Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (15 page)

And plenty of questions needed asking. Standley hinted that members of Roosevelt’s inner circle had welcomed—and even facilitated—the events of December 7. “The ‘incident’ which certain high officials in Washington had sought so assiduously in order to condition the American public for war with the Axis powers had been found.” None of Standley’s charges were novel; yet coming from a former four-star admiral who in 1942 helped draft the Roberts Commission’s report, they represented a striking about-face.
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The case of Admiral Thomas Moorer followed a similar pattern, although with a longer gestation period. Just weeks before Moorer assumed office as chief of naval operations in midsummer 1967, his service had sustained its most devastating attack since World War II. On June 8, Israeli naval and air forces bombed, strafed, and torpedoed the USS
Liberty
, an intelligence collection ship sailing in international waters off the coast of Egypt. Although the attackers did not succeed in sinking the
Liberty
, they inflicted considerable damage, killing 34 Americans and wounding another 171.

Ascribing the incident to a case of mistaken identity, the government of Israel quickly apologized. After a perfunctory court of inquiry, the navy—and by extension the U.S. government—accepted the Israeli explanation. Moorer himself signed off on the court’s findings, which neatly meshed with the preferences of President Lyndon Johnson.
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Yet as with the Roberts Commission report, the conclusions that the navy reached with such alacrity served to enflame rather than ease suspicions that all was not kosher. Critics cried cover-up, insisting that Israel had deliberately attacked the
Liberty
, knowing full well that it was an American vessel, but determined to prevent it from eavesdropping on Israeli military operations. Like Pearl Harbor itself (not to mention the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the events of 9/11, and questions about Barack Obama’s birthplace), official explanations intended to suppress doubts exacerbated them. The issue festered.

After keeping silent for several decades, Moorer himself suddenly felt compelled to weigh in. In 2003, he went public, charging Israel with “acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.” More remarkably, in keeping with the tradition of Smedley Butler, Moorer accused the service that he had led with orchestrating “an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history.”
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Why hadn’t either of the Generals Butler expressed their concerns about U.S. policy when they were occupying positions of influence? Why, in the face of perceived injustice or duplicity, did Admirals Standley and Moorer keep mum, speaking up only long after the fact? The elder Butler’s claim of being incapable of independent thought while in uniform conforms to a civilian stereotype of obedient, brain-dead soldiers, but won’t do. Prolonged immersion in the military bureaucracy may impair, but need not eradicate, critical judgment. A more accurate explanation would perhaps go like this: for some senior officers—just as for others engaged in pursuits where upward mobility provides the principal measure of merit—departure from that environment modifies the hierarchy of interests to which they had reflexively subscribed. When getting ahead and wielding authority no longer take precedence over all other considerations, the moral landscape can take on a different appearance.
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So for a handful of senior officers, the very act of stepping down from the heights of their profession may have the paradoxical effect of expanding their horizons. For the likes of Admirals Standley or Moorer, judgments that once appeared necessary or at least expedient became unconscionable. For the Generals Butler, basic policies once considered sacrosanct suddenly seemed beyond the pale.

GOING ROGUE

Such apparently has been the case with General Stanley McChrystal, the most recent senior officer to exhibit symptoms of Smedley’s syndrome. The episodes cited above qualify as historical curiosities. The McChrystal case is different. It illuminates the dysfunctional nature of the present-day relationship between the U.S. military and American society, while hinting at why this relationship persists and will in all likelihood continue to do so.

A professional soldier who spent most of his career in the “black” world of special operations forces, McChrystal first came to public attention in 2009 when President Barack Obama appointed him commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. As a candidate for president, Obama had vowed to reinvigorate the war effort there, after years during which Iraq had claimed the preponderance of resources and attention. His appointment of the hard-charging McChrystal symbolized his intention to make good on that promise.

Just as the new president’s election had generated media-hyped expectations of big change, so McChrystal’s arrival in Kabul seemed to herald the prospect of the war there dramatically turning around. To Afghanistan, McChrystal was bringing methods General David Petraeus had employed in Iraq. Given that he had worked closely with Petraeus in Iraq, McChrystal seemed like precisely the right guy to achieve similarly happy results in Afghanistan, a latter-day Francis Xavier continuing the work begun by Ignatius Loyola.

Unfortunately, events soon exposed as false the premises underlying those expectations. The Afghanistan War no more resembled the Iraq War than baseball resembles basketball. To imagine that techniques employed in one war will automatically apply to another was naive in the extreme. As McChrystal himself acknowledged in retrospect, his grasp of the challenges he faced in Afghanistan was remarkably shallow. “We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” he conceded. “Most of us—me included—had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”
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Worse yet, when it came to observing the formalities of civilian control, the general turned out to be either spectacularly arrogant or stunningly obtuse. His expansive definition of his own authority—he acted as if President Obama’s job was simply to concur with whatever his field commander might decide—encroached on the prerogatives of the commander in chief. Meanwhile, McChrystal’s headquarters had become a sort of petri dish of rancor and resentment directed at ostensibly clueless politicians said to impede the efforts of seasoned warriors who knew exactly what needed to be done.

In the end, McChrystal lasted about a year in the job. A much-publicized magazine article that depicted him as finding nothing amiss while his closest subordinates ridiculed senior civilian officials in his presence provided the proximate cause for his ouster.
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As the general departed Afghanistan, little evidence existed to suggest that the war’s momentum had shifted. The latter-day Francis Xavier’s efforts to convert the heathen had fallen flat.

Not for McChrystal, however, the hoary dictum calling on old soldiers to fade quietly away. Not long after being hustled into retirement, he began to opine on basic national security policy. Yet rather than denouncing muckraking journalists (who embarrass generals) or meddling politicians (who stick their noses into soldiers’ business), he chose as his primary target that most sacred of post-Vietnam military cows: the all-volunteer force.

