Okay, I know I’m a little late writing about the news that came out last week (here and here) that (1) the Bush administration had decided to hire a new “Iraq war czar” (also briefly, and quite infelicitously, titled an “execution manager”) who would sit in the White House and provide a direct operational link between the Prez and David Petraeus, the US commanding general in Iraq; and (2) no fewer than five retired generals have now turned down an invitation to take up this post.
But I actually think this new plan is a more serious sign of disarray in the highest levels of the US chain of command than most people have so far realized.
Crucially, I think it signals that the President has a serious lack of trust in Defense Secretary Robert Gates. This, because– in line with longstanding US practice, as written into US law– the chain of military command currently runs from the President, through the (civilian) Secretary of Defense, and from him to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and thence to the commander on the ground.
This is not, in practice, too onerous a process to go through. Especially with the speed and convenience of modern-day communications. And meanwhile, it ensures the effectiveness of the civilian command of the military, the integrity and predictability of the chain of command at those high levels, and the ability of both the military and the civilian leaders in the Pentagon to be able to act strategically (that is, to be able to deploy military assets around the world in an informed and balanced way.)
But now the President wants to disrupt this longstanding system. Why?
Well, according to the WaPo’s Peter Baker and Tom Ricks, one key impetus for the change was a memo that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (who for unknown reasons fancies himself a strategic thinker) sent to the White House several weeks ago. This was one of 18 recommendations he made in the memo.
Baker and Ricks write:
- “The slowness and ineffectiveness of the American bureaucracy is a major hindrance to our winning, and they’ve got to cut through it,” Gingrich said in an interview yesterday.
Under the proposal [as subsequently developed] by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, the execution manager would talk daily with the military commanders and U.S. ambassadors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The official would then meet with Bush each morning to review developments. The goal to meet requests for support by Petraeus and others would be “same-day service,” the proposal said.
Right. When what you’re doing in Iraq isn’t working, why not re-scramble the wiring diagram, play musical czars, and figure out a new bureaucratic fix?
Makes perfect sense. (Not!)
In their April 11 article, Baker and Ricks revealed that the three generals who (as of then) had turned it down included retired Gen. Jack Keane– who was one of the main intellectual authors of the “surge” proposal!– and retired Marines General Jack Sheehan.
They wrote,
- Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. “So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks,’ ” he said.
At this point, three things seem clear to me:
- (1) There is a widespread distrust among senior retired generals in either the content of the present policy, or the conditions under which this new post is being created, or both;
(2) The Prez definitely looks as if he’s wanting to cut the Secdef out of the loop. (I believe this may even be illegal? It is, anyway, very very unwise.) And,
(3) The scrambling around and trying to find a new bureaucratic “quick fix” for the policy is a sure sign that the senior administration people themselves realize the policy isn’t working well.
In this regard, the situation in Washington seems highly reminiscent of what was happening in Israel in the third week of their war against Lebanon last summer. At that point the IDF’s increasingly desperate chief of staff Dan Halutz summarily appointed a new commander to come in and take command of the Northern Sector over the head of the sector’s existing commander… Now, in Washington, Bush seems to be trying to bring in a new (preferably military) person to come in and, in effect, replace Bob Gates.
All this is potentially very disquieting. On the other hand, the administration has already seen fairly high levels of (high-level) distrust, second-guessing, and general administrative flailing around throughout the disastrous course of this war in Iraq. One thing that struck me from reading Tom Ricks’s book “Fiasco”, for example, was how often Condi Rice or Don Rumsfeld or other high-level actors felt they needed to send their own personal envoys out to Baghdad to get a feel for what was going on there. That gave me the distinct sense that these officials didn’t trust the reports they were receiving through the normal channels, that is, from each other. (And therefore, they didn’t trust each other.) Meeting and dealing with this constant stream of high-level envoys must quite often have been a real headache for the Iraqis, and for the US generals on the ground.
So this latest development is, it seems to me, a continuation of a long-running flailing around within the upper reaches of the Washington bureaucracy. But it’s probably the most serious to date.
