Cracks in The Constitution?

The New York Times


April 16, 2006
Generals Break With Tradition Over Rumsfeld
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, April 15 — This week, as the chorus of retired generals demanding Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation grew larger and louder, Gen. Peter Pace stood beside the embattled defense secretary and did what some experts say is his military duty.

"As far as Pete Pace is concerned, this country is exceptionally well-served by the man standing on my left," General Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon. "Nobody, nobody works harder than he does to take care of the P.F.C.'s and lance corporals and lieutenants and the captains. He does his homework. He works weekends, he works nights.

"People can question my judgment or his judgment," he continued, "but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld."

Critics of Mr. Rumsfeld, who agree with the former generals who have derided him as wrongheaded and arrogant, may see General Pace's endorsement as fulsome flattery. After all, some officers contend that the 73-year-old defense secretary has promoted top leaders based largely on their fealty to him, his management of the war in Iraq and his ambitious plan to remake the military.

But the comments by General Pace of the Marines were more than a public plug for a boss under fire. Scholars who study the armed forces say they were a public restatement of a bedrock principle of American governance: civilian control of the military.

"This is what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is expected to do by tradition and law," said Dennis E. Showalter, a military historian at Colorado College who has taught at the Air Force Academy and West Point. Short of submitting his own resignation, General Pace had little choice but to offer a public show of support, Mr. Showalter said.

"If he had not spoken out, he would have been making a very strong statement," he said.

The idea that civilian leaders, as representatives of the people, should have the ultimate say in how the country's military power is wielded dates to colonial resentment of British rule and is embedded in the Constitution.

Tensions between civilian leaders and the military brass are routine and occasionally erupt into public view. But the principle of civilian supremacy has never been seriously challenged; the last plotters of a military coup d'état in American history were disgruntled officers faced down by General George Washington at Newburgh, N.Y., in 1783.

In fact, Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prescribes a court-martial for any commissioned officer who "uses contemptuous words against the president, the vice president, Congress, the secretary of defense" or other federal or state officials.

That prohibition, of course, does not forbid serving officers from speaking candidly in private when asked for advice on military matters. Some of Mr. Rumsfeld's critics also fault General Pace and others for not being more forceful in questioning the guidelines put forward by Pentagon civilians that have kept American forces relatively lean in Iraq and have led to the quick disbanding of the Iraqi army.

Neither does the prohibition on "contemptuous words" apply to retirees. And the propriety of the onslaught of attacks on Mr. Rumsfeld's leadership from recently retired senior military leaders, including some who served in Iraq, is a matter of intense debate.

"It's certainly very unusual to have even retired military officers being this public about their opposition," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University political scientist and co-author — with Peter D. Feaver, now a White House adviser — of a 2004 book on civil-military relations. "But I don't think it's improper at all. They've been careful not to violate the core tenet of civilian control — none of them has said these things publicly while on active duty."

Other scholars are not so sure. Richard H. Kohn, a historian at the University of North Carolina who has studied the civilian control issue for 40 years, said he largely agrees with the generals' view of the war and is no admirer of Mr. Rumsfeld. He is sympathetic to what he calls "a dam of anger and frustration bursting on the part of these senior retired people" and says he does not question their right to speak out.

Yet Mr. Kohn said he found the chorus of attacks disquieting. He was disturbed, he said, by an assertion made by Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired from the Marines, in an essay for Time magazine, that he was writing "with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership."

"That's a fairly chilling thought," Mr. Kohn said. "Chilling because they're not supposed to be undermining their civilian leadership."

He also said he feared that the public statements would "poison the civil-military relationship inside the Pentagon and with the president," sowing mistrust between senior civilians and officers.

"It's not the military that holds the civilian leadership accountable," he said. "It's Congress, the voters, investigative journalists. Things have been turned upside down here."

Both Mr. Gelpi and Mr. Kohn said the generals' stance may erode Americans' belief that the military stands apart from politics. "One reason the military is so respected by the public is that military leaders are seen as nonpartisan and outside politics," Mr. Gelpi said.

Among earlier clashes between civilian and military leaders, historians inevitably point to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's challenge to President Harry S. Truman's conduct of the Korean War. In 1951, after General MacArthur repeatedly criticized White House policy, Mr. Truman removed him from command and ordered him back to the United States.

Mr. Truman initially paid a heavy political price for taking on the general. "There was talk of impeachment," Mr. Kohn said. "Truman's approval numbers were in the 20's. He was under enormous assault."

Civilian-military clashes were far less pronounced during the Vietnam War, which was a formative experience for many current senior officers, including General Pace, who led a rifle platoon at the Battle of Hue in 1968.

But the very failure of military leaders to challenge President Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and other top civilians over that war, as depicted in the 1997 book "Dereliction of Duty" by H. R. McMaster, an Army officer who more recently has commanded a brigade in Iraq, has haunted some of the generals now speaking out.

"If the military is always fighting the last war, well, in the last big war, in Vietnam, the generals stayed quiet and that's now seen as a mistake," said Mr. Showalter, of Colorado College.

More recently, President Bill Clinton, who had never served in the military and actively opposed the Vietnam War, came to office facing barely disguised hostility from many military officers.

By moving quickly to fulfill his campaign pledge to end the ban on gay men and lesbians in the military, Mr. Clinton provoked near rebellion among the uniformed services.

General Colin L. Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, was outspoken and quite public in his opposition, saying opening the door to gay men and lesbians would undermine "good order and discipline."

The current "don't ask, don't tell" policy emerged as a compromise, but the services' challenge was also among the factors that prompted Les Aspin to step down as Mr. Clinton's defense secretary after a short tenure.

Mr. Showalter said several factors set the stage for the retired generals' current challenge. Many retired officers have found a place as commentators on television, and some have shared their views in books. The current generation of senior leaders is the best educated in history, he said, and some officers are intellectuals who are less willing than an earlier generation to keep quiet about policy disagreements.

Still, Mr. Showalter said, it is worth asking, "What's the risk to civilian control of the military when recently retired officers — who didn't lay down their stars and resign when they were serving — call for the resignation of the secretary of defense?"