Category Archives: Military

Rummy column

A generals’ revolt may be ugly,
but who else has the credibility?
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SO YOU WANT to impeach President Bush?
Well, for the first time, I can see one way that ditching him might be helpful, and not hugely destructive, to a nation at war:
It would put Dick Cheney in charge, and he might have what it takes to fire Donald Rumsfeld.
Sure, they are old comrades and longtime Bush family retainers, and the family’s loyalty fetish has mutated in this generation to the point that it is valued above the good of the nation. But they are not Bushes by blood, and Mr. Cheney would as soon shoot a pal in the face as look at him.
OK, yes, I’m being facetious — about the veep and about impeachment. But serious and likely solutions are scarce right now.
The secretary of defense must go. He should have gone two years ago (as this editorial board said at the time). He went into Iraq with no realistic idea of how to secure the country after the inevitable collapse of the Iraqi army, and hasn’t learned a lesson yet.
Our troops adapt constantly to their adversary’s changing tactics. But Mr. Rumsfeld is too smart Rumsfeldhubris to learn anything. Just ask him; he’ll tell you. If he doesn’t say it out loud, he’ll say it with the set of his stony jaw, the swagger of his shoulders even standing still, the contempt in his aquiline eyes.
You want to talk hubris? Robert McNamara had an inferiority complex next to this guy.
His attitude has always alienated at least half the nation, and pretty much all of our allies. His decisions, his actions and his inactions have alienated many others, including those (like me) who believe completely in our nation’s mission in Iraq, and are sick of watching him screw it up.
His abstract notions of the proper size and shape of the military do not yield to battlefield realities — or to anything else. Sure, he’s right about some things, such as the wisdom of leveraging our exponential advantage in technology and the expansion of Special Forces and other light, flexible elements. But if only he were one-tenth as flexible as a Navy SEAL, or an Army Ranger, or a typical Marine.
But light and high-tech isn’t a slice of the pizza to him; it’s the whole pie. Special ops, precision-guided weapons and air superiority are critically important. But so is securing the country after the battle — sealing potentially hostile (i.e., Syrian) borders, guarding ammo dumps, placing MPs at every important crossroads and on and on (your know, all those low-tech tasks we performed so well across Europe in 1944-45).
This administration went into office promising not to engage in any nation-building, and although that policy ostensibly changed after 9/11, “Rummy” still acts as though he aims to keep the promise. That Iraq has come as far as it has is a testament to the dedication of American troops, and the courage of ordinary Iraqis. (Ironic, isn’t it? In Iraq, civilians risk their very lives for democracy; in America, it’s only our heartbreakingly few young people who serve in uniform. The rest of us get tax cuts and whine about fuel prices that are still lower than in most of the world.)
But isn’t this just more of the ranting from “the anti-war left” that Charles Krauthammer was decrying the other day? He appropriately highlighted the fact that anti-war types who never before trusted anyone wearing stars are suddenly greeting the dissent of six retired generals as wisdom from on high.
Well, you got me, Charles.
Except that I have never been “anti-war” by any conventional political application of the term. (I’m ticked that the military isn’t big enough to credibly threaten Iran or protect Darfur.)
Except that we endorsed George Bush twice. (Although I’m still appalled that the major parties didn’t offer us a better choice.)
Except that I embrace the outlook of real conservatives (such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who had to force this administration to remember how the good guys are supposed to treat prisoners).
And so forth.
Look, I’m not any happier than Mr. Krauthammer to see six men who have recently worn the uniform speak against civilian leadership. But in an environment in which civilian criticism is dismissed as coming from the “other side,” ex-military officers may be the only ones with the neutrality to lift us out of the partisan mire. They are credible because they have shunned politics.
Still, speaking up has to feel to them like breaking the code. It all makes for an unseemly spectacle — their broken silence, the media rush to ask other generals what they think, and the Rumsfeld defenders’ rush to point out commanders who support the official line. Generals shouldn’t have had to do this. But we needed someone with standing to do it.
You say you like Rummy? Well, early in this war, I enjoyed him, too. I liked his unapologetic, we’re-gonna-do-what-it-takes demeanor. I even took guilty pleasure in the “old Europe” crack, even though I could see it was strategically harmful.
But over time, it got to where it just wasn’t cute anymore. I didn’t see pride in country; I just saw pride. He’s got to go.

Why don’t we just surrender, Sarge?

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The subject of personal ownership of guns came up during the discussion on a recent post, and one respondent wrote, "Never had a gun, don’t want one, lotsa people get shot with their own gun…."

Well, as I was reminded over the weekend, you don’t actually have to shoot yourself to get hurt firing a gun. Or — forgive me — I should say, a rifle.

Somehow, I had gotten to my current ripe old age without ever having fired a high-powered rifle. I had experience with pistol (can’t hit a durn’ thing with ’em), rifle (which I’m not bad at, for a civilian), and shotgun (which you don’t have to be all that good with to hit something).

But when I say "rifle," I mean .22s. Anybody can hit a tin can with a .22, I suppose.

