'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Brass versus suits, contd...

When I say "Thank God for the US military", don't get me wrong. My conviction that violence of all kinds is wrong and counter-productive remains firm. Violence begets violence, it's as simple as that.

On the other hand, at least the people who actually use violence, who are daily exposed to it and are very aware of its costs to all concerned, have a more realistic view of these matters than those who sit in comfortable offices thousands of miles away making life-or-death decisions about military affairs.

So here (while the political echelons of the US leadership were scrambling to find ways both to spin and to escape from the escalating disaster in Iraqi) we have the US's top military commander in Iraq actually telling it to a bunch of journos like he sees it.

As the NYT's John F. Burns put it,

Dispensing with euphemisms favored by many Bush administration officials in recent months, General [Ricardo] Sanchez, commander of the 130,000 American troops in Iraq, described what they were facing as a war.

(Get out your flight-suit, George! They might need you to participate for real this time!)

Burns reported ("from a heavily guarded news conference in the Iraqi capital") that, "On another issue with American political overtones, General Sanchez said interrogations of 20 people suspected of links to Al Qaeda had failed to confirm such links."

Oh gosh, don't you just hate it when that happens? There the spinmeisters of K Street were for the past two days, telling us that the 20 people they'd picked up on suspicion of having organized the attack that nearly caught Wolfie's pants on fire last week were Al-Qaeda operatives-- and so, didn't that just show that Cheney was right with all his repetition of the claims about Saddam-Qaeda links, whatever...

And then the general on the scene goes ahead and tells everyone and her auntie that No, it ain't so?

But according to Burns, Sanchez had still more to say:

The general described a stark picture of the attacks on American troops, saying they averaged six a day when he took command five months ago, rose to 'the teens' 60 days ago, and had increased to 30 to 35 a day in the last 30 days. He predicted that the attacks would increase still further before the intensifying American military campaign began to curb them...

The spinmeisters must be afraid that the military is getting out of control, saying things like that!

Well, from General Sanchez' point of view, he needs to tell the truth like he sees it, and in a fairly public way. For a number of reasons.

First, he needs to know the truth about the identity of his opponents, so that hopefully (for him) he can devise an appropriate response to their actions.

Second--and don't underestimate this requirement--he needs to communicate a clear idea of his analysis of the nature of the opponents to all his subordinate commanders in the field and his supporting commanders back home in the Pentagon. Oh sure, the US military doesn't usually use the NYT as a main means of communication. But with their own communicatons so overwhelmed and possibly unclear, it certainly can't hurt him to seek also to send a clear message out to them thru the NYT and other major media sources.

Third, he needs to get the viewpoint of the uniformed military leadership on these matters firmly onto the public record before the whole military situation inside Iraq goes firmly down the tubes (which is what he certainly seemed to be presenting as something of a possibility despite his tough, blustery talk about the fact that the eventual US victory "was not in doubt.")

Indeed, to me, that's the most interesting thing about Sanchez' press conference: the clear inference I drew from it that he is preparing a clear CYA defense on behalf of the whole of the uniformed military, in the increasingly likely event of a US debacle in Iraq.

And actually, such a defense is not invalid. The brass as a group certainly tried hard all along to warn the pols that invading and remaking Iraq would not be a cake-walk. Remember Shinseki? And it took Bombs-Away Don a long time to find a compliant general who'd agree to become Chairman of the JCS on his terms...

So thank God for the US military, I say, and especially for this: that at the end of the day, the commanders seem to have resisted the huge pressures to be rolled by the chickenhawks, and to have kept their personal and professional integrity--including their responsibilities to the thousands of men and women under their command who don't have the luxury of living in the (highly relative) comfort and safety of the "Green Zone" in Baghdad.

And talking of what's happening out there in the outposts. Here's a revealing excerpt from a certain interesting blog I've been reading recently, which looks as though it must be the transcript of an IM interaction between a person who's an officer in one of the branches of the US military, writing from somewhere in Iraq, and his life-partner back home:

Officer: Have a good story for you. I walked in a tent today and two guys were tossing darts at a board made from Our Glorious Leader's picture.
Partner: Oh man, you didn't bust them for it, did you?
Officer: They saw me and got pale instantly. I think they were seeing their careers flashing before their eyes.
Partner: What did you do?
Officer: I turned and walked out of the tent without saying a word. I stood outside for a few then went back in and no darts or picture was in view. I saw nothing and said nothing to them.

Note the three things that are happening here. The grunts are throwing the darts at OGL's image. The officer (noncom?) effectively condones that action. And the officer tells his sweetie back home about it--on an open IM link, and knowing full well that she will just love the story...

Oh boy, should Karl Rove be worried.