Letters to the Editor
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Retired Flag Officers are Furious
Mark Benjamine doesn't mention a much larger group of retired flag officers who are furious with the Bush administration and believe that its polices are destroying the military. Before Senator John McCain collapsed and allowed the administration to institutionalize certain forms of torture, more than forty retired generals and admirals lobbied fiercely against this disastrous new legislation, which the president has just signed into law.
These men believe that every American serviceman has been put at risk by the administration's willingness to fudge our obligations under the Geneva Conventions. They also think that the command and control system of the Army has been destroyed by the administration's failure to prosecute any higher-ups for the appalling abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
Retired Brig. Gen. James P. Cullen was chief judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. He told me that he "grew up in an Army where the rules were very clear and where serviceman and women had no question about what their obligations and responsibilities were under both the Geneva Convention and our domestic law. When you have a winking-and-nodding policy [as was the case at Abu Ghraib], that just brings about the consequences that we came to view at [the prison]."
What further fuels the officers' outrage is the fact that the policies that have undermined the military were mostly formulated by men like the President who have never seen combat.
"[Vice President Dick] Cheney made mention in the days after 9/11 that he wanted to operate sort of on the dark side," Cullen said. "Here was a guy who never served, and now something terrible had happened, and he wanted to show that he was a tough guy…. So he's going to operate outside the rules of law. Bad message."
[For more about this group, see my piece in the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-kaiser24sep24,0,4792574.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary ]
And while it is certainly true that the officer corps is now overwhelmingly Republican, these genernerals and admirals told me that was not always the case: thirty years ago, it was much more evenly divided between the two major parties.
Sincerely,
Charles Kaiser
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Drop your stars on the desk
The discussion regarding military duty and political descent is an important one, particularrly given the huge dependence that the US has developed on the use of military forces in the implementation of foreign policy. The traditions of the services and the Uniform Code of Military Justice both powerfully inhibit the public expression of political opinion by active members of the military services. This is as it must be. Public arguments over policy by military officers would inevitably damage the essential cohesion of our military forces.
However, every military officer has the option and in fact, the responsibility to resist illegal or unconscionable orders. While the procedure for doing so is simple, it requires self-sacrifice and courage beyond what is typically called for in other professions. You resign your commission, assuming your obligated term of service has expired (generally after 4 years service). That may result in the loss of retirement benefits and place the officer's family in precarious social and financial straits, but it is an obligation that comes with the true patriotism that is assumed by military service. We expect our men and women in the military to sacrifice their lives if necessary, in defense of the country. The hazards associated with finding new employment are hardly so dire.
Imagine if General Tommy Franks, back in February of 2003, had the courage to drop his stars on Rumsfeld's desk after his unsuccessful attempts to secure enough troops for a sure victory and an orderly transition in Iraq. Imagine if a couple of the service chiefs had joined him in his dramatic gesture. A press conference the following day, explaining his resignation, conducted in civilian dress, could have changed history, saved hundreds of thousands of lives and averted a national security disaster. Military history will not be kind to Tommy Franks for his failure to take what he knew at the time to be the right, patriotic course of action.
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Eggs and Omelets
On the hospital ward where I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam, the wounded grunts used to joke about finding the light at the end of the tunnel there by asking each other: Would the last soldier leaving the country, please remember to turn off the lights? But at least in Vietnam only half of the country hated us.
I found this article highlighting two retired U.S. generals calling for a Democratic takeover in the midterm elections as being rather naive and myopic, given Salon's reported status as the premier online magazine for politically incisive analysis.
Retired generals Batiste and Eaton are part of the problem rather than the solution. They have only to look at General Eric Shinseki, if they really want to see an example of moral leadership. During the hysterical propaganda campaign for this war, he testified before a congressional committee and stated at least 200,000 troops would be needed for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Of course, he knew at the time that he was falling on his sword, effectively committing career suicide; and soon afterwards Rumsfeld forced him to retire early as Army Chief of Staff.
And all the Republicans and Democrats, who voted in Congress for the war resolution on Iraq, are also part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The most promenient politicans in this class are the usual johns: John Kerrey, John Edwards, John McCain and John Murtha. And one must also include Hillary Clinton. They all voted for the war resolution, which will be noted by historians as a failure of moral leadership last seen during the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. And we all remember how that resolution went for that war. Or do we? As Gore Vidal observed in one of his essays, we live in "The United States of Amnesia."
What difference does it make if the Democrats regained majority leadership in the House of Representatives and passed legislation to augment the volunteer army with a 100,000 more soldiers? Where are we going to get those soldiers to volunteer for military service? From the editorial staff of Salon and The National Review? Somehow I don't think so. But perhaps I am being just a tad bit cynical about how most Americans really feel about military service to their country. That is unless there is a resumption of a national draft, which would go over politically about as well as a resumption of testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere. Yes, my future is so bright, I have to wear sunglasses at night.
About two years I was standing in a check-out line at a grocery store where the TV sets were tuned to CNN. There was a report about a horrific car bombing at an outdoor market in Baghdad. The man in front of me turned around and said, tapping a cartoon of eggs in the front basket of his cart, "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs."
"Well, Sir, I can see you have never been an egg," I replied, giving him my imitation of Jack Nicholson smiling in "The Shining." General Patton left me alone after that.
Unlike the vast majority of hardcore American civilians,who have never been experienced war or for that matter even a good bar fight, I have been an egg and didn't like the prospect of being part of an omelet.
And the vast majority of generals and politicans, who support war, die in bed rather than on the battleground. But that's the real problem with wars in general, the soldiers are always shooting at the wrong people.