But Saturday, I was visiting kin up in Marlboro County, and my cousin had a new .30-06 rifle he wanted to try out. So we went out to some land belonging to a friend of my uncle’s, where there was an open field with about a 10-foot embankment of earth piled up at one end of it. That’s where we put the paper target.

My cousin shot first, it being his rifle. It was a short, carbine-like weapon with a sort of built-in clip arrangement on the bottom. You swing out the clip thing, load in three rounds in staggered formation, and swing it back up until it snaps into place under the bolt-action breech.

Now, I had been thinking ".30 caliber — that’s not all that much more than a .22." Maybe, if you’re talking about an M-16 kind of .223 round. See, I had reckoned without the enormous shell behind the modest slug — one of those things about three inches long, with most of its length looking to be about twice the diameter of the slug. That’s a lot of powder. That’s a big bullet.

When the first shot was fired, I went straight to my car, opened my briefcase (which is filled with junk for all sorts of contingencies), and pulled out some foam earplugs. Wow.

I had to hurry to get back to Columbia, so I asked to go next, after my cousin had fired a couple of clips. He handed it over, showed me how the first cartridge went in, and I managed to insert the other two of those artillery shells without embarrassing myself. I asked where the safety was, and fumbled with it a bit.

My cousin had noted what a light weapon it was, and he was right. A little too light, I believe. I assumed what I hoped was a good standing position, my feet forming a line about 30 degrees from the direction of fire. I drew it up firmly to my shoulder, aimed the best I could (it was a kind of sight I’d never seen before, and pulled the trigger.

BLAM! The thing slammed into my bony shoulder like somebody hitting me with a baseball bat, while the barrel jerked way up and a little off to the right.

It hurt like an SOB. My immediate thought was, "I do NOT want to do this again." But rather than wimp out, I brought the barrel back down and got ready to fire again. I really tensed up for the second shot, making sure it was tight against my shoulder, and gripping firmly with my left hand to keep the muzzle pointed downrange. It didn’t work. It still kicked like a donkey, and ended up pointed at the sky.

I only have to get through one more round. This time I forced myself to relax, to hold it a little more lightly, and to remember to squeeze the trigger with even pressure throughout my hand, rather than jerk it. I missed the target by about a foot.

My second had missed, too. But miracle of miracles, my first shot — before I knew what I was in for — had actually grazed the black center of the target. And — ahem — mine was the first one to do so.

But I got to thinking later: The M1 Garand fired more or less the same ammunition, from a clip of eight, I believe. And the M-1 Carbine was pretty light (although I think it also fired lighter ammo; somebody tell me if I’m wrong). The average WWII Army recruit, according to Stephen Ambrose, was:

… five feet eight inches tall, weighed 144 pounds, had a thirty-three-and-a-half-inch chest, and a thirty-one-inch waist.

How on Earth did a little guy like that (a thirty-three-and-a-half-inch chest!!!) fire clip after clip of that ammunition and still have use of his right arm? Sure, they were half my age (an average of 26), and they probably knew some trick that I don’t know about the proper way to seat the butt against the shoulder, and the Garand was heavier than the carbine, but still. It makes me respect those guys — all of whom have been my heroes my whole life — even more.

Maybe I wasn’t holding it right; I don’t know. But if it hurt like that, after a day of fighting through the hedgerows, when the time came that the sergeant told us to dig in for the night, I think I might have said, "Sarge, why don’t we just let the Germans have France?"

Of course, knowing the way soldiers gripe, I’m sure a lot of guys did say that. But they still dug in, and got up and fought again the next day.

How stupid is the press?

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A link that blog regular Herb provides in a recent comment asks the not-so-musical question, "Are reporters too stupid to get religion?"

The simple answer is, "Yes."

But that’s a little too simple. I should elaborate. Journalists pride themselves (many of them do, anyway; I certainly did during my news days) on being jacks of all trades and masters of none. At a dinner party, they can usually dazzle an uncritical listener with how much they know about many things — and it works as long as no one probes too deep. But there are several things that most reporters at most newspapers don’t know much at all about (and I hope you’re not including TV people as "reporters," as very few of them get anything):

