Adm. Mike Mullen and the man who replaces him Friday as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are just five years apart in age but their experiences are different in ways that represent a dramatic shift at the top of the nation’s armed forces.
Mullen, 64, the last of six chairmen whose careers were first defined in combat in southeast Asia, spent time as a young ensign off the coast of Vietnam on the destroyer USS Collett in 1968, firing 5-inch guns with such intensity that the barrels melted from the heat/.../
The son of a Hollywood publicist, Mullen, “sort of breaks the mold” of post-Vietnam War leadership exemplified by Gen. Colin Powell, the first Joint Chiefs chairman from among those who served as young officers in Vietnam, Nagl said. Powell, the nation’s top military officer during the 1990-91 Gulf War, was known for the doctrine bearing his name that suggests the U.S. should only commit military force in situations where the objectives are clearly defined and supported by political leaders.
The Powell Doctrine came out of the painful experience of seeing the armed forces – particularly the Army – shattered by eight years of futile combat in southeast Asia and the loss of public support at home. Vietnam was a counterinsurgency that went bad, and leaders who survived the conflict wanted to avoid similar ones in the future, said Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and author of “The Army and Vietnam.”
“There was I would say an effort at collective amnesia,” he said.