On Capitol Hill, the traditional American image of military men obediently holding their tongues in the presence of their civilian superiors suffered a setback the other day in the appearance of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The testimonies of Gen. John Abizaid, the top military commander in Iraq, and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as Rumsfeld sat glumly by, were hardly examples of insubordination. But their candid disagreements with Rumsfeld?s customary stoicism were breaths of fresh air after the last three years of Bush administration self-deception.
Abizaid, acknowledging that the Iraqi insurgency has turned into heightened sectarian violence, frankly warned that “if it is not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.” Pace agreed, while adding, “I do not believe it is probable.”
Their words cut through the optimism of only weeks earlier when Gen. George W. Casey Jr., another senior U.S. commander in Iraq, suggested the possibility of significant American troop withdrawals by the end of this year. Abizaid said the violence, especially in Baghdad, had so worsened that more troops had to be shifted to deal with it.
Several days earlier, another set of military men ? the uniformed lawyers of the services ? appeared before the Senate committee and pointedly took issuewith an even higher superior than Rumsfeld ?the president of the United States. They criticized his plan to press on with military tribunals to try detainees with an approach only slightly modified from the one rejected by the Supreme Court.
These illustrations fall short of the open rebellion of some months ago when a substantial number of retired military officers sharply criticized the premises and conduct of the commander-in-chief?s war in Iraq. They in turn drew some criticism for not having spoken out while they were still in the military, the implication being that they were talking from the security of retirement.
But the more recent candid and critical observations of active-duty generals and other high-ranking officers is a measure of the frustration that they feel toward policies of a civilian-led administration and Pentagon that have put the American military as a whole in such a frustrated and overextended posture on many fronts.
The simultaneous outbreak of violence between Israel and the Arab world has underscored the strain on American armed forces even though they are not directly involved in the fighting. Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, expressed concern that in supporting Israel, the U.S. does not engender further loss of American lives.
Warner also raised the question, if violence in Iraq did disintegrate into civil war, whether the president would have to come back to Congress for new authorization to be involved in it. He noted that the resolution approving use of force in Iraq had no such intention. Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island observed later that in such a civil war, “our first responsibility is to protect our troops.”
Through all this, Rumsfeld uncharacteristically was benignly defensive. When Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York blistered him for “the administration?s strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing,” saying “you are presiding over a failed policy,” Rumsfeld responded weakly with “My goodness.” He insisted he had been temperate all along in his outlook for success and didn?t deserve such castigation.
Clinton later called for Rumsfeld?s resignation. The call has come many times before from other Democrats and some Republicans. But the testimony of his chief military leaders, and of other critical military voices, while not directed at that end, inevitably weakens his hand with Congress, and probably within the Pentagon as well.
As the Bush vision of extending democracy in the Middle East spirals downward, with the use of the military as a key element, the willingness of major military figures still in uniform to level with the public in ways the administration has not, may be pivotal in bringing a healthy dose of reality to a woefully misguided adventure.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
