[Mb-civic] MUST READ: Behind the Military Revolt - Richard Holbrooke - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Behind the Military Revolt
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By Richard Holbrooke
The Washington Post
Sunday, April 16, 2006; B07

The calls by a growing number of recently retired senior generals for 
the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the most serious 
public confrontation between the military and an administration since 
President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951. In that 
epic drama, Truman was unquestionably correct -- MacArthur, the 
commanding general in Korea and a towering World War II hero, publicly 
questioned Truman's strategy in Korea and had to be removed. Most 
Americans rightly revere the principle of civilian control over the 
military. But this situation -- to be more accurate, this crisis in 
civilian-military leadership -- is quite different.

First, it is clear that the retired generals -- six so far, with more 
sure to come -- are speaking for their former colleagues, friends and 
subordinates who are still inside. In the tight world of senior active 
and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue. Recent 
retirees stay in close touch with old friends, who were often their 
subordinates; they help each other, they know what is going on and a 
conventional wisdom is formed. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who 
was director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 
planning period for the war in Iraq, made this clear in an extraordinary 
article in Time magazine this past week when he said he was writing 
"with the encouragement of some still in positions of military 
leadership." He went on to "challenge those still in uniform . . . to 
give voice to those who can't -- or don't have the opportunity to -- speak."

These generals are not newly minted doves or covert Democrats. (In fact, 
one of the main reasons this public explosion did not happen earlier was 
probably concern by the generals that they would seem to be taking sides 
in domestic politics.) These are career men, each with more than 30 
years in service, who swore after Vietnam that, as Colin Powell wrote in 
his memoirs, "when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly 
acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons." Yet, as 
Newbold admits, it did happen again. In the public comments of the 
retired generals one can hear a faint sense of guilt that, having been 
taught as young officers that the Vietnam-era generals failed to stand 
up to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson, 
they did the same thing.

Second, it is also clear that the target is not just Rumsfeld. 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: Gen. George McClellan vs. Lincoln, and Maj. Gen. 
John Singlaub, who was fired for attacking President Jimmy Carter over 
Korea policy. But they are rare enough to be memorable, and none of 
these solo rebellions metastasized into a group, a movement -- in effect 
-- that can fairly be described as a revolt.)

This has put President Bush and the administration in a hellish 
situation, and at a time when the security situation 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 speak up and should now do so on behalf 
of the troops in the field and the institution that he feels is in 
danger of falling back into the disarray of the post-Vietnam era.

Facing this dilemma, Bush's first reaction was exactly what anyone who 
knows him would have expected: He issued strong affirmations of "full 
support" for Rumsfeld, even going out of his way to refer to the 
secretary of defense as "Don" several times in his statements. (This was 
in marked contrast to his tepid comments on the future of his other 
embattled Cabinet officer, Treasury Secretary John Snow. Washington got 
the point.)

In the end, the case for changing the secretary of defense seems to me 
to be overwhelming. I do not reach this conclusion simply because of 
past mistakes, simply because "someone must be held accountable." Many 
people besides Rumsfeld were deeply involved in the mistakes in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, and some of those people also remain in power, and many of 
those people are also in uniform.

The major reason the nation urgently needs a new defense secretary is 
far more urgent. Put simply, the failed strategies in Iraq and 
Afghanistan cannot be fixed as long as Rumsfeld remains at the epicenter 
of the chain of command. Rumsfeld's famous "long screwdriver," with 
which he sometimes micromanages policy, now thwarts the top-to-bottom 
reexamination of strategy that is absolutely essential in both war 
zones. Lyndon Johnson understood this in 1968 when he eased another 
micromanaging secretary of defense, McNamara, out of the Pentagon and 
replaced him with Clark M. Clifford. Within weeks, Clifford had 
revisited every aspect of policy and begun the long, painful process of 
unwinding the commitment. Today, those decisions are still the subject 
of intense dispute, and there are many differences between the two 
situations. But one thing was clear then and is clear today: If the man 
at the center of the military chain of command remains, the policy will 
not change.

That first White House reaction 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 to salvage something in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 
writes a monthly column for The Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401451.html?nav=hcmodule
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