General Knowledge, Specific Truth
August 8th, 2006Israel today openly stated that it plans to push deeper into Lebanon. So much for a short war, so much for a “two week window,” or whatever the hell George Bush pledged. This President’s word means nothing.
Richard Cohen has himself a great article in the Washington Post about our military and the Iraq War.
Among the various awards to government officials — presidential medal, etc. — let me offer one of my own: the Oveta Culp Hobby Award for a truly dumb statement. I have twice before cited the late Mrs. Hobby, the nation’s chief health official back in the Eisenhower administration, because she somehow managed to remain oblivious to the polio panic that struck each summer. When the government ran short of the new and downright miraculous Salk polio vaccine, the rich and fortunate Mrs. Hobby offered the following explanation: “No one could have foreseen the public demand for the vaccine.” For sheer inanity, the remark is almost impossible to beat. Yet three times in the past week I reached for the Hobby Award, thinking she had at least been matched. The first came when Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by Sen. John McCain whether a year ago he anticipated that Iraq might be on the verge of civil war. “No, sir,” the general said.
Next McCain posed the same question to Gen. John P. Abizaid, who is in charge of everything in Iraq. He knew a year ago that tensions were high, he said. But “that they would be this high, no.” Finally, we have the remarks of Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, spokesman for the American military in Iraq. He was not at the Senate hearing, but he caught its flavor and then some. When asked by the New York Times if the United States had moved too quickly to replace American troops with Iraqis, he said, “I don’t think we moved too quickly. I don’t think anyone could have anticipated the sectarian violence.”
I’d like to make a few observations, and given that this is my blog, I’ll do just that. These answers are symbolic of failed leadership. I don’t expect the military men to supplant the President, however incompetent he may be, and these military men are no Douglas MacArthurs. When the Joint Chiefs speak today, they are speaking from the Party Line on the Potomac, and thus this points to the failure of George Walker Bush. It should be clear to everyone that the President has instructed the military to discredit any talk of Civil War in Iraq at all costs.
Make no mistake: the blinders our generals are wearing were put on them by the White House. The fact that they don’t have the nerve to say, “Our course is fatally flawed” is their own doing, but they know exactly what’s going on in Iraq. Just can’t, won’t, say it.