General Chaos: Rumsfeld & His Generals on Both Sides of the Revolt
Retired Marine Lt. General Michael DeLong published a significant retort to the growing league of generals calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign. The piece titled "A General Misunderstanding" ran in the New York Times over the weekend as well as the International Herald Tribune today.
DeLong writes:
As the No. 2 at U.S. Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years. In light of the recent calls for his resignation by several retired generals, I would like to set the record straight on what he was really like to work with.When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Rumsfeld got it, and he carefully listened to our arguments. That is not to say that he is not tough in terms of his convictions (he is) or that he will make it easy on you (he will not). If you approach him unprepared, or if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day.
Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either, and he will always force you to argue your point thoroughly. This can be tough for some people to deal with. I witnessed many heated but professional conversations between my immediate commander, General Tommy Franks, and Rumsfeld -- but the secretary always deferred to the general on war-fighting issues.
Ultimately, I believe that a tough defense secretary makes commanders tougher in their convictions. Was Donald Rumsfeld a micromanager? Yes. Did he want to be involved in all of the decisions? Yes. But Rumsfeld never told people in the field what to do. It all went through Franks.
Many progressive pundits are jumping behind General Zinni and others to try and compel Rumsfeld to resign. I have to admit that I've been hoping and writing that Rumsfeld would step down or be fired for some time.
When America is out attempting to promote the kind of democracy in which accountability of government officials and securing the rights of political minorities are vital, Rumsfeld's employment as Defense Secretary seemed to say to the world the exact opposite. He has never been held accountable for either poor decisions in this war or the moral as well as logistical collapse of America's military forces.
Despite this, there are two interesting, less obvious, dimensions in this debate that have surfaced.
First, the President is clinging tenaciously to Rumsfeld. Why? What does this mean? When Rumsfeld and his management structure have produced failure in Iraq and moral collapse evident for the entire world to see in the photos that came from Abu Ghraib, what possible benefit could there be in Bush clinging to Rumsfeld? Ironically, Rumsfeld staying where he is aggravates many around the country and helps Democrats in their 2006 election efforts. Why is the President so stuck on Rumsfeld?
I really don't know, but this really needs further exploration.
Secondly, General DeLong -- who did report directly to Rumsfeld -- in his defense of the Defense Secretary raised the question of chain of command via Tommy Franks.
A retired General whom I cannot name -- but suffice it to say it is one of the "famous" former generals who served this country well -- wrote this interesting response in an email to Michael DeLong's op-ed:
The response from LtGen DeLong underscores what is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this whole "revolt of the generals" -- the schism it reveals in the mililtary chain of command.Not one of the six who've spoken out reported directly to Secretary Rumsfeld. General Zinni retired in 2000, a year and a half before Rumsfeld became SecDef.
LtGen Newbold was the J-3 on the Joint Staff, which by law is managed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of the Joint Staff. Riggs commanded 1st Army for the first few months of Rumsfeld's term, and thereafter was the Director of the Army's Objective Force Task Force until his retirement.
MG Eaton commanded the Military Assistance Training Team in Baghdad for a year, with at least one commander in the chain between him and Rumsfeld (Abizaid), and was in TRADOC for the rest of his overlap with Rumsfeld's tenure. And MGs Batiste and Swannack were division commanders in Iraq, with a corps commander (Sanchez, Metz, Vines, Chiarelli), the MNF-I commander (Casey), and the combatant commander (Abizaid) between them and Rumsfeld, not to mention the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Myers, Pace) who by law "serves as the spokesman for the commanders of the combatant commands, especially on the operational requirements of their commands."
Those who have come to the defense of Rumsfeld -- Pace, Myers, Franks, and now DeLong -- all sat or still sit much closer in the chain to Rumsfeld than those who have cited his leadership style, disdain for military advice, and meddling in military affairs as reasons he should be fired.
