Washington’s Iraq policy is now under attack from US military men. Retired generals are demanding the 73-year-old Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s removal. They are questioning the manner in which the “arrogant and wrong-headed” defense secretary has conducted the war. More specifically, his dismissive attitude toward feedback has been heavily criticized. Predictably the White House has led the Rumsfeld defense. It has dismissed the generals’ criticism arguing that the army must function under civilian control. That the generals discontent is unjustified and also unconstitutional. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at the Pentagon “People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld.” This defense is not surprising. Rumsfeld is the chairman’s boss. He is also Bush’s pointman on US war on Iraq and by extension the war on the Iraqi people.
This military criticism is significant for two reasons. First, for what it raises both within the realm of civil-military relations. Second, for what it establishes as a role of US military in botched-up military operations.
Obviously there are legal frameworks that firmly uphold civilian supremacy over the military, as does Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under this article, any US military officer who “uses contemptuous words against the president, the vice president, Congress, the secretary of defense” or other officials is to be court-martialed.
The popular US Gen. MacArthur did cross the line set by Article 88 during the Korean War. His repeated criticism of President Harry Truman’s handling of the war cost him his command. Truman’s ratings fell to the 20s and there was talk of Truman’s impeachment. The MacArthur-Truman affair, however, was an aberration, not the rule.
Yet subsequently there was disquiet about the quiet of the US Army in a controversial and lost war in Vietnam. Some US military historians argue that the army’s failure to challenge Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and other civilians over the handling of the Vietnam War has “haunted some of the generals.”
According to professor Dennis Showalter of Colorado College, “If the military is always fighting the last war, well, in the last big war, in Vietnam, the generals stayed quiet and that’s now seen as a mistake.”
It is more than just criticism from retired generals. Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, a retired Marine maintained in his Time magazine essay that he was writing “with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.”
Some critics of the generals’ statements view it as an attempt to undermine civilian leadership. They argue that this criticism is undermining the army’s reputation of being nonpartisan and of being “above the fray.” This unprecedented criticism from the army reflects the restiveness within the ranks about a botched-up war.
Some view this as the first signs of even retired army generals deviating from the norm of “no comments” on the conduct of war. Yet this expectation of “no comments” from increasingly complex and challenging war zones is unrealistic. If the ground situation continues to throw up sustained losses, the men on the front lines supported by many critics at home will speak up.
More than 2,220 US soldiers have died in Iraq. And over 30,000 Iraqis.
Added to these losses, is the fear and hate-loaded battle ethos that has been promoted by Washington’s war leaders. It is an ethos that dehumanizes the adversary promoting almost a brutal means to battle. It leaves a trail of inhuman practices and approaches used in the war. Abu Ghraib abuses, friendly— fires killing the innocents and the US troops targeting innocent civilians including a newborn baby girl, her mother and four other civilians.
Two separate incidents happened on April 17 in troubled eastern Afghanistan. Similarly a woman, who was returning home from a clinic where she had just given birth, the baby and two other women were hurt late Monday when the US soldiers fired at their car after the driver ignored orders to stop in Khost province. The mother was hit in the chest while the other women suffered bullet wounds. There were no details of the baby’s injury. A day earlier in Khost, US soldiers fired at a lorry that refused to halt at a checkpoint and injured the driver and a six-year-old boy. Three days earlier coalition forces killed seven civilians during a gun-battle with suspected Taleban militants in the eastern province of Kunar.
Such excesses must take place in Iraq on a much larger scale.
There is enough out there to outrage the sensitive soldiers and also to make them question the logic of the war. They cannot come out openly to oppose the war. Yet high-profile former military men are joining the criticism chorus of the Congress, media and of organized groups. This will make the war in Iraq and Bush more and more unpopular and force a gradual reduction of US troops in Iraq.
