Generally destructive of good order and disipline

Eliot Cohen:

One could say much to defend Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld against the recent attacks of half a dozen retired generals--that the indictments are either old ("not enough troops," a trope from April 2003) or vague ("ignoring the Powell doctrine"), plodding ("violating the principles of war," a hazy collection of often-ignored, self-contradictory military platitudes), or downright silly (being disrespectful in meetings, as though generals would never, ever, be caught dressing down subordinates in front of their peers). Generals, one might note, may yield to vanity and pique, institutional parochialism and thwarted ambition, limited introspection and all the other foibles of proud men. One might, finally, observe that in the unhappy generals' account of Iraq there is no alternative strategy proposed, no fellow general held to account by name, scant acceptance of personal responsibility for what went awry on their watch, little repudiation of contrary statements made on active duty.

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Even making these assumptions and conceding the narrowly defined nonpartisanship of these denunciations, for recently retired general officers to publicly denounce a sitting secretary of defense is wrong, destructive of good order and discipline in the armed forces, and prejudicial to functional civil-military relations. It is not the same thing as speaking candidly before Congress, telling all to civilian or military scholars collecting oral histories, or indeed writing one's own memoirs after the heat of contemporary passions has cooled, and the individuals in question have left public office. Rather, this kind of denunciation means leaping into a political fight, and tackling the civilians still charged with the nation's defense. Not the charges themselves, but the arrogation of responsibility is the problem: When things go wrong at the top the civilians should, no doubt, take the heat. But not this way.

Begin by noting that public denunciation will almost surely fail, because no president who thinks much of his role as commander in chief will throw the top Pentagon civilian overboard to please officers of any kind. If he did, he would establish the precedent that secretaries of defense serve at the pleasure of their subordinates, overturn the most fundamental feature of civilian control of the military, and neuter his own effectiveness in the conduct of national defense.

Even if ineffectual, however, these declarations do great harm. Retired generals never really leave the public service--that's why, after all, we still call them "general." They set examples for those junior to them in rank, and still on active duty. Imagine, for example, the disgruntled major in the Office of the Secretary of Defense deciding to subvert policy with which he disagrees by, say, leaking confidential memoranda to the press. "Not the same thing," one might respond, but remember that angry majors do not, for the most part, make discriminating moral philosophers. The retired generals have, in effect and perhaps unwittingly, made a case for disloyalty. Indeed, their most troubling belief is that an officer's civilian superiors--and the secretary of defense stands in the chain of command just below the president--do not merit the loyalty that they, as military superiors, would deserve and expect.

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Cohen is a proponent of civilian leadership in a time of war which he makes in his book Supreme Command. He has a son who has served in Iraq. What makes this commentary all the more interesting is that Cohen has also been critical of the conduct of the war in Iraq.