Panic in the Puzzle Palace

There’s panic at the Pentagon and in the White House, too. Rumsfeld is under fire and there’s lots of dry tinder across the river, so President Bush rushes to the defense of his beleaguered minister and beats the bushes for other endorsements.

In a particularly strange op-ed piece entitled A General Misunderstanding in today’s New York Times retired Marine Lt. General Michael DeLong provides a backhanded slap at his former boss, Secretary Rumsfeld.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/opinion/16delong.html

Instead of merely attacking his former star studded colleagues for nipping at Don’s heels, he turns the argument around in a manner that I inferred blamed the generals and Rumsfeld, and DeLong undermines the entire Iraqi adventure as flaw filled and too risk laden from the planning stage.

Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War that I have touted so highly to my readers, took a very different tack in the Los Angeles Times op-ed piece. Bacevich sees the attacks by the generals as an effort to blame Rumsfeld for everything and to escape their own responsibility for military failures in the adventure. I found his article quite compelling.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bacevich15apr15,0,4080791.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

But my own reading of the rodent entrails – without objective basis – is that the retired general officers are attempting to assure planning for the Iranian crisis building and looming before us is far better than that done for Iraq. Seymour Hirsch’s New Yorker article this week frightened people in and out of the Pentagon, and by calling Rumsfeld on the carpet for the prewar inadequacies of the Iraq War and his subsequent micro-management is a way to slow the juggernaut that is rapidly gaining power within the administration. Rumsfeld may be but a handy target and a lightning rod against the civilian defense experts who have gained so much power in recent years; our buddies the neocons are at it again.

In any event, Rumsfeld is unlikely to be in his job at the end of this administration, and, regardless of how this revolt or squabble (you define it), the world is getting more dangerous each day. The generals don’t appreciate how Iraq was handled, and they don’t want to be in the same position if and when we take on Iran.

Blog on!

Wild Bill