Rumsfeld vs. the Generals

In 2004, the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” left a legacy that was not so much honorable as it was disgraceful. Their ruthless negative campaigning proved so effective that “Swift Boating” instantly became synonymous with dirty, character-assassination politics. With great vigor since then, right- and left-wing pundits alike happily cash in on “Swift Boating” their opponents. But not since the run-up to the 2004 elections have politics taken such a bizarre turn as recently, when 9 former military generals spoke out in unison against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, calling for his retirement, and were immediately castigated as gutless, treasonous, whiny brats who were engaging in political grandstanding. Say what?

Retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, veteran of the Iraq war, criticized Rumsfeld for “micromanaging” the generals on the ground, and for committing insufficient forces to key missions and objectives. Retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold lamented that “the cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood.” Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste - who led the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Iraq - called for “a fresh part in the Pentagon. We need a leader who understands team work, a leader who knows how to build teams, a leader that does it without intimidation. A leader that conforms and practices the letter and the law of the Goldwater-Nichols Act.” (The Goldwater-Nichols act was legislation passed in 1986 that streamlined and strictly enforced the chain of command in all branches of the military) Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, and Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni — a former chief of U.S. Central Command — reiterated many of these claims. While their opinions were in concert with one another, it seems logical to conclude that they were compelled to speak not for political or self-aggrandizing motives, but out of an honest concern with the way the Iraq war specifically, and the Rumsfeld military generally, was being orchestrated.

In many circles, conservatism seems to have been replaced with Bushism. That is, that no matter the issue and no matter the facts at hand, obedience to and parroting of Bush administration opinions is the only legitimate position. This peculiar sort of derangement yields a number of peculiar consequences. The continued (and inarguably incorrect) belief that the NSA wiretaps were legal, for one example. The idea that Joe Wilson, and not Scooter Libby, was the real villain in the Plame leak, for another. And now, that veterans and Generals of the Iraq war, in speaking out against a chain of command whose failures they themselves have seen first-hand, are somehow disingenuous, dishonest, or speaking for purely political purposes.

The insults to these leaders come from a variety of strongly right-wing sources. The National Review - a fiercely conservative journal whose founder, William F. Buckley Jr., recently characterized the Iraq war and, by extension, Bush’s presidency, as “a failure” - ran a piece by one Victor Hanson, who brazenly assaults the Generals’ propriety, and accuses them of shilling for a profit. “The ethical questions involved in promoting a book or showcasing a media appearance during a time of war,” Hanson notes, is nothing compared to “the empty nature of these controversies rehashed ad nauseam.” One wonders what rank a military man must obtain before his opinions fall into the good graces of National Review correspondents.

While the general Bushist opinion is that the generals are to be ignored because of what they say, Paul Mirengoff of Powerline suggests that we dismiss them because of who they are: “mostly,” he writes, the generals are “Clinton appointees … who object to Rumsfeld’s pet theories of pushing towards smaller units, more unit independence, much greater reliance on Special Forces, and a reorganization of units to be self-sufficient rather than specialized.” Pay no mind to the fact that none of those supposed refutations address even in part the complaints the Generals had aired.

Other non-affiliated sources have helped fuel the fire. History News Network’s Judith Klinghoffer passes the buck from the Department of Defense to the Generals themselves, suggesting that the problems in the chain of command are the fault of the leaders on the ground. “Sorry, guys,” she concludes in an April 16 column, “civil control of the military is not our problem. Gutless military leadership is.”

I’m not astonished at negative politics - it would be naive of me to think that this was new or unprecedented. I am astonished, though, at how far the Bushist right-wing is willing to go with it. If in 2003 someone said that American conservatives would be attacking Iraq war Generals as gutless, unethical hacks, they would have been laughed out of the Beltway. And yet, here we are.