“I think we ought to have a draft,” McChrystal told a rapt audience gathered for the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. Because a professional military necessarily becomes “unrepresentative of the population,” it cannot properly represent the country as a whole. “I think if a nation goes to war,” he continued, “every town, every city needs to be at risk.” Only then will everyone have “skin in the game.” Here was the equivalent of a cardinal archbishop of the Catholic Church declaring obsolete the tradition of an all-male, celibate priesthood. Smedley’s syndrome had evidently claimed another victim.
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Expecting a small force of regulars to bear the burden of protracted conflict, he insisted, was unfair and un-American. “We’ve never done that in the United States before; we’ve never fought an extended war with an all-volunteer military. So what it means is you’ve got a very small population that you’re going to and you’re going to it over and over again.” With “less than one percent of the population” in uniform, Americans may purport to be supportive, “but they don’t have the same connection” with the professional army they had with the citizen-soldier army of earlier days. “I’ve enjoyed the benefits of a professional service, but I think we’d be better if we actually went to a draft these days,” McChrystal concluded, thereby committing sacrilege akin to Smedley Butler decrying American imperialism and Lee Butler denouncing nuclear weapons as immoral. “There would be some loss of professionalism, but for the nation it would be a better course.”
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McChrystal did not specifically identify the “benefits of a professional service” that he had enjoyed, nor did he question the wisdom of the United States engaging in “extended war,” as it had been doing for more than a decade. Instead, striking a position that was simultaneously radical and retrograde, he merely questioned whether relying on regulars to wage America’s wars could possibly be right given that the vast majority of citizens thereby had no immediate stake in the enterprise.

Initially sold as a solution to problems, the all-volunteer force, McChrystal implied, had become the problem. Abandoned during the Vietnam era as unfair and at odds with maintaining good order and discipline, conscription now held the key to restoring a sense of equity when it came to military service and sacrifice.

Others had been making this point long before McChrystal spoke, just as others had questioned official accounts of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the assault on the USS
Liberty
, long before Admirals Standley and Moorer offered their dissents. As someone who has discussed U.S. military policy with dozens of audiences over the past decade, I can count on one hand the number of occasions when someone did
not
pose a question about the draft, invariably offered as a suggestion for how to curb Washington’s appetite for intervention abroad and establish some semblance of political accountability.

McChrystal’s call for restoring conscription and by implication reviving the citizen-soldier tradition endowed a hitherto quirky view with a tincture of legitimacy. Yet this retired general’s belated appreciation of citizen-soldiers is no more likely to inspire a change in policy than did the belated discovery by earlier retired generals that imperialism is as American as apple pie or that a security policy based on nuclear weapons ultimately produces insecurity and daunting moral snares. The more pressing question is one to which even now McChrystal seemingly remains oblivious: what exactly is the “game” and who are its beneficiaries?

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WINNERS AND LOSERS

McChrystal’s critique of the all-volunteer force will go unheeded for one overriding reason: existing arrangements satisfy the interests and advance the ambitions of those who wield (or covet) power. In that regard, the all-volunteer force resembles academic tenure. Arguments presented by proponents—defenders of America’s professionalized military touting its value in advancing the cause of peace and security; defenders of tenure touting its value in protecting academic freedom and facilitating the pursuit of truth—tell only half the tale. Even if seldom acknowledged, the other (self-serving) half is at least as important. Tenure offers near-ironclad guarantees of lifetime employment, something that very few Americans, subject to the vagaries of the market, enjoy. Reliance on an all-volunteer force likewise suits a long list of beneficiaries. For those who ride the gravy train, doing what’s necessary to keep it rolling takes precedence over contemplating its ultimate destination or the wreckage left in its wake.

The reliance on a small professional warrior class with which McChrystal now finds fault has created winners and losers. Among the big winners, united in their enthusiasm for maintaining the all-volunteer force, are the individuals, groups, and institutions comprising the national security state. These include generals, admirals, and civilian officials who fill the upper echelons of the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council staff; champions of an imperial presidency, who reflexively support anything that enhances the freedom of action exercised by the chief executive; and advocates of global interventionism, however lofty or low the ostensible motive for action.

For those enjoying access to rarified policy circles, intently surveying the globe in search of anything remotely resembling a nail, the all-volunteer force provides the proverbial hammer.
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In the eyes of those who formulate policy or aspirants maneuvering for a chance to do so, the professional military by its very existence enriches the list of conceivable policy alternatives.

The signature phrase of contemporary American statecraft—“all options remain on the table”—derives its potency from the implied threat of military power, like some avenging angel, instantly available to back up Washington’s demands. All it takes to bomb Belgrade, invade Iraq, or send Navy SEALs into Pakistan is concurrence among a half dozen people and a nod from the president. No need to secure prior congressional assent, certainly no need to consult the American people: that’s what the all-volunteer force allows. For those attending that meeting-of-the-half-dozen or angling to advise some future emperor-president, the “game” is the exercise of power and the illusion of shaping history.

The now iconic photograph of President Obama and his closest associates watching in real time the raid that killed Osama bin Laden makes the point. The photo exudes immediacy, intimacy, and above all importance. This small group operating behind closed doors in Washington had rendered its decision; as an immediate consequence, a hardly larger group of Navy SEALs was executing a daring covert operation on the other side of the world. An elite that conferred in secret was directing an elite that operates in secret—with Americans offered a tiny, alluring, carefully selected, after-the-fact glimpse of what had occurred. The last thing the players in this game want is to invite popular participation. A military consisting of citizen-soldiers might lead members of the great unwashed to fancy they should have some say in such matters. Relying on warrior professionals—now embodied by the celebrated SEALs—makes it easier to deflect any such demand.
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