Given where each sat in the chain of command, their complaints about the Secretary of Defense amount to an indictment of every officer serving above them, and especially those now defending him. A piece by Fred Kaplan in Slate Magazine, "The Revolt Against Rumsfeld," includes the following passage:
Gen. Zinni referred to another book, a favorite of officers for nearly four decades now-Anton Myrer's 1968 novel, Once an Eagle. It's about two Army officers, friends from childhood, and their rise through the ranks -- Sam Damon, a straight-arrow field commander, and Courtney Massengale, a scheming Pentagon careerist.Gen. Zinni said the two characters are widely seen in his profession as symbols for the two types of military officer -- and the two paths of military promotion. He stopped short of saying so explicitly, but he suggested that the Pentagon's upper ranks contain too many Courtney Massengales and not enough Sam Damons.
To have retired generals from down the chain call for the firing of the civilian at the top seems to suggest that they have lost confidence in those in between, a sentiment that has surfaced in Loop discussions on this topic, to wit:
Has anyone considered the possibility that the Joint Chiefs might be in general agreement with the SECDEF and feel there is nothing to resign over?Forcing strategic policy changes on political leadership is, in my opinion, better left to the Chairman and Service Chiefs. There would be a horrific effect should one of these resign over policy. But isn't this exactly what our "six" are trying to do?
Uniformed officers can retire or resign in protest or whatever if they can no longer in good conscience, follow the orders of the officers and civilians appointed over them.
It saddens me to see the acrimony among the officers' corps. It clearly damages our esprit. The alternative, to sit silent while the nation goes down the wrong path, is worse.
Not only is it not wrong for a retired officer to publicly discuss the war, I think it is a moral obligation.
The Secretary ensures there is no open dialogue about important issues through those he places in key positions, especially JFCOM.
Since those who have spoken out were either never in the Rumsfeld chain like Zinni (and arguably Riggs) or several levels down the chain, what does their going public say about their confidence in the military commanders above them in the chain?
As the retired dissenters make the rounds of talk shows and submit to print interviews, I hope someone will take the trouble to figure out what each one's position was in the chain of command, then ask if they discussed their misgivings with those above them and what kind of feedback they received.
Secretaries of Defense have been fired before, but if there is a feeling among the two- and three-stars that those above them are all Courtney Massengales, we are seeing a real crisis in command.
The general purpose of the above email message from another of the nation's top retired general was to indicate some qualified support for Secretary Rumsfeld.
However, it is a thoughtful and respectful treatment of the right of retired generals to speak their mind -- but it's calling for the fuller story. What about the generals between them and the Secretary?
Did they speak out at the time? Did they challenge their superior officers and receive responses to their skepticism about decisions emanating from the SecDef's office?
No matter what one's views on whether Rumsfeld should stay in his post or be retired, this question about what happened in the chain of command is worth looking into.
Steve Clemons is Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.
DeLong writes - When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Rumsfeld got it, and he carefully listened to our arguments. So when I read - the people who needed to - I can't decide if this is a tautology, preaching to the choir or self-fullfilling prophecy at work here.
It just doesn't say much, in my opinion, especially when held against opinion such as reported by David Ignatius:
75% is a pretty big number. 25% would be a landfall for the antiwar folks. And remember, the other book cited by Kaplan (besides Once an Eagle) is Dereliction of Duty.
Neoboho
April 17, 2006 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
A military officer I recently spoke with equated statements by members of Congress that U.S. should pull out of Iraq and that the U.S. is losing the war with providing aid to the enemy. His reasoning was that the insurgent and Al Qaida propagandists were using the statements to their own advantage.
Given that we now have retired officers of significantly high rank criticizing Rumsfeld and, as the email above notes, the upper ranks of the military chain of command, will they be placed in the same category?
The unnamed general who wrote the email above highlights an important aspect of this discussion; where is going on in the upper-echelon of the military?
There have been plenty of on and off-the-record criticism of the administration's policies, much of it to little effect. The administration early on dismissed recommendations and warnings from high-ranking officers that have since come to pass. They even publicly humiliated Gen. Zinni when he spoke up in defense of the neer for greater numbers of troops.
Perhaps the Generals are concerned, rightly so, about appearing to disrupt civilian control of the military. Or perhaps there is more resistance afoot than we are aware of (leaks about Iran planning?). Either way there is little doubt that Rumsfeld has managed to inflict some of the damage the post-Vietnam military has been trying to prevent.
