill in Robert Gates. The incoming Secretary of Defense will take over not only two grinding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a top-level military brass that has, in the opinion of many officers, been too timid about demanding what was needed to win those wars.

The problem, say the uniformed and retired critics, is that outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand-picked every four-star commander, personally interviewed every significant three-star appointment, and, in a break with his predecessors, even selected some two-stars for a grilling. The result, many critics argue, is a group of generals who were too reluctant to stand up to Rumsfeld and possibly face getting tossed aside like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who was sidelined after saying that the Iraq war would require "hundreds of thousands" of troops.

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