(Maybe it marks the ‘beginning of the end-game’ for the US military presence in Iraq? Let’s hope so!)
Meanwhile, I’d love to know what Bob Gates is thinking about all this…
Helen, the US ‘National Command Authority’ has been in disarray since George Bush took office. The VP has effectively subverted the chain of command, that was apparent on 9/11 and ever since.
Since the President either doesn’t care, or lacks the capacity to react, effective control of the administration has not corresponded with the structure set up by law.
If there now is a ‘realist’ consensus with Gates and Rice that opposes Cheney, the ‘war czar’ would be Cheney’s lever of power over them. Bush doesn’t need it if he did have any thought of leading, but that is clearly not the case.
Helena,
The so-called U.S. “command authority” became almost instanteously obvious during the 2000 presidential campaign when Dick Cheney selected himself George W. Bush’s vice-presidential running mate and immediately snuck off to Wyoming to change his Texas residency of record back to something less constitutionally prohibitive. The Dick Cheney Shogunate Regency began then and there, with Deputy Dubya’s public relations role as self-described propaganda catapult never seriously augmented since. What about this revolting oriental development do you think has escaped widespread notice?
Nobody but the guy who really runs things could continue, year after year, to repeat with impunity universally acknowledged lies and disinformation deliberately designed by him to manipulate his hapless “boss” and deceive the American people. What I like to call Manufactured Mendacity and Managed Mystification comes directly from whatever undisclosed location Dick Cheney calls his “office” at any given moment. How could this possibly happen? “Because,” as former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said years ago: “Dick likes it that way.” Why do people in America continue to willingly ignore the sneering gargoyle of Dick Cheney and pretend that they see the young, ageless Dorian Gray Bush instead of the hideous picture of his true, evil self hid away in a dark corner of the nation’s attic?
The Chinese have a saying that evokes an appropriate image here: “The centipede is dead but not stiff.” They mean by this that one should not count out the creature as truly deceased until verifiable rigor mortis has set in. First impressions of mortality can sometimes deceive. In our case here, though, we have more or less the “dead man walking” syndrome. One can practically smell the desperate panic now engulfing the decrepit American regime.
Shogun Cheney’s entire modus operandus depends on keeping his own doings secret and his hapless puppet Dubya dependent on only Cheney’s whispered “advice.” Also, the Rasputin Regent for the perpetually immature Dubya must at all costs keep his clueless charge isolated from any real responsibility or control lest the incompetent bumpkin take it upon his own uninstructed self to do something just plain idiotic instead of simply criminal. Hence, layers of bureaucracy must constantly insert themselves between Dubya and accountability for what Dick Cheney decides must happen. The five generals approached to serve as the scapegoat layer of “czarist” bureaucracy obviously know this and wisely have refused to dishonor themselves by playing the stupid stooge in Cheney’s cynical game. Again, what sentient carbon-based life form on Planet Earth does not already know this?
You have accurately perceived the American “command” disarray on humilitaring display here; but even worse for America and its marooned foreign legion in Iraq, “those other people” out there busy cutting down the electric power lines and taking out the bridges leading into, around, and through Baghdad understand the history and tactics of medieval seige warfare only too well — and they know that the American government and military don’t. I fear that we will see much worse for America in Iraq than you may wish to contemplate. Tragically, the Iraqis have already suffered enormous grief; but having somehow survived to this point in the old story, they will probably recover and start doing much better once America suffers the disastrous Dien Bien Phu that its clueless leaders insanely keep courting with each day they stall for time instead of packing up our trapped troops and splitting.
Since everything else in and about Iraq has come as a complete shock to the Dick Cheney Shogunate Regency, the end in Iraq — when it comes — will no doubt catch the gnarled little gnome with his pants publicly down around his ankles but still sneering sullenly about Al Qaeda spies meeting with agents of Saddam Hussein in Prague discussing non-existent weapons of mass destruction about to cause “smoking-gun” nuclear mushroom clouds in America in less than forty minutes time once “the terrorists” “follow us home” across vast oceans in the little rubber rafts that they haven’t even yet begun to purchase off the world’s black market in surplus U.S. military equipment.