April 17, 2006 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
"A military officer I recently spoke with equated statements by members of Congress that U.S. should pull out of Iraq and that the U.S. is losing the war with providing aid to the enemy. His reasoning was that the insurgent and Al Qaida propagandists were using the statements to their own advantage."
First of all, any military officer using this logic is an idiot who should be removed from his command, as he obviously cannot function logically enough to be effective.
If you ARE losing the war, the enemy doesn't need the statements of your side to use to their advantage - they already HAVE the advantage.
If you AREN'T losing the war, then such statements are demonstrably false and useless to the enemy.
At best, the enemy can only "preach to the converted" - which is true about most propaganda that does not rely on the distortion of the facts. Propaganda that relies on distortion of the facts can be effective - but only when the facts are not known. Facts trump propaganda every time otherwise.
I think it is clear that, while the criticism so far has been all about the Iraq war and "accountability" for the mistakes made in that war, the real worry of the lower level officers and some of the senior level officers in the Pentagon is the upcoming Iran war. While the planners may not be concerned (planners are oriented to "what do we do?"), the war gamers have seen the possibilities (because war gamers are more concerned about "what will the enemy do?", and they are likely horrified at the consequences of attacking Iran.
This has percolated out to the retired generals who are the only ones able to speak out and not lose their careers.
Sy Hersh said as much when he refused to release the names of the generals he said were prepared to resign over the possible use of nuclear bunker buster bombs in Iran. He declared that this administration is a "punitive one" and that anybody whose name got out would be retaliated against.
As for the chain of command, criticism of the upper levels of the military has been endemic from former military officers for the last ten or twenty years, from Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko to Colonel David Hackworth. Everybody knows the upper levels of the military are rank with incompetents. The very nature of a bureacratic organization like the military encourages the "Peter Principle" - in spades.
Richard Steven Hack
www.computerproblemssolvedcheap.com
April 17, 2006 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the thorough breakdown of this story Steve. It is disconcerting, yet not surprising to consider that the problems with the military hierarchy are far greater than Rumsfeld.
I am most curious as to your first question - why in the world is Bush clinging to Rumsfeld? Beyond the standard "Bush values loyalty above all else", one can't help but wonder what's really at stake here. Many have sugested that if Bush axes Rummy that it would be an dmission of sorts that the entire war has been a mistake. I'm sure there's some truth to that, but it doesn't seem compelling enough to hang onto someone so obviously incompetent at his job.
I wonder if the truth might be closer to the reality recently revealed in the whole Plamegate leak scandal - that in fact Bush has actually had a much closer hand in what has been going on than even some hard-core anti-Bush-ites have suspected. What if it was Bush who insisted on fighting this war on the cheap from the start? What if it was Bush who decided that torture would be a good idea? What if it was Bush who decided that we would toss all the Bathists from the get-go? Tossing Rummy - who many people hold accountable for all those disastrous "strategies" - could prove quite perilous to Bush if it were to ever be revealed that he in fact ordered all or any of them.
April 17, 2006 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rumsfeld is on the record and wrong so many times that it's a little embarrassing that he has not be asked to resign--and given the Medal of Freedom.
Accountability is not a part of this administration. Remember Tenet's Medal of Freedom for all the false intelligence (he honestly thought they had it right but it was all wrong); Frank's Medal of Freedom for a quick war but uh he forgot to plan for the aftermath; Bremer's Medal for disbanding the Iraqi military and setting the stage for the current quagmire.
With this type of accountability its no wonder Rumsfeld's still there.
April 17, 2006 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
I wonder at Steve's sense of the significant! This is indeed a signal event in American History, but it will not be remembered for the stage managed retorts.
April 17, 2006 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
SherryB
I was just reading about the new American Embassy they are building right now in the middle of the green zone. Over a hundred acres, self contained water and power, security. It will be as big as Vatican City, in the middle of a war zone. It will cost over a billion dollars. The luxury suites for our government officials will allow them to live large amid the squalor and misery the average Iraqi is subjected to daily. If they don't already hate us, wait until they look through the bars at the city of light, a new Taj Mahal, in the center of their city, strewn with garbage, bombs going off, kidnappings, murders, undrinkable water, gas lines, part-time electricity, filthy hospitals, and no security-for them.
