Anyway, I'm talking about leadership today. Or the lack thereof. This struck me this morning:
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Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
Cheney: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.
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And that was that. They created a culture around the need to go to war. They made their plans, fixed the intelligence, defiled a genuine relationship that took two centuries to cultivate to give them some legitimacy, and got themselves a war.
The grunts on the ground, who would ultimately do the dirty work, didn't have a say. The flag (Generals and Admirals) officers who did speak up, opposed to the folly, were cashiered or discredited. Opposition was considered traitorous. Those in command positions now are nothing more than 'yes men' for the administration.
So now we have a war run by draft dodgers and incompetents.
Under the auspices of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), we have abdicated our responsibility to treaties signed in good faith by those speaking for the people of the United States. The Geneva Conventions are not quaint or archaic, or a plot by the U.N. to tie America's hands when prosecuting the GWOT. They are in place to protect our soldiers. This is why I talk about taking the high road. The Rude Pundit says it best as only he can:
Chances are, maybe even by the time you read this, the two American soldiers, captured by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, will be dead, probably in some horrible way, probably with their bodies dumped like all the horribly murdered Iraqis in the blood and gore-strewn landscape that are the markers of Iraqi liberation...
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What if we get pictures of the soldiers, nude, cowering, screaming in a corner, shitting themselves on the filthy floors of a makeshift cell, as their captors hold snarling dogs on leashes just out of bite range of the soldiers?
What if we learn that their captors decide that the soldiers can offer intelligence that can be of use to al-Qaeda and, in order to get that information, the captors put the nude soldiers into rooms that are heated to hellish temperatures, followed by rooms that are impossibly cold with colder water tossed onto them? What if the soldiers are made to stand for days on end? Put into stress positions that fuck up their muscles and limbs? Denied sleep? Had loud music played into their cells? Kept in isolation and fed bread and water for days, weeks on end?
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And he posits:
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And what about the good right-wing punditry? Would Rush Limbaugh look at the photos of the nude, cowering Americans and say it looks like fraternity hazing or some such shit? Would others dismiss it as a media fabrication? Or would they just pathetically overlook everything done in our American names to Iraqis, Afghanis, and others, calling madly for the heads of the captors, not even thinking about the irony of such a statement?
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Yes, ladies and germs, what if? Can we take the high road? Of course not. Our leaders say treatment like that is permissible to achieve certain ends. Is it okay for us to do it but not al-Qaeda? We are in no position to protest the treatment of these men, whatever it might be, because we've taken a path no better than those we claim to be so different from. The abuses at Abu Ghraib might have been committed by the grunts, but they were given legitimacy by the leadership.
As I've explained in the first three parts of this little diatribe, and what it seems few people understand, is the guys doing the shooting don't make the decisions. They don't get the whole story, or anything near the truth. They're allowed to listen to Rush, but not Al Franken. They're allowed Fox 'News'. Most of the grunts in Iraq believe Saddam was in cahoots with Osama to pull off 9/11. So anybody who thinks the average soldier has any decision-making ability is fooling themselves. The grunts believe they are doing the right thing. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't.
When we hear of abuses, crimes against civilians, and general misconduct by our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, you must remember the military is a tightly controlled organization. When those in the lower ranks act up, or act out, you can almost always trace it back to a permissiveness on the part of the command, be it the local commander, the theater commander, or the Commander in Chief himself.
When I was in, I knew how long my leash was. So did the other guys. We knew what our CO would let us get away with and we generally didn't cross the line. When we did, we paid, usually with really shitty details so we didn't forget exactly where the line was. My CO looked the other way to a lot of our hijinks but no one got hurt.
The line in the GWOT has become very wide and very gray. There is only one reason for that and it's simple. Failure of leadership. A rule of thumb to use is the wider and grayer the line, the higher up in the chain of command the failure goes. A supply sergeant running a black market operation out of Okinawa is a local command failure. Soldiers murdering innocent civilians and torturing prisoners is a failure at the top.
As I've said before, the grunts should pay for what they've done but so should the leadership. I've seen a whole buncha grunts go to jail over the past couple years, but the people who define where the line is have yet to answer for their crimes.
It is why I want more than to see Bush and his cronies out of power, I want them all in jail too.
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