General distress

Diplomat Richard Holbrooke gives his own take on what he calls "the most serious public confrontation between the military and an administration since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951": Behind the Military Revolt Washington Post 04/16/06.

Have the Bush fans started saying yet how deeply, passionately committed they are to the democratic principle of civilian control over the military? If they haven't already, it can't be too far off.

Holbrooke's analysis of Bush's dilemma isn't that far off from Axis Pat Buchanan's. But Holbrooke explains it much better:

[I]tis also clear that the target is not just Rumsfeld. [Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Greg] Newbold hints at this; others are more explicit in private. But the only two people in the government higher than the secretary of defense are the president and vice president. They cannot be fired, of course, and the unspoken military code normally precludes direct public attacks on the commander in chief when troops are under fire. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course: In addition to MacArthur, there was Gen. George McClellan vs. Lincoln; and on a lesser note, Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, who was fired for attacking President Jimmy Carter over Korea policy. But such challenges are rare enough to be memorable, and none of these solo rebellions metastasized into a group, a movement that can fairly be described as a revolt.)

This has put President Bush and his administration in a hellish position at a time when security in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating. If Bush yields to the generals' revolt, he will appear to have caved in to pressure from what Rumsfeld disingenuously describes as "two or three retired generals out of thousands." But if he keeps Rumsfeld, he risks more resignations - perhaps soon - from generals who heed Newbold's stunning call that as officers they took an oath to the Constitution and should now speak out on behalf of the troops in harm's way and to save the institution that he feels is in danger of falling back into the disarray of the post-Vietnam era. (my emphasis)

We keep hearing talk about serving generals resigning in protest. I'll believe it when I see it.

There just hasn't been a tradition in the US military of resignation in protest. And what will the generals be resigning to protest? That they don't like the people that the public elected to head the civilian government? They have good reason not to like them, of course.

Will one of them resign and say publicly that he refuses to be part of war planning for a nuclear strike on Iran that would violate American and international law? And that would also be immoral under any reasonable notion of "just war"?

Or will they resign and say that Bush and Rummy refused their recommendations to pour even more troops into the sinkhole of the Iraq War? That Bush and Rummy decined to flatten even more cities like Fallujah? Or to escalate the bombing even more than they're already doing?

The best thing about Holbrooke's column on this is that he doesn't let the military off the hook for recent failure - and worse:

Many people besides Rumsfeld were deeply involved in the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan; many of them remain in power, and some are in uniform.

The Iraq War in particular has revealed some really serious problems in the uniformed military, and some severe failure of the command structure, e.g., the torture at Abu Ghuraib. They shouldn't be brushed under the table, no matter how many guilty generals insist that to criticize them is "anti-military" or a sign of not supporting "the troops".

Holbrooke is being an optimist. He compares the current situation to, uh, the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive of 1968, although being a diplomat he's too delicate to mention that particular event. Rather, he talks about the replacement of Robert McNamara with Clark Clifford as Defense Secretary at that time. Here's the optimistic part:

That first White House reaction [supporting Rummy to the hilt] will not be the end of the story. If more angry generals emerge - and they will - if some of them are on active duty, as seems probable; if the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan does not turn around (and there is little reason to think it will, alas), then this storm will continue until finally it consumes not only Donald Rumsfeld. The only question is: Will it come so late that there is no longer any hope of salvaging something in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Okay, he's not that optimistic. He's not arguing that victory is in our grasp. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, his highest hope is for "salvaging something".

In the Iraq War, we could still probably get American forces out by the end of 2006 without being forced into a retreat under fire. And we could probably evacuate a lot of the people who risk being killed as American supporters after we leave, and put them in those refugee camps that Halliburton has been contracted to build in the United States.

But that assumes there is no American attack on Iran. And, if Seymour Hersh is correct, American soldiers are already there carrying out surveillance and sabotage operations. If we bomb Iran, even the hope of "salvaging something" will have to be downsized.

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