Religion — I have the impression (but no stats to back it up) that the press is slightly more secular than the public at large. I mean that in two ways: First, on a personal level — lots of journalists have never been to church or have quit going (for some reason, the profession seems to draw a lot of "fallen-away" Catholics) — but also professionally. There are still plenty of people of faith in newsrooms, but relatively few who take a sufficient interest in religions other than their own, to the extent that they could write authoritatively about them. You’ll find that’s also true of the general population, but in most fields, journalists make it their business to pick up a little something about everything around them, whether it touches them personally or not. Here’s where the professional tendency comes in. The secular notion that seeps through all of society — that religion is a private matter, with no place in the public sphere — is as prevalent in newsrooms as in the corridors of government. This dampens — in the area of religion — the natural tendency journalists usually have to pry into things that are "none of their business." Most every paper has one or two people who are an exception to this rule — who take a keen interest in religion as religion, beyond their own personal beliefs. Those are the people who are specifically assigned to cover the subject. The problem, and the blundering, tends to come in when you have folks from other beats jumping in to help out on a religion story. While you can take, say, a political reporter and have him go cover a crime story and rely on him to know what to do, that’s just not as true with the religion beat. And given the unpredictable ebb and flow of news, there are always going to be people covering things outside their usual areas.
The Military — There are about as few veterans in newsrooms as you find in most white-collar workplaces where most of the people are under the age of 50. Most journalists, unless they have had personal experience or have worked hard to learn about the military sphere of life, know less about it than they do about other lines of work they have never done personally. For instance, almost no journalists have ever been lawyers, cops or politicians. But they interact with those people a LOT more than they do with people in military service. There just aren’t as many opportunities to hang with the military as there are with, say, cops. Therefore, less learning occurs.
Weapons of any kind — It might seem like this might fall under "military," but the problem extends far beyond that sphere. All reporters at some time end up doing a basic crime story. And that’s where they are likely to embarrass themselves seriously. How bad is it? I have during my career as an editor run across many a malaprop such as, "Police say the suspect fired at the clerk with a shotgun, but the bullet missed him." And I’ve seen things just as bad as that get into the paper — meaning that several people failed to realize that shotguns don’t fire "bullets."
Money — Math tends not to be journalists’ strong suit. They were good at writing in school, not numbers, and to many people who think nothing of whipping together from scratch a 1,000-word news story requiring multiple sources in a couple of hours, figuring out a percentage change is seen as heavy lifting. This gets worse when the number involve money. Journalists tend to be less interested in money than the average person; its mystique doesn’t grab them, and they don’t grasp it. Most reporters are bright enough to have made a lot more money doing something else. But that didn’t interest them enough.
Science/Medicine — You see a lot of "health news" in newspapers these days. What you don’t see is a lot of reporting that represents a sense of perspective or in-depth knowledge on these issues. This is improving somewhat, but most journalists are a long way from having the kind of easy familiarity with the sciences, including medical science, that they do with crime, punishment and politics. One reason, among many, would be that they generally don’t interact with physicians or physicists any more than they do with the military.

Anyone who IS conversant with in any of those areas can pretty well write his or her own ticket. Business writers — if they’re any good — are in high demand. Religion writers are in demand, but a little less so, as few papers have more than one or two religion writers, and they have entire staffs devoted to business. Supply and demand.

Few mid-sized papers have anyone devoted to military affairs. But when they do, if that person gets any good at it, once again you have a high-demand commodity. For instance, I was Dave Moniz‘s editor when we started the military beat back in the early ’90s. It was terra incognita for Dave, but he worked hard to develop expertise, and to break down the natural suspicion and even hostility with which most military people regard representatives of the press (I grew up in the military, so I know all about this alienation, and fully understand why it’s there). Anyway, Dave had only done that a handful of years before he went to USAToday to cover the same beat. You’ll see his byline on their front page from time to time.

A U.S. commitment can work

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A back-and-forth discussion on the subject of Bosnia among readers responding (initially, anyway) to a recent post reminded me of this piece from The New York Times, which I meant to draw attention to it at the time, but got busy with other things. Unfortunately, you can’t read it online now without paying for it.

The thrust of it was that no, the situation in Bosnia isn’t perfect — far from it — but we accomplished our goal there. Our goal was modest by the standard of what we’re trying to do in Iraq: We just wanted to stop the killing (at least, that was the goal once we finally decided to do something). We accomplished that.

The author, Roger Cohen, called the Dayton accords signed in 1995 “a messy, and unedifying, end to a conflict” but went on to say that “the Dayton agreement had one conspicuous merit: it stopped the killing that had taken about 200,000 lives. The quieted guns were a tribute to what American power and diplomacy can achieve.”

Note the word, “diplomacy.” The piece stresses the importance of working in concert with powerful allies, and draws some obvious contrasts with what has happened in Iraq. That’s the first of “two lessons” he says the Bosnia experience holds for Iraq.

“The second,” he wrote, “is that a 10-year American military commitment can bear fruit.”

Now note “10-year.” Also note “commitment.” The result is that eventually, one can draw down the troop deployment — we only have 200 in Bosnia now. But note again, all you impatient sorts: “10-year.”

Anyway, the part I liked best about the piece was the headline: “Lessons From Bosnia, 10 Years On: A U.S. Commitment Can Work.” I saw that as a fitting rebuke to the isolationists and do-nothings on both the left and the right.

In praise of an honest man

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It was really refreshing to read Ted Rall’s latest piece. Here’s an anti-war man of the old school, one who doesn’t mess about with half-measures. Disagree vehemently with his perspective if you will (and I’ll be with you on that) but you’ve got to admire his honesty.

He starts off by expressing his contempt for the inconsistency he sees around him:

"Support the Troops, Oppose Their Actions," reads the oxymoronic headline of an April 2005 essay at antiwar.com.

