By Richard Holbrooke
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B07
The calls by a growing number of recently retired senior generals for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the most serious public confrontation between the military and an administration since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951. In that epic drama, Truman was unquestionably correct -- MacArthur, the commanding general in Korea and a towering World War II hero, publicly questioned Truman's strategy in Korea and had to be removed. Most Americans rightly revere the principle of civilian control over the military. But this situation -- to be more accurate, this crisis in civilian-military leadership -- is quite different.
First, it is clear that the retired generals -- six so far, with more sure to come -- are speaking for 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 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."
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This has put President Bush and the administration in a hellish situation, and at a time when the security situation 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 speak up and should now do so on behalf of the troops in the field and the institution that he feels is in danger of falling back into the disarray of the post-Vietnam era.
more at --
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401451.html
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