Seven Days in May..?
The current issue of Harper's Magazine (April 2006; Vol. 312, No. 1871) has a shortish panel discussion entitled "American Coup d'Etat: Military Thinkers Discuss the Unthinkable;" I say "shortish" because, while the piece runs from p. 43 to p. 50, the transcript of the forum proper only runs from pps. 44-50, and the transcript only takes up the first two-thirds of p. 44.
Yes, I could've wished for a more in-depth discussion of this possibility; twenty pages, at least.
The panelists are Andrew J. Bacevich; Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.; Richard H. Kohn; Edward N. Luttwak; and Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's.
As Harper's doesn't offer an on-line version of this article, even to its subscribers, I offer herewith some choice excerpts.
To all leftie paranoids who are pressed for time, I tender first this quote from Mr. Bacevich: "Our military doesn't need to overthrow the government, because it has learned how to play politics in order to achieve its interests" (p. 45).
In short, it is the considered opinion of these luminaries that a military coup in the U.S. is, at present, unlikely, if not superfluous: less Seven Days in May; more It Can't Happen Here.
The worrying details are behind the cut, for those with more leisure to peruse them.
First, this disquieting observation from Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.:
"Americans today have an incredible trust in the military. In poll after poll they have much more confidence in the armed forces than they do in other institutions. The most recent poll, just this past spring, had trust in the military at 74 percent, while Congress was at 22 percent and the presidency was at 44 percent. In other words, the armed forces are much more trusted than the civilian institutions that are supposed to control them."
-- p. 47
Next, this exchange about the jockeying for influence between the State Department and the Department of Defense; here's a hint: Foggy Bottom isn't winning....
DUNLAP: Well, I don't think it's anything new that the State Department is underfunded. The State Department has no bases in any state, so it does not have a constituency. But in terms of the expenditure of resources in the Department of Defense, that is very much controlled by civilians and not military commanders.
LUTTWAK: But it is still the military that has the resources.
BACEVICH: And so over time -- because this has happened over time -- you create a bias for military action. Which agency of government has the capacity to act? Well, the Department of Defense does. And that bias gets continually reinforced, and helps to create a circumstance in which any president who wants to appear effective, and therefore to win reelection, sees that the opportunity to do so is by acting in the military sphere.
-- p. 48
Next, topic, partisanship in the military:
WASIK: ...Insofar as there is a 'culture war' in America, everyone seems to agree that the armed forces fight on the Republican side. And this is borne out in polls: self-described Republicans outnumber Democrats in the military by more than four to one, and only 7 percent of soldiers describe themselves as 'liberal.'
KOHN: It has become part of the informal culture of the military to be Republican. You see this at the military academies. They pick it up in the culture, in the training establishments.
....
DUNLAP: Which brings up a crucial point. Let's accept as a fact that the U.S. military has become more overtly ideological since 1980. What has happened since 1980? Roughly, that was the beginning of the all-volunteer force. What we are seeing right now is the result of twenty-five years of an all-volunteer force, in which people have self-selected into the organization.
BACEVICH: But the military is also recruited. And it doesn't seem to me that the military has much interest in whether or not the force is representative of American society.
KOHN: I don't think that's true.
BACEVICH: Where do you think recruiting command is focused right now? It's focused on those evangelicals, it's on the rural South. We are reinforcing the lack of representativeness in the military because of the concentrated recruiting efforts among groups predisposed to serve.
DUNLAP: They are so focused on getting qualified people. The military is going to the Supreme Court so that it can recruit on campuses where currently we're not able to.
KOHN: That's just law schools.
DUNLAP: But it has implications across the armed forces.
BACEVICH: The recruiters go for the rich turf, which is where the evangelicals are. You have to work a hell of a lot harder to recruit people from Newton and Wellesley, Massachusetts.
KOHN: Or anywhere in the well-to-do or even middle-class suburbs.
BACEVICH: In an economic sense, the services are behaving quite rationally. But in doing so they perpetuate the fact that we have a military that in no way 'looks like' American society.
-- pps. 48-9
This topic concludes with the following exchange:
KOHN: ...Not only are military officers more partisan than the general population; they're more partisan than, say, business leaders and other elite groups. I've tracked the numbers of retired four-star generals and admirals endorsing a candidate in presidential campaigns, and it's vastly up in the last two elections.
BACEVICH: Remember at the Democratic National Convention, where General Claudia Kennedy introduced General John Shalikashvili to address the delegates? Why were they up there? There was only one reason: to try to match the parade of retired senior officers that the Republicans have long been trotting out on political occasions.
KOHN: But is that to get military votes? Or just to connect with the American people on national security and patriotism?
BACEVICH: It's both. In 2000, the Republican National Committee put ads in the Army Times and other service magazines attacking the Clinton/Gore record. To me that was, quite frankly, contemptible.