But he’s just warming up. He goes on to slice and dice the very "support the troops but oppose the war" position that I have objected to in this space — only from the opposite direction. While I support the troops and their mission, I have to appreciate Mr. Rall‘s consistency in opposing both:

If we are, as Jean-Paul Sartre posited, defined by our actions, most of
the blame for the murder of more than 100,000 Iraqis belongs to our top
government officials. But Bush’s armchair warriors couldn’t have
invaded Iraq without a compliant and complicit United States
military–one that, it should be noted, is all volunteer. These
individuals, who enjoy free will, fire the guns and drop the bombs. If
personal responsibility is to have any meaning, the men and women of
our armed forces have to be held individually accountable for the
carnage.

Oh, and by the way, he doesn’t stop at condemning soldiers who have done things that most of us would censure, such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib. He goes far beyond that:

Even if U.S. forces were not violating the rules of war in
Iraq–torturing, maiming and murdering POWs, robbing and subjecting
civilians to collective punishment, dropping white phosphorus and
depleted uranium bombs on civilian targets–the war itself, based on
false pretenses and opposed by the United Nations, would remain a gross
violation of American and international law.

So, you’re wondering, is he saying that soldiers and marines and sailors who just go to Iraq are war criminals? Well, I refer you to his next paragraph:

Soldiers,
they say, must obey orders. However, "just following orders" wasn’t an
acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials, where the charges included
waging a war of aggression. Do our government’s poorly paid contract
killers deserve our "support" for blindly following orders?

How bracing it is to read such rhetoric! None of that namby-pamby "support the troops by bringing them home" pablum for our Ted! The men and women who willingly bear untold sacrifices on our behalf are "contract killers" to him. No doubt where he stands.

Enter his world for a moment. It is a world in which the commander-in-chief is "an unelected imposter," and in which:

Every
order to deploy a soldier, aviator or sailor to fight in Iraq is by
definition an unlawful order, one that he or she is legally and morally
bound to refuse.

So what’s a soldier to do? Well, Mr. Rall’s got it all figured out:

The
military used to be an honorable calling. Not under Bush. Ethical
Americans considering a military career should seek a civilian job
until a lawful, elected government has been restored in Washington and
we have withdrawn our forces from occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Those
who are already enlisted should refuse to reenlist. Soldiers trapped by
"stop loss" orders should apply for conscientious objector status
(which is difficult to obtain) or refuse deployment based on the
unlawful order principle. And if all else fails, there’s always
desertion.

OK, so there are a couple of places where he slips into the ambivalence that has characterized the current anti-war movement — such as when he says "The military used to be an honorable calling." (That assertion begs for elaboration, of course. When was it honorable, by Mr. Rall’s standards? Until January 2001? For about four years in the early 1940s? Up until 1783?) And there’s a confusing bit toward the end where he seems to hold up actions by the anti-war folks during Vietnam to "support the troops" as somehow backing his position.

But for the most part, he resolutely refuses to wimp out. He recovers quickly at the end, with a breezy, "OK, lefties? You can drop the ‘support the troops’ shtick now." You’ve got to give him that.

At this point, I should say that I’m sure there are thousands upon thousands of people who are honestly sincere in saying they "support the troops but oppose the war." But then, I’ve noticed time and again in my 52 years that the human brain has an almost limitless capacity for rationalization. That’s what enables people to say, "I’m not pro-abortion; I’m pro-choice," or "I’m not a racist, but…."

But set that aside. I’m sure there are many people who love the troops and hate the war and are not rationalizing, but are sincere about it from the bottom of their souls, both consciously and unconsciously.

I have to wonder, though: How many others out there, deep down, really and truly despise the troops themselves for fighting and dying (and killing) for us? Well, we seem to be at one and counting.

‘Band of Brothers’ to go to Iraq

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I had thought that this was good news out of Iraq this week, and that this was even better.

Currahee But I probably took more heart from this news than from anything I’ve seen in a while. I realize the other things are probably more substantially significant, but there’s something reassuring on a gut level about the 506th PIR being resurrected, even if it isn’t technically a Parachute Infantry Regiment any more.

That unit distinguished itself to such a degree in Normandy, Holland, Bastogne and Germany in 1944-45 that the young men who have Currahee2_1 adopted "Currahee" as their battle cry (after the foothill near Toccoa, Ga., that the original soldiers of the 506th had to run up and down — three miles each way — as a routine, daily part of their initial training in 1942) have a tremendous tradition of honor to live up to. From what I’ve seen from our soldiers and Marines in the field in this war, I’m sure they’ll meet the challenge, and old heroes such as Dick Winters and "Wild Bill" Guarnere will be proud to call them brothers.

