Taliesin Redux

What to make, then, of the chivvying of Rumsfeld? It seems to me that virtually all of the recent commentary is well off the mark: the generals' revolt cannot be taken at face value but must be understood as the unintended byproduct of an increasingly dysfunctional institution. Surely the generals realize that their cries for Rumsfeld's head will be rewarded with nothing more than a tantrum? Though the sight of President Ford and Melvin Laird hoisted up from the La Brea Tar Pit in Rumsfeld's defense does induce a certain frisson, nevertheless, Bush's blank response—"I am the decider"—tells the whole story. Bush owns the Iraq War. Rummy is merely a sock-puppet. No gaggle of generals ever could get Bush to step down, and they know it. Further, William Lind has demolished, as has the US Army War College, the arguments that any different combination of forces could have met with success. So despite a great number of articulate words being fired off, the generals (regardless whether they admit this themselves) are not seriously re-fighting the planning of the war. Nor are objections to Rummy's management style creditable. And I absolutely believe that on their part there was no organized effort. Like a wheeling flock of birds or school of fish the generals, responding to an unseen conductor, exhibit no individual awareness whatsoever of their fellows. Finally, one must doubt whether prospects of remunerado, despite new book contracts which may have dangled, had any motivational force.

What that leaves is angst. Not only angst over the Iraq War. The idea that the US military is now the tool of politicians who willy-nilly may attack and invade substantial sovereign states that do not pose a threat, including attacks with nuclear weapons, formally introduces not only the raiment of empire, but the catechism of imperial storm-troopers. Forget valor, stamp out moral reasoning, deny the existence of truth: it's a brave new world, red in tooth and claw. At first stunned, then shocked into flight, the generals can no more voice this angst than they could mount a military coup. It is simply not in their culture. But their flight in itself warns us that the improved apparatus of war can no longer be trusted as it once was to lay obediently at the feet of its masters. A childlike prophecy that won't instantiate today, or tomorrow, but will tear down the ramparts over time, ineluctably, as the old virtues fade away.