Did you honestly believe that the generals George Bush hand picked to carry out his strategery in Iraq would treat the new Democratic President (starting January 20, 2009), Barrack Obama, as their legitimate Commander in Chief? That they would set aside all the power and influence they had gained during the Bush years and accede to a diminution of their authority to make policy choices in the Global War on Terror (i.e., our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)? If so, please kindly disabuse yourself of any such foolish notions. All generals who held high positions in the Clinton era are long gone, and so is anyone who did not get on board with Bush’s shoot first and never ask questions policy (remember Generals Shinseki, Casey, et alia).
Those who hold senior positions in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and those who command troops in the field, owe their positions to Bush and Cheney. They will not go quietly into the night when it comes to complying with the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq (SOFA) and withdraw US forces within 16 months, which Obama has promised to do. Quite the contrary. They fully intend to subvert Obama’s stated policy goals in Iraq, as Gareth Porter of the Asia Times makes clear:
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United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops. […]
General David Petraeus, now commander of CENTCOM, and General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, who opposed Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan during the election campaign, have drawn up their own alternative plan rejecting that timeline, as the New York Times reported on Thursday. That plan was communicated to Obama in general terms by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen when he met with his national security team in Chicago on December 15, according to the Times.
The determination of the military leadership to ignore the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and to pressure Obama on his withdrawal policy was clear from remarks made by Mullen in a news conference on November 17 – after US ambassador Ryan Crocker had signed the agreement in Baghdad.
Mullen declared he considered it “important” that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq “be conditions-based”. That position directly contradicted the terms of the agreement, and Mullen was asked whether the agreement required all US troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, regardless of the security conditions. He answered “Yes,” but then added, “Three years is a long time. Conditions could change in that period of time … “
Mullen said US officials would “continue to have discussions with them over time, as conditions continue to evolve”, and said that reversing the outcome of the negotiations was “theoretically possible”.
Obama’s decision to keep Gates, who was known to be opposed to Obama’s withdrawal timetable, as defense secretary confirmed the belief of the Pentagon leadership that Obama would not resist the military effort to push back against his Iraq withdrawal plan. […]
The New York Times first revealed that “Pentagon planners” were proposing the “relabeling” of US combat units as “training and support” units in a December 4 story. The Times story also revealed that Pentagon planners were projecting that as many as 70,000 US troops would be maintained in Iraq “for a substantial time even beyond 2011”, despite the agreement’s explicit requirement that all US troops would have to be withdrawn by then.
Odierno provided a further hint on December 13 that the US military intended to ignore the provision of the agreement requiring withdrawal of all US combat troops from cities and towns by the end of May 2009. Odierno told reporters flatly that US troops would not move from numerous security posts in cities beyond next summer’s deadline for their removal, saying, “We believe that’s part of our transition teams.”
His spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton, explained that these “transition teams” would consist of “enablers” rather than “combat forces”, and that this would be consistent with the withdrawal agreement. […]
In an article in The New Republic dated December 24, Eli Lake writes that three military sources told him that the US “military transition teams”, which have been fighting alongside Iraqi units, as well as force-protection units and “quick-reaction forces”, are all being redesignated as “support units”, despite their obvious combat functions, “in order to skirt the language of the SOFA”.
US commanders have not bothered to claim that this is anything but a semantic trick, since the redesignated units would continue to participate in combat patrols, as confirmed by New York Times reporters Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker on Thursday.
It seems that Obama’s first foreign policy crisis will come from within the ranks of our own military. These generals will try to railroad Obama into the same occupation strategy which has been such a disaster for America in terms of lives lost, money wasted, terrorist recruitment enhanced and our international reputation sullied. They still dream of their 100 year war against Islamofascism, as much, if not more than our good friends, the righty warbloggers.
And why shouldn’t they? These wars and occupations have led to promotions for these men, enhanced prestige for the military institutions they serve and almost unlimited spending for whatever the Pentagon wants. These generals have become celebrities in their own right, and men whom even Senators fear to openly contradict or oppose. Such was the magic of the Defense Department’s propaganda campaign, aided and abetted by Karl Rove and a willing and submissive mainstream media. And I’m not just talking Fox News here as you well know. Even so-called bastions of the effete liberal media such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and so forth jumped on the hero worship bandwagon, turning these war coomanders into larger than life size heroes, virtually exempt from public criticism of their actions.
In short, these Bushcovite generals are making a power grab. It may not be a coup d’etat in the classic sense, but in the sense that they wish to impose their foreign policy goals and strategies on the Obama administration, they are effectively seeking to decapitate Obama as the nation’s Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, and in his place raise up a shadow junta dedicated to preserving America’s overseas empire (and the Pentagon expenditures that go with it).
Certainly, their is a measure of pride and arrogance involved as well. Withdrawal from Iraq will be seen by many, and especially many high ranking officers, as a defeat. None of these proud and committed men want their reputations soiled by that ugly word. They saw what happened to the commanders who were blamed for losing Vietnam, and it is not a fate that appeals to them.
In addition, as perhaps no other class of military men in American history, they have benefited from the public’s adulation of all things military, thanks in large part to 911 and the Bush/Rove propaganda machine which fostered unquestioning worship of our Armed Forces, making that second only to the worship of a Christian God in the minds of many Americans. Indeed, to many the two are inextricably linked. Obama is a direct threat to all that enhanced power and influence. These pre-inaugural machinations are all part of another Pentagon psy-ops campaign. However this time, it isn’t the the Bush neocons who are running it, but the generals themselves, and it’s goal is to keep the new President on the sideline when it comes to matters of war and peace.
I can’t think of a more dangerous dilemma for any new President to face than an under the radar mutiny by the very generals who are supposed to obey his orders and carry out his policies, not advance their own grand designs, purposes and desires. That it is happening simultaneously with the worst economic meltdown since the great depression is even more problematic for the new administration, and a sobering reminder of just how badly Bush has mangled and distorted our political and governmental institutions in the wake of his eight year reign as “The Decider.”
History teaches us that, in the beginning, emperors seize power from an established regime which has been weakened through either internal or external conflicts, or both. Bush fits this pattern, with his assertion of absolute power after the 9/11 attacks, pursuant to the theory of the “unitary executive” which promoted his (or Cheney’s) vision of a royalist presidency. In the end, however, emperors are often placed on the throne by the very military forces which originally served the state in their name. The actions of Generals Petraeus, Odierno, Mullen (and who knows who else at the Pentagon) are borderline treasonous, and if they persist in these efforts to subvert President Obama’s authority over the military, it will not bode well for the future of our Republic.