Yet another column, w/ links

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Leadership wanted to explain need to succeed in Iraq
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
“I DON’T KNOW how long it’s gonna take. It’s gonna take a while. And it’s gonna cost more money, and it’s gonna cost more blood.”
That’s what U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told the Columbia Rotary week before last regarding Iraq. During that meeting, and in subsequent interviews, he talked about how important it is that the Iraq_mp_1 nation’s leaders explain to the American people — over and over — the connection between what we’re doing in Iraq and the war on terror, the absolute necessity of staying there until a stable democracy is achieved, and just how long and costly that is going to be.
Not that we have a choice to make: “The American people have no option. It was never an option.” The fight that we are engaged in in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere started long before this date four years ago.
“The root causes of this war had been building over time,” he said. “We ignored them. We disengaged. There were plenty of signs the terrorists were getting stronger and bolder, and we sent them the wrong signal.”
Until Sept. 11, 2001. After that, we fought back. But there’s a lot more involved in achieving peace and security than just fighting.
“There are elements of the War on Terror beyond the use of military force, and they are going to be expensive,” the senator said.
   Those elements are also the ones likely to take the longest time, he believes. People in Iraq and other Islamic countries have to realize that “Winner-take-all politics is not a democracy” — or at least, not the kind that works. They have to get not only the politics right, but the fundamental notions of the rule of law. “A courtroom is a place for the unpopular cause,” he said. “How long does it take to get honest judges? A long time.”
   And what about the home front? He agrees that we have to have a better energy strategy, and that includes both drilling in Alaska and an emphasis on conservation. It is, the senator said, “imperative that we get away from fossil fuels in general and Mideast oil in particular.” And we need to turn back to nuclear energy. Other countries, including France, have not had our qualms about using that cleaner source of power. “Surely we can be as bold as the French,” he told the Rotarians to general laughter.
   And then there’s hydrogen, although that is a long-term strategy. “We in South Carolina are going to become, if I have anything to do with it, the Detroit of the hydrogen economy — without the crime.”
Meanwhile, in Iraq, “The more troops in the country, the better,” for the foreseeable future, the senator said.
His explanation for why polls increasingly show that the American people want to pull out of Iraq is that they are not getting an accurate picture of what is happening. All they see is quick images of mayhem on television or “a few words in the paper” about the latest car bombing, and they despair. They think, “These people can’t help themselves; why should we help them?” Especially when it costs American lives.
But Iraq is worth fighting for largely because of the courage of the Iraqi people — the majority that wants their country to be peaceful and free. It is “the one place in the world where people are standing up to terrorists right in their own backyards,” he said. That makes it one place where we have to win if we’re going to win the larger war that we only fully engaged four years ago.
Aside from roughly 1,900 Americans, thousands of Iraqis have died in this cause, and yet they keep on trying. We have to “stand behind those who are willing to put their lives on the line to build a better Iraq.”
“If you talk about leaving soon, you don’t understand the situation,” he said. And more than once, he told me, “I want to fire the next general who talks about taking one troop out next year.”
“We’re talking about an exit strategy when we should be talking about a winning strategy.”
But what about members of Congress, including those in his own party, who are looking at the polls and talking “exit strategy”?
“Make ’em vote,” he said. “Take (Sen. Russ) Feingold’s resolution (to create a timetable for withdrawing troops) or something and make them vote for it.” He seems quit
e sure they won’t.
OK, fine. So we have to win in Iraq, the American people don’t fully understand why, we need more troops rather than fewer, it’s going to be more expensive than most taxpayers realize, and we have an administration in place that can’t seem to explain that, and that wants to cut taxes and do everything on the cheap. What about that?
First, Sen. Graham says he and other supporters of the war in Congress share much of the blame — for being too optimistic about Iraq going in, and for not explaining the stakes well enough to the public.
He also acknowledges that the president hasn’t done all he should: “His challenge is a constant focus that has been missing.” President Bush used to talk about the “long haul”; more recently he soft-pedaled that.
But he has seen the president change in recent days. “I think the president is learning from Katrina. I see this president adjusting.” Yes, I’ve seen some of the same things. I’ve actually seen him, for once, admit error, and work hard to make up for it.
Still, while I agree with pretty much everything that Sen. Graham has to say on the subject, I am Bush_honor_guard not as confident as he is that George W. Bush will exercise the leadership necessary to the situation. I agree with the senator, for instance, that the president gave some very good speeches explaining the stakes in the first days right after Sept. 11, 2001. But that was a long time ago.
All of that said, I hope Mr. Graham is right. Because this is the president we’ve got; we don’t have any choice there, either. If leadership does not emerge, from Congress as well as from the president, we will fail in this war. And this nation — indeed, the civilized world — can’t afford that.
Ultimately, as the senator said, “History will judge us not by when we left, but by what we left.”

The debate continues…

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Wow. I was so overwhelmed and lulled into a placid state by the kind comments in response to my Sunday column that I didn’t notice until just now that this debate was still going on (and this one, too, in a related vein).

Rather than continue to jump in with my answers and asides in the comments stream, I’m going to respond to a couple of my correspondents with this new posting — largely because I still haven’t mastered a way to insert links, much less files, conveniently into the comments format. I continue to admire those savvy folk who have figured it out.

Anyway, Portia said I had explained my lack of military service — one of the great regrets, or perhaps I should say gripes (since it wasn’t my choice), of my life — in a recent column, but she couldn’t get to it to provide a link. I’ve mentioned it more than once, but I have a feeling that this is the one to which she refers. If not, I’ll go back and look for another one.