This will be the biggest embassy on earth. It's no wonder we are building all those permanent bases, we'll need to protect our billion dollar investment. Maybe the Generals see the folly of this and are getting out ahead of it. What a horrific mess we're in. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, unless we have a citizens revolt to go along with the Generals.
April 17, 2006 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
So what if the WSJ doesn't have a comics page. They do have that editorial page.
April 17, 2006 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately, this looks likely to degenerate into dualing generals, and the Neocrooks will pawn it off as just a disagreement between professionals, or some-such. In truth, there is no precedent for this in US history, and that includes MacArthur. There will always be factions within the military, and the only way one "clique" would go public against the other, is if it truly finds the others' transgressions to be grievous.
April 17, 2006 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
One additional thought: not all of Hitler's generals rebelled against him, either. Only those who could forsee calamity.
April 17, 2006 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
General Zinni retired in 2000, a year and a half before Rumsfeld became SecDef
Rumsfeld was appointed Defense Secretary as soon as the election was completed. Cheney knew who he wanted for that position before Election Day.
For a history of the Rumsfeld, Cheney and the SecDef state of mind read Michael Klare's "The Star Warrior Returns". This may help to explain why Rumsfeld is taking the hit: everything was his idea with a little help from his protege Cheney.
See "Keeping the Cold War Cold: Cheney at the Department of Defense."
April 17, 2006 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
The 75% of military officers that Wapo's David Ignatius estimates as the Grassroots of Rebellion, curiously enough, mirrors Zogby's poll of US troops in Iraq - 72%(?) want out now or by next year.
And Bush wants to attack Iran to keep em there? That is a National Security Strategy???
Small wonder the Generals are rebelling!
April 17, 2006 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Been thinking about this for some time,because it doesn't make sense on the face of it. Here is an idea that might fit:
It would be hard to convince Iran that any sabre rattling we do is real. What if the generals revolt was actually a ploy to convince Iran that there was an attack plan under consideration?
April 18, 2006 2:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
How nice. Steve's analysis of the outrage is that it represents a breakdown in the chain of command. Same blame the messenger nonsense the Bushies give out at criticism. I still await a single instance, anywhere, at any time, differentiating NAF from neocons, and I remain thoroughly disgusted at the access they're given here. Let's just get Rumsfeld as our next guest blogger and be done with it.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
April 18, 2006 8:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Knowing what you know of Richard Myers and Peter Pace, would you place high value on what they say? I have seen Richard Myers speak words that were simply not believable. The same with Peter Pace. If you were down the chain of command, you just might have the same view. The criticism of the retired generals should come as no surprise.
It is, indeed, their duty to speak out. They are citizens now, not part of the military, and citizens with experience who know whereof they speak.
Bush and Rumsfeld are turning away from their failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and moving on to "spread freedom" in Iran. The generals should be alarmed. Those in the Pentagon who are talking to Seymour Hersh are alarmed too.
As to why Bush hangs on to Rumsfeld, is it possible that he would have difficulty finding someone who would carry on with the mad schemes in place to pursue aggression against Iran?
April 18, 2006 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
According to Cobra II when Eaton presented the plan for going to war in Iraq in December 2001 the plan called for 500,000 troops. Rumsfeld expressed his annoyance during the presentation. Myers asked Rumsfeld what number he thought would be better. Rumsfeld pulled 125,000 out of the air. No one questioned this number. Eaton is quoted as berating himself for not speaking up even though he was the junior officer in the room. This made up number was not only conveyed to Franks but Franks had people from the Pentagon looking over his shoulder to make sure he was complying with Rumsfeld's number and ideas.
No wonder the generals, who did not like Rumsfeld prior to 9/11 are speaking up now.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
April 18, 2006 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Depends how you define "rebelled", which ranged from active (e.g., Beck) and passive (e.g., Rommel) in the attempted coup of 20 July 1944, to confronting Hitler at staff conferences (Guderian), to surrender (Paulus), etc.
