Four-Star Story

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2006 8:15 AM

From the amount of media coverage the ex-generals' revolt is generating, you would think they had donned khaki uniforms and stormed the Pentagon in an attempted coup.

And yet all the retired brass have done is to speak out, generally from the safety of climate-controlled television studios.

Ever since one general spoke to Time last week and The Washington Post fronted the story of others who were coming out from under the cone of silence, the controversy has been huge. Liberals rejoiced, conservatives counterattacked, and thumbsuckers pondered What It All Means.

The story has gained considerable altitude because it's a new front in the war over the war, and because of the novelty of career military men calling for the head of Don Rumsfeld. President Bush's full-throated defense of Rummy late Friday gave the debate an extra boost going into Easter weekend.

Then you have all these sub-arguments: Should retired generals be speaking out at all? Why didn't they say anything sooner? Are they just a bunch of Clinton-appointed hacks who didn't like Rummy's attempts to reform the Pentagon, or are they speaking for many active-duty types who can't challenge the commander-in-chief without facing court-martial? Do they validate what outside critics have been saying about the bungling of the war and the occupation? Or are they shooting at the wrong guy, in that Rumsfeld has basically been carrying out Bush's policies?

More conservative voices are taking on the ex-generals since I blogged about this yesterday, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

"As for those who've raised the issue of competence, we'd be more persuaded if they weren't so impossibly vague. If their critique is that Mr. Rumsfeld underestimated the Sunni insurgency, well, so did the CIA and military intelligence. Retired General Tommy Franks, who led and planned the campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein, took a victory lap after the invasion even as the insurgency gathered strength.

"If their complaint is that Mr. Rumsfeld has since fought the insurgents with too few troops, well, what about current Centcom Commander John Abizaid? He is by far the most forceful advocate of the 'small footprint' strategy--the idea that fewer U.S. troops mean less Iraqi resentment of occupation.

"Our point here isn't to join the generals, real or armchair, in pointing fingers of blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq. Mistakes are made in every war; there's a reason the word 'snafu' began as a military acronym whose meaning we can't reprint in a family newspaper. But if we're going to start assigning blame, then the generals themselves are going to have to assume much of it."

National Review also questions the generals' motivation:

"The last week or so could be called 'The Army's Revenge.' There had been resentment toward Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld from the beginning over his attempts to transform the military into a lighter, more modern force. Against the backdrop of the difficulties in Iraq that have weakened the secretary, a handful of retired generals have been able to draw blood with their recent calls for Rumsfeld to step aside (four of them served in the Army, the other two in the Marines).

"As a political matter, Rumsfeld's leaving at this moment, under this kind of fire, would play as an admission that the critics who say the Iraq war was fundamentally botched have been right all along. The White House realizes this, which is one reason President Bush made such a strong statement in support of Rumsfeld on Friday. That retired generals are criticizing a Defense secretary is not, per se, the threat to civil-military relations that some of Rumsfeld's defenders seem to think. Retired flag officers are citizens after all, and they're free to say whatever they want. But there is something unseemly about it, especially considering that most of them apparently kept conveniently quiet about their misgivings while in uniform.

"More important, the criticisms of Rumsfeld don't have much force. Some say he is too imperious. This charge isn't hard to believe of the strong-willed Rumsfeld, but it is disappointing that generals are apparently so easily cowed that their only recourse when dealing with a muscular Defense secretary is to whine about it after the fact."

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum is a bit queasy over the spectacle:

"A friend of mine who's currently serving in Iraq emails some thoughts about the recent criticism of Donald Rumsfeld coming from retired general officers:

"It's very interesting to watch the retired generals coming out to speak against Secretary Rumsfeld from here. Prior to mobilization, I was a fairly vocal critic of this administration and its national security policies. But now that I'm on active duty, I have to stay mute and neutral, especially in front of my soldiers.

"It's also difficult to weigh the value in having these generals speak out now, versus the harm they're doing to the principle of civilian control over the military. But I guess most of all, I have to ask the question 'why now?' It would've been one thing for these generals to fall on their swords in 2003 or 2004 -- to literally lay their stars on the line when it counted. But now that they're comfortably retired, and we're three years into the war. . . . .I don't know what to make of these acts of dissent.

"Should the generals have spoken up earlier? Should they have spoken up at all? Regardless of whether or not we agree with the generals' criticism, I think it's wise to be uneasy about something that has a bit of a sense of a palace revolt against the current civilian leadership of the military. But has mismanagement of the war become so extreme that the usual rules simply don't apply anymore?"

McJoan at Daily Kos, citing a NYT story, laughs at one argument advanced the former military leaders:

"General Richard Myers, newly retired former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently got his Pentagon 'fact sheet.' He says it is very rude of former generals to criticize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

"General Myers, who has emerged as one of Mr. Rumsfeld's chief defenders, repeated his comments from late last week that generals speaking out against the defense secretary are inappropriately breaching military etiquette that dictates officers only air complaints with the civilian leadership privately.

"Oh my goodness! How can we survive a breach in military etiquette! I'm sure the families of our dead soldiers would be appalled at this rudeness. That's undoubtedly what is motivating General Myers to speak out so strongly about the this incredible threat to national security, rude retired military personnel."

Speaking of war critics: Thirty-five years after "Four Dead in Ohio," Neil Young is coming out with an album about Bush and Iraq, with one track called "Impeach the President."

But the former No. 2 general at CENTCOM is backing Rumsfeld.

The Washington Post editorial page wants Rummy out -- as long as his departure is voluntary?

"In our view Mr. Rumsfeld's failures should have led to his departure long ago. But he should not be driven out by a revolt of generals, retired or not."