Also, the link that Mike C provided was interesting, and I recommend it (although I got lost in exactly what the late William Jennings Bryan Dorn‘s namesake was urging Woodrow Wilson to do; I really need to bone up on that period). But I bring it up here because its title, and this passage …

The profound interpretation recognizes that if there is an invasion the decision for it and for its sweeping historical consequences will be in the hands of one man, The President of the United States, and that he – and he alone – must take complete moral responsibility for this massive intervention in the fate of our species. And this fact is conveyed in the title of Mr. Hammerschlag’s article: it will forever be Bush’s War, no matter what the outcome.

… reminded me of an older column of mine (and here’s where I really had to go to a posting rather than a comment, since I had to attach a Word file, that piece no longer being online).

Oh, and in answer to "Amos Nunoy‘s" last question, namely, "Did you know it wasn’t about mass weapons the whole time? You didn’t say," I most certainly did NOT write "Hey, there’s no WMD." Why? Because I thought, like everyone else, that Saddam had at least one variety of WMD (he had used it in the past, after all), and was working feverishly to develop others. In fact, we mentioned it editorially among the reasons to invade at the time — partly because that cause was more important to others on our editorial board than it was to me, but also because it WAS part of the argument. It just wasn’t what was important to me, and would not have been reason enough alone to justify invasion in MY mind. You can tell this by what I did stress at the time, such as (at least in passing) in the column linked in the paragraph above. Or, more to the point, this one. In fact, the latter is worth quoting here, in case you have trouble calling up that old file:

The answer to all of the above is: Sept. 11.

Before that, U.S. policy-makers didn’t want to destabilize the status quo in the Mideast. What we learned on Sept. 11 is that the status quo in the region is unacceptable. It must change.

Change has to start somewhere, and Iraq is the best place to insert the lever, for several reasons – geography, culture, demographics, but most of all because Saddam Hussein has given us all the justification we need to go in and take him out: We stopped shooting in 1991 because he agreed to certain terms, and he has repeatedly thumbed his nose at those agreements.

Iraq may not be the best place in the world to try to nurture a liberal democracy, but it’s the best shot we have in the Mideast.

That was written, by the way, the month before the 2003 invasion. You’ll notice, "Amos," that while I didn’t specifically mention WMD (because, once again, I thought that threat, while insufficient, was real) I DID say that the president, for Realpolitik reasons, wasn’t frankly stating exactly WHY we had to go into Iraq — or at least, wasn’t stressing it enough to suit me. That’s why that column was headlined, "The uncomfortable truth about why we may have to invade Iraq." I thought it was important to state those reasons more prominently beforehand, so I did.

Wednesday column, with links

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Where have all the heroes gone?
Nowhere, actually
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
APPARENTLY, there are no war heroes any more. At least, there are none that America feels like lifting up as examples and celebrating. This was the premise of a piece in The New York Times’ Week in Review section Sunday that explained some things to me.
There are, of course, actual heroes in the war on terror. The Times piece gave the names of three of them.
The problem is, I hadn’t heard of them. You probably hadn’t, either. And the contrast between that ignorance on our part, and the way Sgt. Alvin York and Audie Murphy (whose picture, portraying himself in the autobiographical Hollywood movie, “To Hell and Back,” was the dominant feature of the section’s front page) were lionized during and after their wars, is striking — and shocking. And stupid, if, as the story suggests, it reflects a deliberate policy decision on the part of our government.
The three mentioned were:

Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, Congressional Medal of Honor. He fought off scores of elite Iraqi troops to save his outnumbered unit before he was killed.
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, Silver Star. She led a team that killed 27 insurgents who had attacked her convoy.
Sgt. Rafael Peralta received no medal that I’ve been able to trace. After sustaining multiple wounds to the chest and face during the November battle for Fallujah, he grabbed a live enemy grenade and tucked it under his body, sacrificing himself to save a roomful of fellow Marines.