April 18, 2006 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
It makes some sense to use the opposite reasoning, that is, how were those who were closer to the ground war feeling the effects of the leadership above them, and were they listened to?
That the generals defending Rumsfeld were closer to him does not necessarily mean that they are the authorities on how Rumsfeld's leadership affected those fighting the war and those leading them closer to the ground.
This issue goes back to the reason why the guardsman who piped up and asked Rumsfeld about the promised armor for the Humvees needed help from a reporter. When an autocratic authoritarian leadership style is running the show, it is not necessarily the freedom to speak up to him as much as the consequences for doing so without the public glare watching that measures the meaning of the "open door."
April 19, 2006 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your example points out that having reporters drive actions is not necessarily a sane way to run wars, Rumsfeld or no Rumsfeld. Not all Humvees have the suspension or cooling system to be armored; there are Humvees designed to be armored and others intended to move in the interior of a convoy.
With all military vehicles, there is a constant tradeoff between protection, speed and firepower. If something is so armored that it can't move, it becomes vulnerable. I know very professional soldiers who will not wear full armor on certain missions, claiming that in Iraqi weather and with the need to move quickly in a firefight, the additional weight increases the chance of heat exhaustion, lets them carry less ammunition, and reduces their ability to maneuver.
There are times where the people that should get the most attention are the career NCOs and others that are close to the ground, but also have a little more of a big picture than an individual soldier.
April 19, 2006 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to be a ubiquitous Bush Administration excuse
for everything that hurts that we're in a war. But, in
fact, we are acting as if we are at war with a global
system akin to Communism, not Jihadists. The threat to
our survival is an"axis of evil," the thesis goes,
serving "Islamofascism," to use Frank Gafney's
favorite word. Our lone outpost status is invoked by
many neocon think-tanks, insisting that so far we lost
Europe to "Islamrope" so it is imperative that we and
Israel win in the Middle East.
I'm not surprised that President Bush refered to Iraq
aplenty in his State of the Union address and sought
to deflect despair by pointing to our success in
Afghanistan as lodestar to our prospective success in
Iraq only if we persevere. I recommend that he pass
out the Kool-ade so we too can wash that down, lest we
be unable to swallow his Afghan-Iraqi analysis. At the
Defense Dept. it is said of military men who spout the
Rumsfeld-Cheney line that they "drank the Kool-ade."
Surely many did. As one begins to hallucinate one
finds one's self thus earning another star before
retiring.
A Democrat, today, would be jubilant. Mr. Bush seems
to be stuck at a 39% approval rating for months
now-- despite his speech-making blitz-- and the
sticking point, according to the pollsters, seems to
be Iraq. While no one could rejoice at the sad fate of
Iraqis, American soldiers and international relations
in general as a result of Mr. Bush following his gut--
he now denies that he ever invoked God as his guiding
policy voice-- one can take some small comfort in the
obvious fact that the American people were not taken
in by his word-smiths' efforts to make him seem, "in
charge." White House Assistant Dan Bartlett had said
on PBS, last month, that the American people expect
President Bush to prove that-- his words-- he "can
walk and chew gum" at the same time. Apparently, he
could not convince more that 39% of us. More
interesting, when asked who should lead America in a
new direction, only 25% said Mr. Bush but 52% said
Congress!
To understand how this came about, though in its last
term Congress was notorious for little more that
outrageous pork bills and is awaiting anxiously for
the Abramoff revelations, we should really take note
of how the Bush Administration, led by a self- avowed
"war president," handles war. A good insight comes
from the court scribe, of all people, Bod Woodard. His
two books, "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack"
dubiously place the President in the middle of things,
making decisions, but clearly the National Security
Council therein seems to fly by the collective seat of
its pants as if he were not there to make decisions.
We now also have a number of other
books from officials that add to the story
confirmation of at least my worst nightmares, leading
me to rue my past heart and soul support for Mr. Bush.
But, all the deceptions and untruths aside, the one
big question the Bush Administration never answered is
why did we thin out in Afghanistan without finishing
it off and proceeded to Iraq, where we've been stuck
in a tar pit, losing blood and money, only to be now
preparing to pull out empty-handed?
