Well, and the fact that Your Humble Blogger has taken a nice long sabbatical from analyzing political rhetoric must be nice and obvious to Gentle Readers all, and perhaps it’s as much of a relief to y’all as it is to me. It’s a bad time to care about political rhetoric in this country, not only because so much of it is so bad, but because of the reliance of the party in power on a very few very simple tricks to distract us from talking about the subject of the conversation. The successful reliance thereon. And our cultural willingness to be distracted.
Take, for instance, the current controversy, if we can call it that, about ... well the controversy appears to be about whether it was appropriate for some retired military brass to publicly criticize the civilian oversight of the military, specifically asking that Secretary Rumsfeld be replaced. Yesterday’s editorial The Generals’ Revolt in the Washington Post said that the criticism “threatens the essential democratic principle of military subordination to civilian control.” David Broder, on the same page, said President Bush should Listen to the Brass. E.J. Dionne talks further about the Roots of the Uprising, talking about Our Former President’s attempt to make the military more inclusive, and the public opposition to that policy. In today’s Post, Melvin R. Laird and Robert E. Pursley ask Why Are They Speaking Up Now? In Blogovia, I noticed a well-written note by Pat Lang with the incredulous title Retired Soldiers Should Not Criticize?
Have you noticed it? You see, we begin by asking, in a time of war, when we are occupying one nation and considering attacking another next door to it, whether we want to stick with our current leadership or change it. Within a day or two we are asking under what circumstances retired brass should publicly criticize the civilian leaders. While those articles do devote some space to the merits of the original issue, the bulk of it (and the headlines, which are important as well) is about the limits of discourse. Meanwhile, the leadership has weathered the political storm, and evaded serious public scrutiny once more.
Now, this is distressing to me for two reasons. Well, two as a student of rhetoric; it would be far more distressing to me as a citizen if I thought that there was some chance that a replacement for Secretary Rumsfeld would be independent-minded, capable, far-seeing, thoughtful, able to keep the confidence of both Our Only President and the military leadership, articulate, perceptive, and destined to lead us to the Land of the Eternal Sabbath. Honestly, though, I’ve gone beyond caring whether Secretary Rumsfeld remains in charge of the Deparment of Preventative Defense for the next three years. Even that, even the subject of the conversation, seems to be to be far from the real point of the conversation.
However, as someone who is fascinated by techniques of argument, I find it tedious to have the same damn technique put over again and again on us rubes. I mean, we discover that the administration has been wiretapping Americans without warrants, and we discuss whether the information should have been published. We discover that Our Only President has “declassified” information to be given to one reporter in order to further a political agenda and discuss whether it was “a good leak”. When a Congressman introduces a resolution to change the conduct and aims of the war, we discuss whether such a resolution is a “stab in the back.” Now, I’m not saying that my Party has never used this particular trick, or that I would never condone the use of this particular trick. I’m saying that I’m tired of it. Yes, it works. There are lots of things that work. I’m bored with this one. Can we go back to innuendo and smear? Or, please, to stirring emotional appeals to our better natures? I’m not asking that politics be conducted cleanly, I’m just sick of the tedious twisting of the subject of every political conversation from the subject of the conversation to the conversation itself.
And then, you see, the other reason I’m distressed by this is that the conversation about the conversation, the discussion of the limits of the discussion, is in fact quite important. I would, under somewhat different circumstances, be clamoring for us to discuss, as openly and clearly as we can, what we think we can talk about and what we can’t. I think, in particular, this matter of the relationship between the military, the civilian oversight, and the civilian retired brass is a tricky and fraught one, and I find some of the arguments on either side compelling. The matter of civilian oversight of the military is terribly important, actually as central to the American project as the ballot and the bench, and I think we have let our eyes drift from the prize to a dangerous extent. On the other hand, if we have limited resources, and the Lord knows Your Humble Blogger has limited resources this week, perhaps we should devote them to discussing whether we have done well in Iraq, are doing well, will do well, and whether we will do well in Iran. Because, you know, that, too is important.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I’m surprised to see you discussing the endless shifting of focus away from actual policy to process. Is that really what blogs are for? Isn’t it unseemly to call attention to the process-obsessed media, particularly in this time of war?
