President Nixon’s “Blue Ribbon” panel on defense reorganization has produced a plan that reads like something drafted by McNamara holdovers in the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy. Gilbert W. Fitzhugh, chairman of the Board of Metropolitan Life, was chairman of the panel. His understanding of how wars are won seems no better than Robert S. McNamara’s grasp of military reality. Mr. Fitzhugh apparently doesn’t realize that wars are won by generals and admirals, not by grey-flannel field marshals with expertise in management.
If the Fitzhugh panel recommendations are accepted by Congress (which seems unlikely), the principal result will be a new layer of civilian bureaucracy over the nation’s combat forces.
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