In the meantime, Afghanistan looks more and more like
a place where the Taliban decided to come back, stand
and fight, according to TERRORISM MONITOR of the most
reliable Jamestown Foundation. And Iraq looks more and
more like a place where we may be forced to choose
between Iran and alQaeda turning off the lights after
we leave.
I would argue that Mr. Bush unashamedly took the
policies John Kerry and the Democrats advocated during
the 2004 campaign and made them his own. But by then
the patient had already long been in the intensive
care unit mismanaged. What might have turned a crash
into the rocks for Uncle Sam into a soaring flight to
success in 2004, in 2006, may just be too little too
late. It thus seems that the Bush Administration seeks
to recapture public approval by November by simply
bringing back of a lot of the troops, period-- mission
UN-accomplished.
Back in 2003, I marveled at the yeoman's job the media
was doing exposing the current battered condition of
the Bush ship of state. What had from the start seemed
like a hermetically sealed vessel suddenly sprang
leaks at the waterline as middle level apolitic career
bureaucrats in government felt honor bound to let the
American people know what kind of "experts" are in
charge and what they are doing.
But after the 2004 election, Karl Rove decided to
spend Mr. Bush's "political capital" playing hardball.
Instead of just selectively giving "inside dope" to
favorite journalists, as LBJ used to do, Rove
threatened them all with loss of access if they do not
cooperate. In these days of 24/7 TV news, that's the
professional reporter's kiss of death. So the second
term saw many leaks unreported. Seymour Hersh, a
most prolific digger-upper journalist, recently
expressed utter despair at how the stories disappeared
from the media though the leaks are running as fast as
ever. But there is no need to despair. For, since the
leak to British media of utterly embarrassing
information-- the "Downing Street Memos"-- about how
the Blair Cabinet functions and then British
Ambassador to America Meyer's book, the British side
of the alliance in Iraq has been running like a fawcet
fully open and in print.
I was one of the early young conservatives there when
Bill Buckley started Young Americans for Freedom and
during the Goldwater Campaign. Together with the Cal
Conservatives for Political Action I helped take back
the UC Berkeley campus from the New Left in the 1960s.
I was also at one time the New Jersey Chairman of YAF.
But while there were many young conservative activists
and intellectuals back then that I will always admire,
I do recall that many were self-serving opportunists
who thought that the only way to succeed was to "think
outside of the box" and do things the opposition would
never think of. Mr. Abramoff and the K Street Project
indicate what "thinking outside the box" really means.
Corruption, graft and pork in Congress know no party
bounds. But what makes the K Street Project unique, it
seems, is that it takes the graft and spends it to
make a giant edifice, an institutionalized exclusive
Republican graft and influence peddling factory. On
the other side of the ledger, where one would hope
there would be ideas, national institutions and
policies that benefit America, Americans and the
globalized world, we get only the equivalent of toxic
brain damage from overindulging in Kool-ade. Such
incompetence I had never seen in US government. If one
were to drive a car with such reckless abandon, one
would invariably end up arrested for negligent
homicide. And yet, though it was THEIR collective sons
and daughters that died or were mutilated in Iraq (I
won't mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) the
American people as a whole did not
face-up to that reckless incompetence until it hit
close to home with the assault on America by Hurricane
Katrina. That made it obvious that the top doesn't
know what's happening at the bottom.
At this point, no one-- no matter how much one might
despise Bush and the people around him-- can possibly
want an American defeat in Iraq. The cost to mankind,
the Iraqis and we Americans is incalculable; such
madness as is seen in the Jihad institutionalized
suicide-murder and terror as the best and cheapest way
to overwhelm America's power.
Now things are desperate, somehow we must all
contribute to, in some way, finding a way out that
does the maximum good for Iraq and world security and
the minimum good for the terrorists.
In Mr. Bush's first term, he was desperately seeking
advice from academia, professionals and the public.