In an earlier age, Sgt. Hester would have been brought home and sent across the country to sell War Bonds. But we don’t do that today, and not only because there are no War Bonds. (Remember, in this war, the homefront is not being asked to sacrifice in any way whatsoever; instead, we have tax cuts and soaring deficits.)
The NYT piece gave the following, admittedly speculative, “reasons” for this: “(P)ublic opinion on the Iraq war is split, and drawing attention to it risks fueling opposition; the military is more reluctant than it was in the last century to promote the individual over the group; and the war itself is different, with fewer big battles and more and messier engagements involving smaller units of Americans. Then, too, there is a celebrity culture that seems skewed more to the victim than to the hero.”
Amen to that last. Who get portrayed as heroes? Jessica Lynch and football star Pat Tillman — both victims. One was wounded and captured, the other killed by friendly fire.
And we hear about the mostly unsung victims who are killed, without any chance to fight back, by roadside IEDs. The message we get from that? “There’s just no use in continuing to try.”
The actual heroes do get mentioned. President Bush spoke of Sgt. Peralta — a Mexican immigrant who enlisted the day after he got his “green card” — at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast (surely you heard about it). And Sgt. Smith’s name pops up 154 times in the last two years in the news databases I searched. It’s sort of hard to keep the one Medal of Honor awarded in Iraq a complete secret, after all.
But compare Sgt. Smith’s name recognition to Brad Pitt’s. Or Sgt. Hester’s to Janet Jackson’s. Or Rafael Peralta’s to Rafael Palmeiro’s. See what we elevate as worthy of our attention?
Let’s confront another rationale the Times identified: Divided public opinion gives all the more reason to stress the nobility and achievements, not only of those who perform traditional acts of valor in combat, but of those who build schools, or train the new Iraqi army.
Our leaders fear to confront attitudes such as this one, expressed by one Kevin Canterbury in a letter to The Boston Globe:
“I am disgusted by the American media’s glorification of the blood sport we call war,” he begins. (What glorification? Has this guy seen the news?) “Truly sincere, honorable people like Sergeant Rafael Peralta, who make almost superhuman sacrifices to protect freedom and democracy in America, are used as props to personalize and humanize the big lie that the Iraq debacle is a just and noble endeavor.æ.æ.æ. There is nothing romantic about this war.”
No war was ever romantic. It is always an unbelievably horrible, nasty, bloody business. Society used to hide that, and do its best to romanticize combat. But to me, heroism means a lot more when depicted against the brutal reality: Are you more impressed by Audie Murphy in the sanitized battle scenes of “To Hell and Back,” or by the portrayal of Dick Winters’ deeds in HBO’s painfully realistic “Band of Brothers”?
Those of us who believe this war is necessary should not flinch from its horrors. We should hold up what heroes manage to accomplish in spite of it all. Are we squeamish about the fact that the heroism of Sgts. Smith and Hester involved killing the enemy? Yes, we are; even I am. But I think most Americans would appreciate what they’ve done, if they knew enough about them.
Confront directly the attitudes of those like Mr. Canterbury who take the untenable stance of “supporting the troops but not the war.”
As a political tactic, this is a smart improvement over the Vietnam-era practice of spitting (figuratively if not literally) on returning veterans. But when people say “support the troops by bringing them home,” I see it as spitting on the graves of the 1,800 who have already given their lives. That’s what abandoning Iraq would mean.
Soldiers kill. Soldiers get killed — and not in pretty ways, keeling over saying “They got me,” without a trace of blood. They get killed in the manner of Sgt. Peralta, whose remains could only be identified by a tattoo on his shoulder.
If we can’t face that, let’s give up on the whole thing. Let’s disband the military altogether, and just hope the rest of the world decides to show its gratitude by being nice to us from here on.
Or we can face a grim task, and openly respect those who distinguish themselves in performing that task for us while we sit on our broad behinds watching the Michael Jackson trial.
On the day after Sgt. Peralta died, his little brother received the first and last letter the Marine ever wrote to him. “Be proud of being an American,” he wrote. Young Ricardo Peralta should take that advice. And America, returning the favor, should be proud of his big brother.

Refreshing intellectual honesty

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In a professional sense, there is nothing I admire more than intellectual honesty. It is one of the reasons why I rail against political parties and ideologies, because they encourage people to approach an issue or event thinking, "What’s in this for me and my side?" or "How do I spin this to support my preconceived notions?" instead of "What’s really going on here, and what are its true implications, regardless of what I want them to be, and what is the best course for the greater good?"

This is human nature (in the sense that it is something that someone who wants to be a better person should strive to rise above). And the moment one declares a party affiliation or embraces an ideology, one has surrendered to the temptation to follow this easy path. That’s why I avoid doing those things (one reason, anyway). But am I immune to the pull of this corruption? Of course not. I make my living laying opinions out before the public, and it is in my nature as much as it is in anyone else’s to approach each issue or event wanting to find in it justification, rather than refutation, of the position that every reader knows I have taken. After all, a portion of my reputation, such as it is, depends upon my opinions holding up reasonably well to scrutiny. But my reputation is worthless if I’m not able to able to resist that temptation sufficiently to see things as they are.

Whether I succeed in that or not, I leave to others to judge over time. My purpose in this posting is to recognize such intellectual honesty in another writer.

I get so sick of both knee-jerk criticism and knee-jerk defense of what our nation is doing in Iraq, that when I see someone approach the issue in an open-eyed manner, it is refreshing, and renews my faith in the potential of the human race. So it is that I would like to bring this piece from The Washington Post to your attention. It is written by an expert (which I am not) who supports our mission in Iraq (as I do) and has done so since the start (as I have), but because he cares so much about the mission, is enormously frustrated with mistakes the Bush administration has made in this critical endeavor (as am I). So you might say I think this guy is intellectually honest because I agree with him (mostly, anyway). And you may be right.

But there’s one important way in which this writer is different from me — his son is a soldier, and "Before long he will fight in the war that I advocated…." That gives a particular urgency to Eliot A. Cohen’s soul searching. And his own display of honesty is all the more admirable because he has been identified, fairly or not, with a particular ideology. The piece is well worth the read.