No one in America commands anything authoritatively at the moment. The sight and smell of a rotting albatross corpse has started to gag just about everyone but Mad Dog John McCain who has suicidally decided that looking too stupid to stipulate somehow enhances his prospects for becoming Dick Cheney’s Deputy Dubya the Third. My, how that picture up in the attic just keeps getting uglier.
Who Pushed America into War in Iraq?
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/contributors/04-2007/Article-20070413-ea631747-c0a8-10ed-00a3-4c8cfaaa7ce2/story.html
very good article above – except the part where it says “bush regrets” – bush is too stupid to know he should have regrets – and too protected to feel the pain of what he has done.
Excellent points & better late than never, which is the amount of analysis given by the MSM to date.
From childhood, Bush hasn’t been forced to speak with or work with or deal with anyone or any institution that annoys him or upsets him. He bypasses them & ignores them.
This immaturity is now being played out in all his presidential duties.
It causes me to reflect more seriously on how many Bushes it takes to change a light bulb.
Michael Murry (and many others) overestimate Dick Cheney, and treat him as though he were some (evil) genius. He strikes me, especially after I read a lengthy biographical article on him, as a third-rate mind, who married well/wealth and generally bullied his way up the ladder of power.
Such people often get a reputation for cleverness because the penalty for pointing out their faults is painful retribution. So the myths build – e.g. that Mussolini at least made the Italian trains run on time; that Donald Rumsfeld was a businessman of genius, when his success was built on bribery – you get the picture.
Face them with real problems, and they usually dither or get bogged down in infighting as they try play the blame game. Challenge them boldly, and they usually fold like a cheap suit.
I see the same traits in Paul Wolfowitz. And for those who ask why he could start a war in Iraq and get away with it, while give his partner a pay rise/promotion and all hell breaks loose – at the Pentagon, he was among friends; at the World Bank, he’s among enemies.
A little less than 2 years to go with this administration. How much of our political gravity will be yanked toward the White House, and away from Congress, the Supreme Court, even the Pentagon?
I have a bad feeling that the majority of non-Bushies believe a cloud will lift, magically, from our political life on January 20, 2009. No: the next President will have to deal with the many messes Bush/Cheney leave. This President might not have enough moral or political clarity to reverse all of the emerging “Unitary Executive” nonsense.
The barriers between the military and the politicians, foreign policy and domestic policy, is being blurred. The “bureaucracy” that Gingrich foolishly wants to cut is our system of checks and balances, which prevents too much power from clumping in the Oval Office.
Once again, I reiterate what seems only obvious to me and many others besides myself — including the five retired generals who declined the proferred position of “war czar” in the Dick Cheney Shogunate Regency: namely, that since the Vice President holds enormous sway over the American government — not so much through “genius” but just long-practiced bureaucratic cunning — only a fool would agree to serve as a toothless shill for Cheney’s interest in preserving his own unaccountable power above all else.
Given Cheney’s geopolitical and strategic stupidity, of course, it goes without saying that his skill in bureaucratic infighting and co-optation of obstructive peers has not served America well. Still, in noticing his early and complete grasp of George W. Bush’s callow unfitness for the job of President of the United States, it does not take any special insight to perceive how masterfully Cheney has played to Dubya’s insecure vanity and through that oily obsequiousness subverted the normal flow of power and accountability in the government. Ironically, the real-life Romanov Czars had their own Rasputin who maintained his disastrous influence over them not through geopolitical or military accumen, but through finding in their son’s hemophilia the perfect lever for his own aggrandizement. Dick Cheney fits the profile to the letter.
To coin a cliche, power abhors a vacuum, and Dick Cheney knows only too cleverly that in the hollow George W. Bush he has found the low-watt lightbulb of his dreams: an expectation purposely set so low that the lack of illumination all around him provides the perfect twilight in which to operate unobserved. Needing to pay public lip-service to Dubya’s nominal position as titular head of the government costs Cheney nothing in terms of real power — no matter how disastrously wielded — and so we keep seeing him praise to the heavens an adolescent twit for whom, in the quiet of his own creepy counsel, he can have nothing but amused contempt.
