General Strike (The Hidden Modo)

Maureen Dowd does her usual job of piling on with Say Uncle, Rummy (fully available to Times Select subscribers):

Rummy was ordered to go to Iraq by the president, but he clearly has no stomach for nation-building, or letting Condi run the show. He seemed under the weather after a rough overnight ride on a C-17 transport plane from Washington into Baghdad. And Condi's aides were rolling their eyes at the less than respectful way the DefSec treated the SecState as she tried to be enthusiastic, in her cheerful automaton way, about what she considers the latest last chance for Iraq.

A reporter in Baghdad asked Rummy about the kerfuffle when Condi talked of "thousands" of tactical errors in Iraq. Rummy later noted that "I don't know what she was talking about, to be perfectly honest" and that anyone who said that had "a lack of understanding" about warfare. She's just a silly girl, after all.

He could have taken the opportunity to be diplomatic about the diplomat, but he's incapable of that, so he just added more fuel to the fire.

"She's right here, and you can ask her," he said, pointing to Condi, who said she had not meant errors "in the military sense." She must have meant mismanagement in the civilians-mucking-up-the-military sense.

The former "Matinee Idol," as W. liked to call him, is now a figure of absurdity, clinging to his job only because some retired generals turned him into a new front on the war on terror. On his rare, brief visit to Baghdad, he was afraid to go outside Fortress Green Zone, even though he yammers on conservative talk shows about how progress is being made, and how the press never reports good news out of Iraq.

If the news is so good, why wasn't Rummy gallivanting at the local mall, walking around rather than hiding out in the U.S. base known as Camp Victory? (What are they going to call it, one reporter joked, Camp Defeat?)

In further evidence of their astute connection with the Iraqi culture, the cabinet secretaries showed up there without even knowing the correct name of their latest puppet. It turned out that Jawad al-Maliki, the new prime minister-designate, considered "Jawad" his exile name and had reverted to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

On the cusp of the third anniversary of "Mission Accomplished," Rummy was still in denial despite the civil war, with armed gangs of Shiites and Sunnis going out and killing each other and Balkanizing whole communities.

When a reporter asked him what the U.S. had to do to get the militias under control and stop the sectarian dueling, he answered bluntly: "I guess the first thing I have to say is we don't, the Iraqis do. It's their country. It's a sovereign country. This is not a government that has an 'interim' in front of it or a 'transition' in front of it. It's a government that's in for a period of years and undoubtedly, unquestionably, will be addressing the question as to how they can best provide for the security of all of their people."

Yeah, let's leave it up to what's-his-name. We broke it. What's-his-name can fix it.

Hendrik Hertzberg also has some slicing words regarding Rummy and the Revenge of the Generals in this last week's issue of the New Yorker:

In the ongoing South Americanization of political culture north of the border—a drawn-out historical journey whose markers include fiscal recklessness, an accelerating wealth gap between the rich and the rest, corruption masked by populist rhetoric, a frank official embrace of the techniques of “dirty war,” and, by way of initiating the present era, a judicial autogolpe installing a dynastic presidente—what has been dubbed the Revolt of the Generals is one of the feebler effusions. But it is striking all the same. By last week, the junta had swelled to six members: General Anthony C. Zinni, of the Marine Corps (four stars); Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, also of the Marines (three stars); and Major Generals John Batiste, Paul D. Eaton, John Riggs, and Charles H. Swannack, Jr., of the Army (two stars). Some reckon that Wesley Clark (Army, four stars), William E. Odom (ditto, three stars), and Bernard E. Trainor (Marines, three stars) are entitled to spots as auxiliary members.

[...]

This brass band of clarion calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation or dismissal has occasioned a certain amount of hand-wringing about alleged threats to the constitutional principle of civilian control of the military. But, as military coups go, this one is pretty weak tea by hemispheric standards. Instead of seizing the radio stations and the Presidential Palace, our disgruntled generals are content to overrun the op-ed pages, the bookstore signing tables, and the greenrooms of the cable-TV news talk shows. Also (and this is not a small point), the generals in question, however youthful and vigorous some of them may appear, are retired. They are no longer links in the chain of command; not being subordinate, they can’t be insubordinate. They are civilians. And they are every bit as entitled to express their views publicly, and to give their former civilian superiors a hard time in the process, as were Andrew Jackson in 1824, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952—not to mention the nine other ex-generals who became President, beginning with General George Washington (ret.), in 1789.

[...]

If Bush were serious about stanching the hemorrhage of public support for any kind of American role in Iraq, then Rumsfeld’s exit—a step that has been suggested not only by generals and Democrats but also by conservative hawks like George Will, Max Boot, David Brooks, and Bill Kristol—would be the obvious beginning. The President’s response has been an adamant refusal. “I’m the decider,” he said last Tuesday. “And I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense.”

His reasons for this decision are obscure, a matter for speculation—wild speculation, as he might phrase it. “We had an accountability moment,” Bush said a few days before his second Inaugural, “and that’s called the 2004 election.” Perhaps he thinks that that was the last such moment he owes the country; perhaps dumping Rumsfeld would feel too much like another one. Perhaps his attachment to Rumsfeld—whom the elder President Bush is known to dislike—has something to do with the younger’s need for substitute fathers.