Probably my favorite part appears at the very end. I include it here in case you have trouble getting to the link:

There is a lot of talk these days about shaky public support for the war. That is not really the issue. Nor should cheerleading, as opposed to truth-telling, be our leaders’ chief concern. If we fail in Iraq — and I don’t think we will — it won’t be because the American people lack heart, but because leaders and institutions have failed. Rather than fretting about support at home, let them show themselves dedicated to waging and winning a strange kind of war and describing it as it is, candidly and in detail. Then the American people will give them all the support they need. The scholar in me is not surprised when our leaders blunder, although the pundit in me is dismayed when they do. What the father in me expects from our leaders is, simply, the truth — an end to happy talk and denials of error, and a seriousness equal to that of the men and women our country sends into the fight.

Both the cheerleaders and those who are doing all they can to make public support for the war "shaky" should read this realistic assessment. Then they should drop their simplistic poses and think about how we proceed from here.

More on Westmoreland

RE-enlistments up

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A colleague today pointed me to this story by a former colleague. (I was Dave’s editor when he was The State‘s military writer, a service he now performs for USA Today. We were also members of the legendarily bad, and aptly named, softball team — the Cosmic Ha-Has. Small world.)

This story, the thrust of which is that "Soldiers are re-enlisting at rates ahead of the Army’s targets, even as overall recruiting is suffering after two years of the Iraq war," sheds new light on a topic that I addressed in a recent column, light that shows us some good news amid the bad. And it does more than that.

Dave wrote:

Army officials attribute the strong re-enlistment rates to unprecedented cash bonuses and a renewed sense of purpose in fighting terrorism.

The first of those factors can be quantified, and Dave did so in his story — X percentage of soldiers getting between Y and Z amounts in re-up bonuses. But the second part is what strikes me.

Note the contrast: People who are already in the Army, and in many cases exposed to fire in Iraq, are re-enlisting beyond the Army’s hopes and expectations. In other words, the ones who actually know what it’s all about are signing up for additional hitches. Meanwhile, the young people who really don’t know much about the military beyond the 24/7 news reports about IEDs and suicide bombers are not signing up in needed numbers, despite the fact that impressive bonuses and personal benefits are dangled in front of them, too.

Why is that?

Dave quotes Col. Debbra Head, who tracks retention from the Pentagon, as saying that "The biggest thing is that soldiers believe in what they are doing." It’s easy for me to believe that, because I believe in what they’re doing, and I truly appreciate what they’re doing, because I believe it is enormously important to America, to Iraq, to the Mideast and to the world. I believe there’s nothing more important that an American could be doing right now than what they’re doing (they’re certainly making more a contribution than I am). And in their own, quiet way — letting their actions, in re-enlisting, speak for them — they’re letting us know that that’s what they think, too.

The Longest Day

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Today is the day of days — at least it was, 61 years ago. Our modern-day Agincourt, when men who lay a-bed in America might hold their manhoods cheap in later years, for not having been there to launch the assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europa.

Of course, the men who were there would have snorted at such flowery, high-flown rhetoric. They were just there to do a job that they didn’t want to have to do, and were pretty ticked off at the Germans for keeping them from being able to lay a-bed back home.

And unlike at Agincourt, there were plenty of men on our side that day. About 175,000 were flung into the headlong, all-or-nothing effort — on that first day alone. The war in the West, and and perhaps in the East as well, depended on the establishment of a beachhead on this day, in spite of everything Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had done to make it impossible. And he had done all he could.

By this time of day, the battle was well joined. Paratroopers had been on the ground since midnight — early evening on June 5 back home. They had been scattered all over the place by C-47 pilots who had been totally unprepared for the volume of anti-aircraft fire they had flown into — dropped too fast, too low and almost always in the wrong locations. Plenty else had gone wrong. So many things had gone wrong that Iraq looks seamless by comparison. At midmorning, Omaha had looked hopeless — to the generals. But individual sergeants and lieutenants here and there didn’t know that, and went ahead to get the job done.

How, I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine. All any of us who were born later can know is what we read in books and see in films. Steven Spielberg has done his best to try to depict the experience, in one epic film and on television, and for many of us, that constitutes our entire understanding of that momentous day.

To help connect us a little more to the reality, I provide links to sites dedicated to two of the real men who were there — Bill Guarnere and David Kenyon Webster. One of them still lives, the other is long gone. Their names — particularly Sgt. Guarnere’s — are well known to those who watched Mr. Spielberg’s "Band of Brothers." Both were members of Company E of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Mr. Webster’s letters home (he was an aspiring writer who had left Harvard to join the Airborne) were a critical source for Stephen Ambrose when he wrote the book upon which the series was based.

Go to the sites. Mr. Guarnere’s is worth it for the intro alone. Mr. Webster’s contains excerpts from his letters. Their words provide a better, and more fitting, tribute to what they and so many thousands of others accomplished than anything further I could say.

bradwarthen.com

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