Beating Drums
April 18th, 2006In the battle for the future of the American Republic, the war drums begin to beat as the year 2006 advances, and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post joins the call for Al Gore to enter the ring. As an ardent Al Gore supporter, I can say that I endorse the article — and its summons — wholeheartedly. Excerpted are the pieces relevant to Al Gore’s latest film:
Boring Al Gore has made a movie. It is on the most boring of all subjects — global warming. It is more than 80 minutes long and the first two or three go by slow enough so that you can notice that Gore has gained weight and that his speech still seems oddly out of sync. But a moment later, I promise, you will be captivated, and then riveted, and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a hand basket.
You will see the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps melting. You will see Greenland oozing into the sea. You will see the atmosphere polluted with greenhouse gases that block heat from escaping. You will see photos from space of what the ice caps looked like once and what they look like now and, in animation, you will see how high the oceans might rise. Shanghai and Calcutta swamped. Much of Florida, too. The water takes a hunk of New York. The fuss about what to do with Ground Zero will turn naught. It will be under water.
“An Inconvenient Truth'’ is a cinematic version of the lecture that Gore has given for years warning of the dangers of global warming. Davis Guggenheim, the director, opened it up a bit. For instance, he added some shots of Gore mulling the fate of the Earth as he is driven here or there in some city, sometimes talking about personal matters such as the death of his beloved older sister from lung cancer and the close call his son had after being hit by a car. These are all traumas that Gore had mentioned in his presidential campaign and which seemed cloying at the time. Here they seem appropriate.
Before continuing, let me apologize for my absence. I fell ill on Sunday night at the White Sox game and fell iller at yesterday’s, too. I would’ve been sicker had the White Sox lost, but I’m in okay shape and so I have the time and energy to write again. I do hope everyone had a good weekend — and spent it in drier locales than I did!
The drumbeat on global warming is rising, in part because of Al Gore’s work and in part because people like the Queen of England are pushing for more action. As a global issue, global warming is the most important on Earth, by far. The greatest tragedy of the last ten years is that the Republican Party flat-out refuses to take any meaningful, serious action to combat Global Warming. And why? Because they’re moral cowards, as Al Gore has charged.
[Said Gore:] “I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and, like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of. His reaction to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish list of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’ to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done to the nation as a whole—that can come only from genuine moral cowardice. I don’t see any other explanation for it, because it’s not a question of principle. The only common denominator is each of the groups has a lot of money that they’re willing to put in service to his political fortunes and their ferocious and unyielding pursuit of public policies that benefit them at the expense of the nation.”
Since we’re talking about cowardice, the turkey of a man that is Mikhail Gorbachev is out of his cage again, writing about the Chenobyl nuclear accident as “the cause” of the Soviet Union’s collapse, “even more than my launch of perestroika” was. Of course, the fact that Socialism fully practiced only works “in theory” might have had something to do with it. As would the fact that the Soviets bankrupted themselves in a foolish effort to “keep up” with the West. And then there’s karma — the idea that what goes around comes around, and crushing peaceful movements with tanks will lead to some bad karma.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that karma caused the fall of the USSR. I’m just saying that if we want to claim that voodoo did it we might as well attribute it to Karma instead. At least then we wouldn’t be rewriting the failures of Communism and the sickness of the Soviet Union.
The military is revolting against the Pentagon’s leadership, and it’s getting quite serious and heated. The first thing of note is that the military has always disagreed with the Defense Secretary and given him hell. The Joint Chiefs typically see the Defense Secretary as a political hack to be dealt with and respect while he’s in office but deride whenever they get the chance. When you’ve been a military man all your life, you don’t appreciate having someone like Donald Rumsfeld telling you what to do. And you particularly don’t like it when he messes up the War Effort.
First, it is clear that the retired generals — six so far, with more likely to come — surely are speaking for many of their former colleagues, friends and subordinates who are still inside. In the tight world of senior active and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue. Recent retirees stay in close touch with old friends, who were often their subordinates; they help each other, they know what is going on and a conventional wisdom is formed. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who was director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the planning period for the war in Iraq, made this clear in an extraordinary, at times emotional, article in Time magazine this past week when he said he was writing “with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.” He went on to “challenge those still in uniform . . . to give voice to those who can’t — or don’t have the opportunity to — speak.”
Second, it is also clear that the target is not just Rumsfeld. Newbold hints at this; others are more explicit in private. But the only two people in the government higher than the secretary of defense are the president and vice president. They cannot be fired, of course, and the unspoken military code normally precludes direct public attacks on the commander in chief when troops are under fire. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course: In addition to MacArthur, there was Gen. George McClellan vs. Lincoln; and on a lesser note, Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, who was fired for attacking President Jimmy Carter over Korea policy. But such challenges are rare enough to be memorable, and none of these solo rebellions metastasized into a group, a movement that can fairly be described as a revolt.)
This has put President Bush and his administration in a hellish position at a time when security in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating. If Bush yields to the generals’ revolt, he will appear to have caved in to pressure from what Rumsfeld disingenuously describes as “two or three retired generals out of thousands.” But if he keeps Rumsfeld, he risks more resignations — perhaps soon — from generals who heed Newbold’s stunning call that as officers they took an oath to the Constitution and should now speak out on behalf of the troops in harm’s way and to save the institution that he feels is in danger of falling back into the disarray of the post-Vietnam era.
In the end, the case for changing the secretary of defense seems to me to be overwhelming. I do not reach this conclusion simply because of past mistakes, simply because “someone must be held accountable.” Many people besides Rumsfeld were deeply involved in the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan; many of them remain in power, and some are in uniform.
The major reason the nation needs a new defense secretary is far more urgent. Put simply, the failed strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be fixed as long as Rumsfeld remains at the epicenter of the chain of command. Rumsfeld’s famous “long screwdriver,” with which he sometimes micromanages policy, now thwarts the top-to-bottom reexamination of strategy that is absolutely essential in both war zones. Lyndon Johnson understood this in 1968 when he eased another micromanaging secretary of defense, McNamara, out of the Pentagon and replaced him with Clark M. Clifford. Within weeks, Clifford had revisited every aspect of policy and begun the long, painful process of unwinding the commitment. Today, those decisions are still the subject of intense dispute, and there are many differences between the two situations. But one thing was clear then and is clear today: Unless the secretary of defense is replaced, the policy will not and cannot change.
The drums are beating for a hanging on the Potomac, and it’s the right call. In the Washington Times, there’s alarm over whether or not these generals are preparing a coup or conspiracy of sorts. It’s an interesting thing to discuss — I, being a fan of Harry Truman, particularly find the intrigue surrounding an Executive v. Military Confrontation intriguing — but what Blankley writes about in the Times is far fetched and seems to be a shameless effort to discredit the generals.
Perhaps they can get Bob Novak to leak something about someone’s wife on the Joint Chiefs soon? That’ll ease the calls for Rumsfeld to resign! I can only imagine the heated conversations that are going on in the Halls of Washington. While immigration engulfs Washington, a silent storm has begun in the middle of the night and it’s going to leave Donald Rumsfeld a soggy, broken man whether he resigns or not. But if he doesn’t, it’ll be Iraq left cold, wet and shattered — something particularly alarming considering that Iraq is a desert. Bush should think of that the next time Donald Rumsfeld gives him his resignation.