Friendly Fire: The Generals v. Rumsfeld

This week a number of retired generals, including those who commanded troops in Iraq, called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. This is not the first time that that the Administration has faced opposition from the military. In December of 2004, soldiers in Kuwait unexpectedly confronted Rumsfeld with a series of questions regarding the lack of adequate armor, to which he rather infamously responded, "you have to go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." Yet, what makes the current uproar particularly damaging for the Administration is not only the seniority of the military officials, but the unprecedented decision to speak publicly. Even during Vietnam, retired generals who fought in the war kept grievances private and never took the step of calling for a change in civilian command.

At the moment, what we're witnessing is the inversion of the traditional civil-military relationship. The ostensible reason why we have civilian control of the military is because civilian leaders are subject to popular pressure. Political opposition in a democratic society ensures that elected representatives and those to whom they delegate power are constantly confronted with competing perspectives. As a result, military decisions are meant to be the product of general consensus and permanently subject to the popular will. Today, by contrast, the Administration's war policies exist almost entirely outside the domain of public accountability. As we've mentioned before, even massive protests have little capacity to alter decision-making. It's civilian insulation rather than responsiveness that has become the political rule.

In this context, the military has for all intents and purposes become the politically significant voice of opposition. On a variety of fronts, from torture and global detention to the war in Iraq, JAG officers, retired generals, and enlisted soldiers have posed some of the greatest practical challenges to the civilian establishment. While such criticism is clearly necessary, it also raises serious questions about American political life.

To begin with, precisely because the military culture is structured around obedience and task-completion, one cannot expect soldiers to pose a meaningful challenge to the goals of public policy. Criticism, to the extent that it's even aired publicly, will inevitably focus on tactics and limited objectives -- such as body armor or whether Rumsfeld should stay or go. The fact that such criticism is being voiced at all does suggest deeper opposition to Administration policies. If the U.S. was engaged in a war with the popular support and political legitimacy of World War II, soldiers wouldn't be complaining about their combat vehicles or calling for resignations.

Yet, the act of moving beyond tactics to articulating and altering public policy is something that can only be done by citizens and their representatives. Thus, on the one hand, the increased willingness of military officials to question civilian leadership is clearly a positive development. Yet, on the other hand, it also marks the hollowing out of ordinary politics. The very fact that only generals have the legitimacy and power to call for civilian accountability tells us much about the capacity of citizens to assert control over their own ostensibly democratic institutions. Without viable avenues for political change, we're left with military officers struggling in incomplete and ideologically limited ways to fill the void. This may be better than nothing, but not by much.