Columnist
To appreciate the Pentagon drama unfolding in the nation’s capital, one must resort not to Katie Couric but to Niccolo Machiavelli. The Florentine official penned The Prince, a 16th-century treatise on the ruthless conduct of government policy.
A group of retired U.S. Army generals, aware no doubt of the Machiavellian regime they’re up against, have dared place the war counselor of the Bush administration under siege.
“We went to war with a flawed plan,” said Maj. Gen. John Batiste, “that didn’t account for the hard work to build the peace after we took down the regime.”
This withering, dare we say unprecedented, attack has forced the “arrogant” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld into a defensive crouch at his daily Pentagon press briefings. Instead of pontificating on his impeccable strategy, he spent last week explaining why he should not be heading for the shade. Secure with their severance packages, the group of ex-generals continues boldly to demand that the 73-year-old defense secretary join them in retirement.
Despite his earlier offers to step down over revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld insists that now is not the time. Funny how a scandal not directly tied to Rumsfeld produced a resignation offer, while the disastrous Iraq war so heavily smeared with his fingerprints does not.
When asked why he offered to walk the plank over Abu Ghraib but not now, Rumsfeld replied: “Just call it idiosyncratic.” This just happens to be the generals’ opinion of their civilian leader’s war policy: idiosyncratic and deeply flawed.
Their concerns cannot be as lightly brushed aside as, say, those of Cindy Sheehan. Whereas the civilian war protester lost a son, the generals, who clearly represent others on active duty, have seen more than 2,000 soldiers buried.
This brings us back to The Prince. Machiavelli cautioned that plotters should not attack the king directly unless they’re absolutely certain to get him. It seems this warning was not lost on the retired generals. Surely they know Rumsfeld is a servant of the king.
As White House deception unravels, the generals have stepped forward to warn a concerned nation that Rumsfeld (read Bush) is conducting a needless war in an incompetent manner. Some of the language of the generals’ attack on Rumsfeld appears to be thinly disguised as to its real target.
“My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions – or bury the results,” said retired Army Major Gen. John Riggs.
“Swagger” clearly is a dagger aimed not so much at the chief in the Pentagon as the one in the White House. “Casualness” also misses the intense Rumsfeld but scores squarely upon the persona of the National Guard pilot who wasted his young years and shirked his military duty in Alabama.
Both secretary and president, however, qualify for Riggs’ biting criticisms about “those” who have avoided combat themselves and don’t bother with the burials of the American soldiers dying on the battlefield of Iraq.
Bush stood steadfastly behind his besieged secretary of defense. “I hear the voices,” Bush said, “and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I’m the decider. And I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”
With that the casual decider in chief swaggered off the stage.