Now, even a cynical victim/veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent like me can hope that a senseless and self-destructive imperial war will end just as the one of my own long-past experience did: “not with a bang, but a whimper,” as T. S. Elliot put the case. However, I do not judge the signs propitious yet, since Sheriff Dick has thrown down Deputy Dubya’s manly marker for him in the looming budget showdown over funding this fatuous fool’s farce in Iraq. Cheney has effectively boxed his “boss” into defying Congress and its many Constitutional war powers by openly predicting the the Democrats in Congress will back down and give the Boy Blunder yet another blank rubber check for anything and everything that Dick Cheney and his fascist cabal demand. So, I will wait without holding my breath to see if Nancy Pelosi stands her ground for the American people — to whatever little extent she has acctually stood for in fact ending this stupid War on Iraq — and in so doing demonstrate that someone other than Dick Cheney wields any sort of effective power in the American government in service to what the people want: namely, peace. If Dick Cheney wins again on this one, though, I will just have to consider that unfortunate outcome further unnecessary corroboration for what I feel the reluctant generals in question have seen as clearly as I have.
” Kurt Vonnegut was a divine spark of liberating genius for an entire generation. His brilliant, beautiful, loving and utterly unfettered novels helped us redefine ourselves in leaving the corporate America in the 1950s and the Vietnam war that followed.
Having seen the worst of World War II from a meat locker in fire-bombed Dresden, Kurt’s Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, cut us the intellectual and spiritual slack to seek out a new reality. It took a breathtaking psychic freedom to merge the interstellar worlds he created from whole cloth with the social imperatives of a changing age. It was that combination of talent, heart and liberation that gave Vonnegut a cutting edge he never lost.
Leaving us in his 80s, Kurt also leaves us decades of anecdotes and volumes of writings — and doodlings — about which to write. But lost in the mainstream obituaries — including the one in the New York Times — is the ferocity with which he opposed this latest claque of vicious war-mongers.
Vonnegut gave his last campus speech in Columbus. He and I met here many years ago, after another speech. Not knowing me from Adam, he was gracious enough to give me his home address.”
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_1969.shtml
After reading General Sheehan’s explanation of why he turned down the War Czar position, I am thankful that his twisted worldview has not been added to the nasty stew of arrogance and stupidity currently passing for US foreign policy.
What on earth does he mean by “the reconstruction of Haiti?” Is he suggesting that what happened to that country is some kind of model for other parts of the world?
Is our mistake that we “allowed Tehran to develop more policy options?” Or is it that we allowed a small cabal of reactionaries and neoconservatives to force our own government into a position where it has no viable policy options of its own?
Are “U.S. interests” in the Middle East really more important than destabilizing threats to the entire region? How much destabilization are we willing to cause in pursuit of those interests?
Why are we entitled to “assured access to energy resources” owned by other sovereign nations? Are we also entitled to assured access to their land, air and water?
The General’s basic objection seems to be that the Cheney administration lacks a coherent strategy for achieving world domination. I find that fact reassuring.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/15/AR2007041500564.html
it seems to me, a continuation of a long-running flailing around
It is “a continuation of a long-running flailing around”
Recently the State Department has been trumpeting PRTs as a strategy for getting Iraq on its feet. Unfortunately, Iraq is not Afghanistan. Not only is security non-existent, but Iraq’s infrastructure is far more complex than Afghanistan’s. Thus, Iraq needs real experts and a supple bureaucracy—both in the Green Zone and in Washington—to help it out of its decrepitude. But both of these are lacking.
NOAM CHOMSKY: There’s an interesting study being done right now by a former Russian soldier in Afghanistan in the late 1980’s, he’s now a student in Toronto who’s comparing the Russian press and the Russian political figures and military leaders, what they were saying about Afghanistan, comparing it with what Cheney, others and the press are saying about Iraq and not to your great surprise, change a few names and it comes out about the same.