Restive Generals Oppose New Wars

August 15, 2005
Bush Against the Generals
Iran, the White House, and the purge of the military
by Justin Raimondo


The tipping point against this immoral, ill-conceived and in-every-way
disastrous war seems to have been reached, as hundreds - and soon to be
thousands - of Gold Star Mothers and sympathizers march against the war in
Crawford, Texas. Popular support for George W. Bush's Napoleonic foreign
policy has plummeted to its lowest point ever. "Like the Japanese soldier
marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President George W. Bush may
be the last person in the United States to learn that for Americans, if not
Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over," avers Frank Rich:

"'We will stay the course,' he insistently tells us from his Texas
ranch. What do you mean we, white man? A president can't stay the course
when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The
approval rate for Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last
weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved President
Lyndon Johnson's handling of Vietnam in early March 1968.'"

The war against Ba'athist Iraq may be over, but the war against the
mullahs of Iran is just beginning. What else are we to make of the
president's recent interview with Israeli public television:

"When asked if the use of force was an alternative to faltering
diplomatic efforts, Bush said: 'All options are on the table.' 'The use of
force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in
the recent past to secure our country,' he said in a clear reference to
Iraq. 'I have been willing to do so as a last resort in order to secure the
country and provide the opportunity for people to live in free societies,'
he added."

A "last resort"? Don't make me laugh. The Bushies came to Washington
all primed up to invade Iraq: 9/11 gave them the excuse they needed to carry
out their plan - a plan, by the way, not limited to the conquest of Iraq.
The confluence of the president's pronouncement with news of Vice President
*** Cheney's recent request that the military come up with a plan to attack
the Iranians - using nuclear weapons - as a response to a terrorist attack
in the U.S., should send a good-sized shiver down your spine, dear reader,
as it does mine.

Frank Rich believes Bush "can't stay the course when his own citizens"
refuse to go along, but that is nonsense: he can and will do exactly as he
pleases. The constitutional provision assigning exclusively to Congress the
power to declare war has long been a dead letter, killed by Harry Truman
when he sent U.S. troops to Korea. Aside from a few old-fashioned
conservative Republicans, the peoples' elected representatives uttered
hardly a peep of protest. Just as Congress - aside from a few isolated, and
heroic, cases - will stay silent today. As long as the Democratic party is
successfully neutered on foreign policy issues by the neocon-influenced
Democratic Leadership Council, the War Party will encounter no opposition on
that front.

The political groundwork for an assault on Iran has already been laid,
as Joshua Kurlantzick points out in an excellent piece in Vanity Fair
magazine, and these preparations ought to evoke in us an eerie sense of déjà
vu: the same playbook is being used as was followed in Iraq, even including
a mysterious (and, in this case, uniquely kooky) group of exiles funneling
fake "intelligence" to the war hawks in the Pentagon.

You say Chalabi, I say Rajavi - let's call the whole thing off!

As the president of the United States cowers in his ranch, afraid to
meet with a 48-year-old mother who wants to know why her son had to die, he
hurls anathemas at Tehran and gathers his hosts for fresh conquests. Bush
can safely ignore Congress - not that they'll give him any trouble - and he
can tell the chauffeur to speed up when he passes Cindy Sheehan on the way
to a fundraiser for the Republican War Machine. However, he can't safely
ignore the grumbling of his generals - who may be just short of joining the
Crawford peace camp, along with a few divisions from the North American
Command. Bush has just slapped down the top American commander in Iraq,
General George Casey, for daring to suggest that troop reductions were in
the offing. The London Telegraph reports:

"The top American commander in Iraq has been privately rebuked by the
Bush administration for openly discussing plans to reduce troop levels there
next year, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. . Gen George Casey, the U.S.
ground commander in Iraq, was given his dressing-down after he briefed that
troop levels - now 138,000 - could be reduced by 30,000 in the early months
of next year as Iraqi security forces take on a greater role."

If the troops are going into Iran - or, as some say, Syria - then
bringing them home is out of the question. Is the president facing an
officers' rebellion as he ratchets up the rhetoric against Tehran?

The firing of General Kevin Byrnes, allegedly for "adultery" - even
though he's already been separated from his wife - a few months before he's
due to retire, is awfully suspicious in this context: General Byrnes
reportedly made an enemy of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for opposing
the Rumsfeldian "transformation" of the military into a more "flexible"
instrument of the Bush Doctrine and the neocons' imperial vision. In
essentially firing a four-star general - a vicious act of retribution that
certainly bears the personal stamp of the chimp-in-chief - the White House
engaged in a preemptive strike against the War Party's enemies in the
military. This is no doubt a sore spot for the White House: opposition from
American's military leaders to the Iraq adventure made headlines in the
run-up to war, and their continuing objection to this administration's
policy of unconstrained aggression was summed up in the remark of a retired
general to the Washington Times: "The Army is just too small for what they
want it to do."

General Eric Shinseki, the former chief of staff of the Army, dared
face down Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in estimating "several hundred
thousand" U.S. troops as the required size of an Iraq occupation force - and
was forced into retirement. Now Casey has been rebuked and is presumably on
the way out, while Byrnes has been purged, along with no one knows how many
others. It's the night of the long knives in the Pentagon, as the War Party
cleans out suspected dissidents from the top ranks of the military and
prepares for the next move on the Middle Eastern chessboard.

It doesn't matter if the majority of Americans overwhelmingly oppose
the president's war plans, just as long as organized opposition can be
effectively neutralized. Is a housewife from Vacaville threatening to show
up the president as a coward and a liar? Then smear her and make her the
issue - anything to divert attention away from the president's own cowardice
and the monstrous immorality of his foreign policy. Is a four-star general
standing in the way of the neocons? Then smear him, too, on trumped-up
charges and haul him out of his office in disgrace. Is the antiwar movement
beginning to gain momentum? Then bring out the smear artists and begin a
media campaign of demonization.

The regime has a two-note strategy: fear and smear. This summer,
they're firing with both barrels, and we can expect the noise level to rise
appreciably as we approach the fourth anniversary of 9/11 - the catalytic
event that catapulted us into this Bizarro World, where up is down, all
morals are inverted, and we live in a "democracy" where a war opposed by a
clear majority is about to be escalated, not ended.

If I were president in such a world, I, too, would be nervous about
opposition to my crazed war policy emanating from the military. In Bizarro
America, after all, anything might happen - including uniformed generals
leading the antiwar movement.

Finally taking seriously their sworn duty to defend the Constitution,
will they take up their positions next to Cindy Sheehan and march on the
president's Crawford compound? We can dream, can't we? Who knows, but in
Bizarro America, it just might happen, and wouldn't that be a sight to see?
The final rout of the chickenhawks, as they meet their Waterloo!


NOTES IN THE MARGIN

I have a review of Colin Wilson's recently published autobiography,
Dreaming to Some Purpose, in the current (August 29) issue of The American
Conservative. They don't put a lot of their stuff online, but here's a
taste:

"Book reviewers are literary guides, gently leading readers in the
right direction: with the publication of Colin Wilson's autobiography, I am
happy to assist in the rediscovery of a hidden treasure. Wilson's meteoric
career - from the heights of his 1956 success, The Outsider, a study of the
creative misfit in modern literature, to his current state of exile from the
'literary' community - is a testament to the theme that energizes all 120 of
his published books: the idea that human beings can rise above the muck and
pettiness of ordinary human existence if only they keep their gaze fixed on
the stars."

The American Conservative is available at all the better newstands,
but if you haven't subscribed, you have only yourself to blame for missing
out. Go here to subscribe, if you haven't already.

- Justin Raimondo


http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6938


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