Posted on 05/25/2006 12:02:00 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Did you know that over half of Americans won’t mind us having a banana republic government structure? That’s what a Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics poll found last week.
Fifty-four percent of respondents said that our military should be run by military personnel, with only 20% coming out in favor of civilian control.
In over two years of being a complete news junkie, I have never seen scarier poll results than that. Don’t get me wrong, I have an enormous level of trust for our men and women in uniform. But the Framers of our Constitution weren’t exactly kum-bai-yah anti-military types either, and they established a bright line between the responsibilities of the civilians in the chain of command (the President and the Secretary of War/Defense) and the warfighters who were commanded.
Granted, the respondents were probably thinking about the narrow concern of war planning. But if we’re going to pretend that generals and admirals always have a great war plan (and history tells us otherwise) why not just dispense with having the President sign off on it? For example, why should an actor who never served in combat (Reagan), a draft-dodger (Clinton), or a former Lieutenant with no combat experience (Bush 43) tell the Joint Chiefs how to best deploy their forces?
He should because if a President elected by the people and his appointed secretaries (confirmed by the Senate) is telling them what to do, that means we the people are telling them what to do. If it’s the other way around, our new national anthem should be “The Banana Boat Song” by Harry Belafonte. We could even dispense with letting the Congress decide whether we go to war, where our forces are based or even what equipment they use. Let the generals nuke Iran, invade it or just pretend it doesn’t exist if that’s what they think is best. Talley me banana, baby.
Not coincidentally, the poll comes out as the current Secretary of Defense is under attack from seven Army and Marine generals who are demanding his resignation. Their claim is that Rumsfeld scrapped a perfectly good war plan for Iraq and crammed one of his own making down the throats of the military. But as far as integrity and credibility goes, a couple of these generals have major problems.
Take retired Marine General Anthony Zinni. He should have enormous credibility on the subject of Iraq, having been the commander of Central Command. He even planned and led the spanking of Saddam’s forces in 1998 known as Operation Desert Fox. Zinni says we didn’t have enough troops on the ground (possibly true) and didn’t anticipate the size of the insurgency, which is definitely true. The problem is he also criticizes the intelligence assessment prior to the war.
Why is that a problem, given the intelligence failures we’ve seen? Zinni isn’t just saying the intelligence was flawed, he’s repeating the “Bush lied” slander. He claims that Bush “had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support.” He went on to say that "The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there."
There is simply no way that a man as smart as Zinni really believes that Bush (and Clinton, and UN weapon inspectors and intel analysts in countries all over the globe) lied about WMD intel. He should know this because he was part of the “Saddam’s got WMD’s” chorus. In 2000, Zinni testified before Congress about the strategic situation in the Middle East. He called Iraq “the most significant near-term threat” in the region due to their “pursuit of WMD.”
“Despite claims that WMD efforts have ceased,” he continued, “Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions, … Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains the scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months. … The Iraqi regime’s high regard for WMD and long-range missiles is our best indicator that a peaceful regime under Saddam Hussein is unlikely.”
So much for General Zinni.
Another dissenting general is retired Army Major General John Batiste. Batiste says Rumsfeld is a disaster and has called him “contemptuous, dismissive and arrogant” toward career officers. But that’s not what he told his men when Rumsfeld visited them in Tikrit in 2004: “This is a man with the courage and the conviction to win the war on terrorism.” Sure, Batiste wouldn’t have criticized Rumsfeld in front of the troops, but why the flip-flop from courageous to contemptuous?
Sure, the generals aren’t a conspiratorial cabal, and they are all men of patriotic service. But the two most vocal ones definitely have an axe to grind, and all of them have forgotten that in America the Secretary of Defense fires generals, not the other way around.
Can you say “Day-O?”
Let me put it this way: If it had been a gallup poll, I probably wouldn't have mentioned it. Fox polls tend to be less prone to semantic games.
Sure his name isn't "MacNamera?"
Competence is generally (no pun intended) assumed in Flag Officers, excellence is another matter. Some senior military officers have genuine partisan political loyalties, often based on family history. Others (e.g. Wesley Clark) are simply opportunists (in their military and post-retirement endeavors), who will conform to the prevailing winds to get ahead. Many, in the best tradition of Cincinnatus and William T. Sherman, avoid politics in and out of uniform. To say that there weren't more than a few flag officers who didn't "conform" to get themselves noticed during the Clinton years is a bit naive or disingenuous.
If the poll question was as you stated, then Fox went against their "tendency".
"To say that there weren't more than a few flag officers who didn't "conform" to get themselves noticed during the Clinton years is a bit naive or disingenuous."
Well, sure.
Generals are military politicians, when you get right down to it.
Still, I didn't like the inference that BECAUSE these generals became generals during the Clinton Administration, that they were therefore incompetent pantywaists. I think that's not true.
They may have been quite competent generals, even, some of them anyway. But they're partisan hacks now that they're ex-generals.
Yes, I expect you're right about their motivations.
Oh, and I'm sure the American public, which has shown their vast knowledge of Constitutional matters over the past several decades, would have backed civilian control to the hilt f the question had been worded differently? C'mon!
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