By the way, if you want the details on the Pulitzer awards -- including the four prizes won yesterday by The Post -- I've got the details here .

This is a story you won't be able to escape in the coming days:

"The new White House chief of staff put the West Wing and official Washington on notice on Monday about potentially substantial changes in the way the White House is staffed and operates," says the New York Times.

I guess Josh Bolten is now running the country.

"Senior White House officials had spent months playing down the need for any substantial overhaul of administration personnel. Mr. Bolten's message seemed to suggest that Mr. Bush had now come around to the idea that his presidency needed some fresh faces, if not a fresh start."

Scott McClellan was asked whether he's on his way out--and deflected the question.

Former Illinois governor George Ryan is guilty of a long list of corruption charges.

Meanwhile, talk about stories with legs! Our McCain Watch continues, with the New Republic's Peter Beinart all but yelling, "John, don't do it!"

"I think John McCain is making a big mistake. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a liberal. McCain -- as every political junkie knows--has been aggressively mending fences with the conservative establishment he once loathed. He's giving the commencement address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University; he has endorsed South Dakota's anti-abortion law and the teaching of creationism in schools; he has lavishly praised President Bush; he has even lavishly praised President Bush's parents. . . .

"In his quest to become ideologically acceptable, McCain has several things going for him. For starters, as Byron York has noted in these pages, the issue that drove the right berserk in 2004 -- McCain's support for campaign finance reform--is old news now. Second, a huge new issue has emerged--the war on terrorism--on which McCain's hawkishness suits the Republican base. Third, with the deficit exploding, the right is moving away from its cut-taxes-and-the-deficit-be-damned stance of a few years ago and back toward the anti-deficit posture it assumed in the mid-'90s. . . . Since McCain is more a deficit hawk than a tax-cutter, he's more in tune with the conservative base today than he was in 2000--when all Republicans could think about was how to free multi-millionaires from the estate tax.

"So McCain may well succeed and become the candidate of the Republican establishment. The problem is that, in 2008, that could be a poisoned chalice. For starters, parties have enormous difficulty winning three straight presidential elections. In the last half-century, Richard Nixon (1960), Hubert Humphrey (1968), Gerald Ford (1976), and Al Gore (2000) have failed. Only George H. W. Bush (1988) succeeded. Even in the best of circumstances, the public grows tired of one-party rule. And, for the GOP, 2008 will almost certainly not be the best of circumstances...

"So what should McCain do? He should still seek the Republican nomination--but take more care not to disfigure his public persona in the process. And, if he loses as a result, he should bolt the party, choose a respected Democrat as his running mate, and run as an Independent."

We've heard this argument before. We heard it when John Kerry wanted Johnny Mac as his running mate. Read my lips: Not gonna happen.

Lots of bloggy talk out there about this Washington Post profile of the woman behind the My Left Wing site. Sample paragraph:

"She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers 'malevolent,' a 'sociopath' and 'the Antichrist'? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as 'Satan,' or about Karl Rove, 'the devil'? Should it be about the 'evil' Republican Party, or the 'weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving' Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says 'I have a special place in my heart. . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned'?"

Maryscott O'Connor responds on her blog:

"I do not consider, nor have I ever promoted myself as the Spokesperson for the Angry Left. The fact that I have been designated or implied as such by two members of the corporate media is beyond my control; I deny such a claim, I repeat that I speak only for myself, and that is the best I can do. To those who would advise me that I should eschew the media altogether, I can only reply that it is an absurd suggestion. I blog because I want to be heard; when offered the opportunity to be heard by increasingly large numbers, I accept it.

"If anyone is offended by the very idea of my speaking my opinions into a larger megaphone than theirs, they are free to say so, but it is not for them to tell me what I may and may not do. To suggest, as someone actually did, that I ought to have asked permission of the left blogosphere to go on television and be profiled in a newspaper as a liberal blogger, is the height of surreal arrogance.

"I chose to allow a reporter into my home to observe and listen to me, and to report what he heard and saw in a major newspaper. I was under no illusion that I might be portrayed flatteringly or maliciously. I believed he would report the truth, and that, he did."

Marty Kaplan huffs about the piece at HuffPost:

"It's a reminder that the press loves to cover politics the way it covers religion: it's all dogma, darlings. We report; you decide. And if not as religion, then as psychodrama: since, insanely, it's taboo to assess the validity of the claims being made, the media tell us everything about the motives behind the claims, and nothing about their merits.

"The psychodiagnosis this Post piece offers of Maryscott O'Connor, it also extends to the whole lefty comment-o-sphere. (That means you.) But in making that diagnosis, the article inadvertently holds up a mirror to the sad pathology of contemporary journalism itself.

"In the article, we learn seemingly everything about Ms. O'Connor the person; it's a Dr. Phil-worthy bio that enables us to attribute her political anger to her past. Her blogging against Bush, her chain-smoking, her former drinking to excess? Ah, her father, we learn, was 'a 25-year-old Marine who died fighting in Vietnam three months before she was born, which she thinks helps explain the . . . the alcohol, the cigarettes and the very first piece of writing she ever published online, a rant against the war in Iraq that began, "Every single millisecond of my life was directly affected by the nightmare that was Vietnam."'

Um, it's a profile in which the woman gets to explain herself, not an opinion piece designed to examine whether her arguments against Bush are accurate.

The right also trashes the piece, with Chickenhawk Express seeing a hidden agenda:

"My question is why the Washington Post felt it appropriate or even necessary to profile a blogger that is, in her own words, 'insane with rage and grief.' Was it to promote blogging as a way to vent anger? Was it an attempt to discredit bloggers? I think it was nothing more than an easy way to get another negative Bush message in print using a far left over the edge blogger as the article's focus."