Dissatisfaction

Make sure to read Fred Kaplan’s column on the increasing discomfort of the officer corps with the Bush administration, and with Don Rumsfeld in particular. Also take a look at this NYT op-ed by Major General Paul Eaton, which I unfortunately missed at the time. General Eaton gave a lecture in my American Foreign Policy class back in the spring of 2000, while he was stationed at Fort Lewis.

I’m of two minds on the question of dissatisfaction in the officer corps. I recall, at SWAMOS 2000, Eliot Cohen talking about how the Clinton administration had allowed the senior brass far too much latitude, and that a Republican administration would likely see the firing of a few generals in short order, just to put them back in line. I do think that Clinton was too deferential to the uniformed military, and that the one ray of light in the Rumsfeld DoD has been the willingness of civilians to assert control. But that is obviously also a double-edged sword, and the restoration of civilian authority would undoubtedly have gone more smoothly and been less destructive if a) it hadn’t involved the silencing of military voices when that expertise was most necessary, and b) the civilians in question weren’t so goddamn stupid.

UPDATE: Brad Plumer says the same thing, only better.