President George Bush recently threatened vowed to keep Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in place during Bush’s remaining two years in office — which wasn’t the greatest sign that there will be any new approach to the war in Iraq.
But it’s now going to be difficult for the White House to suggest that those clamoring for Rumsfeld’s election are just partisan Democrats, cranky independents, or people somehow unsupportive of the troops in the field given this:
An editorial to be published Monday in independent publications that serve the four main branches of the U.S. military will call for President Bush to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
“Basically, the editorial says, it’s clear now, from some of the public statements that military leaders are making, that he’s lost the support and respect of the military leadership,” said Robert Hodierne, senior managing editor for the publications’ parent company Army Times Publications.
“That they’re starting to go public with that now, with their disagreements, added up with all of the other missteps we believe he’s made, that it’s time for him to be replaced,” Hodierne.
Army Times Publications publishes the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and the Marine Corps Times.
It is the second time the publications have called for Rumsfeld to resign.
Bush has maintained that Rumsfeld will stay on the job until 2008.
In May 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke, an Army Times editorial said, “This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential, even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.”
The timing of Monday’s editorial was prompted not by midterm elections, scheduled for Tuesday, but by Bush’s statement earlier this week that he intends to keep Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney in their posts through the end of his term, Hodierne said.
No one running for midterm elections, he noted, would have the power to replace Rumsfeld.
The timing of the editorial was coincidental, Neill said.
But he added, “President Bush came out and said that Donald Rumsfeld is in for the duration … so it’s just a timely issue for us. And our position is that it is not the best course for the militaryâ€? for Rumsfeld to remain the Pentagon chief.
Neill said he was uncertain how troops will react. “I think we’ll hear from both sides,â€? he said. “It will be interesting to find out if it swings significantly one way or the other.”
E&P then gives the full text:
The Ross Report at the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle posted the advance text of the editorial tonight, and this was cited by MSNBC. Andrew S. Ross is executive foreign and national editor of the paper. Here is the text, as posted, under the heading, “Time for Rumsfeld to go.” [TEXT OF EDITORIAL BEGINS HERE]
“So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.”
That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.
But until recently, the “hard bruising” truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “mission accomplished,” the insurgency is “in its last throes,” and “back off,” we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples.
Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.
Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war’s planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it … and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”
Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on “critical” and has been sliding toward “chaos” for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.
But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.
For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don’t show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.
Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.
And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.
Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.
This is a mistake.
It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.
These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.
And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.
Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.
This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:
Donald Rumsfeld must go.
This is powerful stuff for several reasons:
- It comes on the heels of polls showing support for the war heading south faster than senior citizens from New York in wintertime.
- The obvious impact of these editorials is that the call for Rumsfeld to spend more time with his family is coming from military-oriented newspapers. But it also comes within the context of the Bush administration being hammered from all sides for what is emerging as a CONSENSUS that the war has been and is being managed incompetently or in a closed-minded manner by administration officials….Rumsfeld in particular.
- It’s one more piece in an emerging negative puzzle that included as pieces Bob Woodward’s book, neocons blasting the administration for bungling the war, some members of the military who publicly express their concern over the way the war has been implemented and over poor contingency planning and occupation plans.
More than ever you get a sense that for perhaps one of the first times in America’s democracy you have a government that doesn’t truly intend to BALANCE information and input from critics and consider it in policy making.
It’s policy making by positive affirmation.
This means more than ever that those who seek ANY kind of a substantive change (big or small) in Iraq war policy more than ever will have to opt to nurture a strong countervailing force — something that can try to influence or at least put a check on an administration that seems to feel public and opposition opinion is something that should be to be ignored or placated rather than seriously considered.
And that is: divided government, where another branch of government can provide vigorous oversight, political warts and all. Will the wide range of Americans who want a change in policy consider voting for the Republicans who have been loyal to the administration and hampered real oversight? Or will people of many different political persuasions cast votes for for change, even if it means putting their own partisan preferences aside?
And, even if they vote for change, will the administration respond to the vote or explain it away and do whatever it wants? If so, what then?
One irony: an administration that has given the back of its hand to the usually-cherished concept of creating consensus has created one — a growing conventional wisdom that it does whatever it wants and it does that ineptly. But in this case young lives are at stake.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.