To shift back a level, civilian control over the military isn’t being threatened in any way. Just one particular civilian’s control over the military. But there was never supposed to be only one civilian in control of our military anyway — it was supposed to be the executive branch informing and checked by Congress, and Congress is supposed to be responsible to the citizenry (military and civilian alike). If we are to be informed voters, and thereby indirectly exercise our control over our military, then we must not accept limits on the discussion beyond those required by immediate operational security.
Well, and just to get dragged back into that part of the conversation, part of the background to this, in my opinion, is that after Our Previous President completely failed to exert civilian control over the military on the matter of sexual preference, his administration was evidently very lax in oversight, particularly in organizational matters. The current administration, for all its faults, was keen on exerting administrative oversight, and was willing to do so over the objections of some of the top brass, some of whom were overly protective of tradition and their own fiefdoms, and some of whom were raising quite legitimate concerns. I have a sense that some of Sec’ty Rumsfeld’s inability to convince the brass that he knew what he was doing was their opposition to his executive control. On the other hand, some of it was undoubtedly due to the fact that he didn’t know what he was doing.
And there’s more to it than that, as well. An enormous amount of our foreign affairs work was transferred from State to Defense under this administration, particularly of course intelligence gathering, but also a wide variety of other tasks. While this was also under Secretary Rumsfeld’s civilian oversight, it was operationally within the military (if I understand it correctly, which I probably don’t). I was worried, some years ago, that there was not already enough civilian oversight; I understand procedurally how allowing a cabal of officers to force out the civilian head of Defense is a bad precedent, and worse when Defense is effectively State. And, of course, there was for a while an attempt to include Our Only President as a military, rather than civilian, leader, calling him the Commander-in-Chief at every opportunity, dressing him in phony uniforms, and constantly showing him saluting as if he were an officer. They’ve left off with that, for obvious reasons, but it was (in my opinion) dangerous dabbling with the cultural concept of civilian control.
All of which would be a marvelous conversation to have in our spaces for national discussion of serious matters if we weren’t occupying one country and (reportedly) considering invading another. Under the circumstances, we should probably try to focus, for a moment, on the merits of the case for ousting the Secretary of Defense. And, you know, the rest of the incompetents and crooks with whom Our Only President has chosen to surround himself.
Thanks,
-V.
The current situation is strange in that the failures of policy and the criminality of the administration is obvious to most people (witness the latest 33% approval ratings for the President). People whose judgments about these failures ought to be taken seriously keep speaking up about this or that failure, as if this administration might pay heed to them, but it doesn’t. Instead, this administration says, “it’s not appropriate for you to tell us what we should do,” by which they really mean, “you don’t have the power to dictate what we do, so *** off.” The only thing this administration regards is power, and right now the American people do not have the organized, legal power to rein the administration in, because the Ameican people were foolish in the last election and because the Republican Congress is as irremediably corrupt as the Bush administration. The _only_ thing that will change the behavior of this administration is forceful, organized, legally savvy opposition from Congress, and there is no chance of such opposition coming in to being until the November elections.
Thus, anyone criticizing the Bush administration and the Republican Congress for its failed policies and criminal corruption should recognize that the only thing such speech can really accomplish is to make it impossible for the electorate to forget that this Administration must be reined in by the election of a Democratic Congress in 2006. Neither the Bush administration nor the Republican Congress is paying any attention to criticism. They never have and they never will, because they don’t care about the good of the country.
Michael’s post #2 above is thus makes exactly the right rhetorical move in the discussion on civilian oversight the Bush Administration would like to substitute for a rehearsal of its policy failures, because it turns that discussion into a rehearsal of the failures of the Republican Congress to represent the interests of the American people.
Our tedious but effective rhetorical rejoinder to the Bush Adminstration’s “conversation about the conversation ploy” should be to turn every conversation about the conversation to the point that we the people have the right to exercise oversight over this administration. We do that by electing the Congress. Therefore, if you vote for a Republican for Congress in 2006, you are voting for the party that stood by and cheered while its President has sent our soldiers to die in a mismanaged, pointless war based on lies, let a great American city be destroyed, shamed the American people by having prisoners tortured, alienated friendly nations around the world, and bankrupted the Federal government with giveaways to Big Oil and tax breaks for the super rich.”
Think Rumsfeld’s a fool and/or a criminal? Then vote Democrat in 2006.