After 9/11, that despair became hysterical; yet, many
said: no way, you stole the election, now sink as
president. But the Ship of State, for better or worse,
is the ship we are all on. It sinks, we sink. That is
why Prof. Juan Cole and other academic colleagues in
social sciences, some experts on Eastern Europe,
sought to form bodies that remove from the president's
eyes the veil of ignorance. Alas, by the time their
scholars' operation got going, the Bush Administration
was already usurped by the Cheney- Rumsfeld
axis-of-utterly-incompetence. Misjudgements and
deceptions alternated, dragging America down, down,
down. At first there was hope in Mr. Bush's second
term, for he had locked Cheney in the basement and
turned to Condi Rice to lead him out of his blindness.
In Iraq, she let loose Amb. Kalilzad, who may yet make
the best of a bad situation. Academia should contact
her and offer her all the help it can to regain global
alliances lost to past mindless hubris.
But the biggest danger now is that Bush might have had
a point when, called on to think of how he will be
viewed by history, he simply said: who cares, by then
we'll all be dead; he thuoght that with time Americans
would treat it all as history, and that they find
boring. None of us will be dead by this November,
hopefully. And, if the Democrats take at least one
House of Congress, there is much hope that the public
will be treated to numerous investigations that today
are suppressed by a Republican majority of the types
that set the record straight on things the way they
set the record streight on domestic spying-- with
silence. We also need to know how many followed
Congressman Cunningham's criminal thinking "out of the
box" at the expense of our heroes in the field of
combat.
I was, am and will remain a Republican. A life as a
refugee from Communism taught me how to hope. But I
realize that the dream I dared dream of-- Republican
control of both the Executive and Congress-- is as
close as you can get to totalitarianism, ie.
incompetence covered by lies, covered by incompetence,
covered by lies....with power maintained by erosion of
power from where it ultimately belongs, in the hands
of the citizens. If we as a nation are lucky and
survive this vicious cycle of incompetence and
deception protected
by erosion of the citizen's power, one more repeat of
such a Bush Era and we will not survive as a free
nation. Whether it be Republican or Democrat, we need
to raise much higher the bar on the minimal cognitive
ability and statesmanship skills required. The Bush
Administration cannot be allowed to remain as a lesson
unlearned about intellectual and administrative
corruption and incompetence. I would hate to leave my
American children ignorance as a legacy, even if we
are at war.
The REAL problem is that the facts were always out
there for us to imbibe. Thus, those who don't know,
don't know only because they don't want to know. With
a Democrat Congress two things will happen: (1) the
foibles and failures of this Administration totally
drunk of Kool-ade will be paraded before the voters.
(2) The American people will thus have to face up to
what was done in their name and at their
responsibility. Perhaps then, they might realize that
alQaeda came nowhere near at killing American
democracy as we came at killing it ourselves.
The Bush Administration and Republican dominance of
Congress can only serve as a sort political flu
vaccine if we treat it as a history we must all learn
in detail. In truth, the Bush mantra-- getting them
there so they don't get us here-- was an
inappropriate, campaign gimmick that goes with the
self-anointed title "war president." In truth, Pogo
said it best: we have met the enemy and he is us.
Daniel E. Teodoru
April 19, 2006 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is more than clear that the Republican Party stands for nothing you may believe in, neither liberty, morality, responsibility, justice, opportunity, freedom nor peace.
Time is past to let go of outdated ideas of just what conservatism in America is today. It is death, destruction, fascism and deception. The party, and ideals you may have thought they once believed in, is no more. It is not coming back. Please wake up.
April 20, 2006 4:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
One can argue that neither party is ideological in a European sense. There are conservative (or "classic liberal") positions in the Democratic Party, and liberal (or "classic liberal") in the Republican.
Conservatism isn't monolithic. I might suggest that the kind with which many here have problems is one that is based theoretically on social and religious traditionalism, and tactically practices divisive and confrontational politics driven by fear, uncertainty and doubt. Karl Rove, I suspect, isn't especially an ideologue, but sees the ideological FUD as a tactical opportunity.
I can't say that I see clear alternatives from the Democratic establishment, such as it is. The party that reinvents itself may be the one that will have the long-term ride.
It is worth noting that I gave a 4 to Daniel's long post for its eloquence, if that is the right word. Let me simply say it is very thoughtful and introspective, good things for rational thinking. I need not agree with all his conclusions to find it a good post.
April 20, 2006 4:57 AM | Reply | Permalink