The Knives Are Out, But Where's Cheney?
by Edward Spannaus
The knives are coming out, from all sides, against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, ranging from the traditional Eastern Establishment, to the uniformed military, and even to the hard-core neo-cons of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, who are attacking Rumsfeld for screwing up their imperial schemes.
There is widespread recognition that the Administration's foreign policy is in shambles. But the big question in all this is: Where is Dick Cheney, the Svengali who has functioned as George W. Bush's controller on behalf of the Chickenhawk neo-cons? Why is Dick lying low, now that the policy he foisted on Bush is visibly crumbling, and the heat is on?
Military in Revolt
The most intense opposition to Rumsfeld, is coming from within the military itself. As is generally the case, it is retired general officers who say publicly, what those on active duty can only say privately.
Speaking on Sept. 4 to several hundred active-duty Naval and Marine officers, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni blasted the Bush Administration's handling of postwar Iraq. "There is no strategy or plan for putting the pieces together," he said. "We're in danger of failing."
Zinni passionately invoked the Vietnam experience, as Secretary of State Colin Powell has done in the past. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?"
Zinni, who endorsed candidate Bush in the 2000 campaign, implied that the Bush Administration is now damaging and overstretching the U.S. military, in the manner that Bush and Vice President Cheney had charged, during the 2000 campaign, that the Clinton Administration had done. "We can't go on breaking our military and doing things like we're doing now," Zinni declared.
Zinni also brought up the Iraqi reconstruction fiascowhich the Pentagon insisted it be in charge of, bypassing the experience and expertise of other agencies, including the State Department. "Why the hell would the Department of Defense be the organization in our government that deals with the reconstruction of Iraq?" Zinni asked. "Doesn't make sense."
Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper (USMC-ret.), a former Gulf War commander, said in an interview with the Washington Post during the same meeting, that he is hearing an unprecedented amount of concern among retired officers over how the Bush Administration has handled Iraq. Their criticism focussed on Rumsfeld. "I've never seen so much discontent among the retired community," Van Riper said. Last week, he said, he was at a breakfast with eight retired generals, at which one asked about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "When are they going to get rid of this guy?"
It is also remarkable that many soldiers on duty in Iraq have been willing to be quoted, by name, in making bitter comments about Rumsfeld and about the unexpected conditions in which the troops now find themselves in Iraq. When Rumsfeld made a quick visit to the U.S. base near Tikrit last week, a Reuters correspondent on the scene reported that the troops would have had only one question for the Secretary of Defense, had he stuck around to hear it, and that would have been: "When are we going home?"
Rumsfeld's Fading Star
As the New York Times put it rather politely on Sept. 9, Rumsfeld's star seems to have "lost a little luster." Apart from the attacks from expected quarters, he is also being stabbed in the back by the Weekly Standard gang, who blame him for not fighting for more U.S. troops for Iraq, and instead agreeing to go to the UN to ask other countries to help. Weekly Standard publisher Bill Kristol has repeatedly attacked Rumsfeld over the past week for saying that everything was finewhen it wasn'tand Kristol now says that the White House feels they've been misled by Rummy. Another Weekly Standard article by Tom Donnelly, a leading figure in the American Enterprise Institute and also the Project for the New American Century (with which Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld were previously associated) calls Rumsfeld the "Secretary of Stubborness," and suggests that history may call Rumsfeld "the architect of defeat in the larger war for Iraq."
There is also increasing recognition that former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and former Army Secretary Thomas White, were right in their disputes with Rumsfeld last spring, when both were warning that the occupation of Iraq would be a massive, costly operation, and that Rumsfeld had too few troops to secure the country. Rumsfeld fired White (himself a former Army general) in April; and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz ridiculed Shinseki's estimates that more troops would be needed for the postwar occupation, than were needed to overthrow Saddam Hussein. When Shinseki retired in June, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz boycotted his retirement ceremony.
White has just published a book which is sharply critical of Rumsfeld and his civilian staff at the Pentagon. He is also highly critical of the policy of "preemption" championed by Rumsfeldand also by Dick Cheney. "If you go ahead and preempt, you create vacuums that you must fill for some period of time," White says.
"What we found in Afghanistan and Iraq is if you preempt, you become the sovereign leader of a geographic area and it carries with it enormous consequences that cost a lot of money and take a great deal of time."
The Establishment Speaks
The military is not alone. The current issue of the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, is packed with articles attacking the foreign policy failures of the Bush Administration, in what is one of the strongest signals yet of Eastern Establishment opposition to the neo-con takeover of the Bush Administration.
Boston Globe columnist Robert Kuttner notes that the CFR is "the epicenter of the American Establishment," and that its three top officersPeter Peterson (chair), Carla Hills (vice-chair), and Richard Haass (president) are all Republicans. Kuttner says that "it's still a well-kept secret that the vast foreign policy mainstreamRepublican and Democrat ex-public officials, former ambassadors, military and intelligence people, academic expertsconsider Bush's whole approach a disaster."
Additionally, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) have both called for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to resign, or be fired.
Laudable as an objective as this may be, the only way to decisively knock out the policy, is to knock out Dick Cheney. He is the crucial bridge between the neo-cons, and the President himself. Dick Cheney is the true "Dr. Strangelove" of this Administration, who could try and get out of the mess he has created, by provoking a little nuclear war here or there. To clean up the mess, we must clean out Cheney.
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