WASIK: It seems as if the two are related: if it's reported that you have the support of the military -- as was the case before the 2004 election, when newspapers noted that [Senator John F.] Kerry had less than 20 percent support within the military -- then you get a halo effect around the rest of the voters. Does the partisanship of our military present a danger to the nation?
KOHN: One of the great pillars in our history that has prevented military intervention in politics has been the military's nonpartisan attitude. That's why General George Marshall's generation of officers essentially declined to vote at all, as did generations before them. In fact, for the first time in over a century we now have an officer corps that does identify overwhelmingly with one political party. And that is corrosive.
-- p. 49
The last topic that the panel discusses is the military's adeptness at playing politics:
KOHN: Consider this glaring example of political manipulation by the military: After every other American war before the Cold War, the country demobilized its wartime military establishment. Even during the Cold War, when we kept a large standing military, we expanded and contracted it for shooting wars. But in 1990 and 1991, the military -- through General Colin Powell, who was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time -- intervened and effectively prevented a demobilization.
BACEVICH: More accurately, I'd say that he prevented any discussion of a demobilization.
KOHN: That's right.
DUNLAP: We did have a reduction in the size of the military. There were cuts of around 9 percent, in both dollars and manpower.
KOHN: But it was nothing compared to the end of the great American wars prior to that.
BACEVICH: Powell is explicit on this in his memoirs. 'I was determined to have the Joint Chiefs drive the military strategy train,' he wrote. He was not going to have 'military reorganization schemes shoved down our throat.'
KOHN: This was not a coup, but it was very clearly a circumvention of civilian military authority.
BACEVICH: Let us also consider the classic case of gays in the military. Bill Clinton ran for the presidency saying he would issue an executive order that did for gays what Harry Truman did for African Americans. He wins the election. When he tries to do precisely what he said he would do, it triggers a firestorm of opposition in the military. This was not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff merely saying, in private, 'Mr. President, I would like to give you my professional opinion.'
KOHN: It was the most open revolt the American military as a whole has ever engaged in.
LUTTWAK: Ever?
KOHN: Open revolt, yes.
BACEVICH: Now, Clinton's actions were ill-advised, to put it mildly. But what we got was something like rebellion. Two Marines published an op-ed in the Washington Post, warning the Joint Chiefs that if they failed to stop this policy from being implemented, they were likely to lose the loyalty of junior officers. I mean, holy smokes.
-- pps. 49-50
Last excerpt, one directly tied in with what is usually the lead international story on any given day in the U.S. media for lo, these past three years: the war in Iraq:
LUTTWAK: ...One day General Eric Shinseki, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, happened to be testifying on Capitol Hill. Somebody asked him about a possible invasion of Iraq, and General Shinseki -- reflecting what, as I understand it, was the view of anyone who had ever looked at that country and counted its population -- said that it would take several hundred thousand troops to control Iraq. Whereupon Shinseki was publicly contradicted by his civilian superiors, who ridiculed his professional opinion.
DUNLAP: Right. Dick, do you consider that to have been appropriate feedback for him?
KOHN: No, Shinseki behaved appropriately. In contradicting and disparaging him, the civilians signalled to the military that they did not want candor even when it is required, which is in front of Congress.
-- p. 50
Let's consider two of these superficially innocuous, but oh-so-ominous statements:
"Our military doesn't need to overthrow the government, because it has learned how to play politics in order to achieve its interests." Well, there you go. It's not subornation; it's politics. Next one:
"This was not a coup, but it was very clearly a circumvention of civilian political authority." This, in reference to the man deemed by many in the punditocracy to be the first electable African-American candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. (He also happens to be the man largely responsible for whitewashing the My Lai massacre of 1968.)
Not with a bang; with a whimper.
The transcribed proceedings close with Mr. Bacevich allowing that the current climate makes possible "the military making deals with politicians whose purposes may not be consistent with the Constitution" (p. 50).
Not a cleft-chinned General James Mattoon Scott; an oleaginous Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip.
Again: how --- comforting.
Yes, I could've wished for a more in-depth discussion of this possibility; twenty pages, at least.
The panelists are Andrew J. Bacevich; Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.; Richard H. Kohn; Edward N. Luttwak; and Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's.
As Harper's doesn't offer an on-line version of this article, even to its subscribers, I offer herewith some choice excerpts.
To all leftie paranoids who are pressed for time, I tender first this quote from Mr. Bacevich: "Our military doesn't need to overthrow the government, because it has learned how to play politics in order to achieve its interests" (p. 45).
In short, it is the considered opinion of these luminaries that a military coup in the U.S. is, at present, unlikely, if not superfluous: less Seven Days in May; more It Can't Happen Here.
The worrying details are behind the cut, for those with more leisure to peruse them.
First, this disquieting observation from Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.:
"Americans today have an incredible trust in the military. In poll after poll they have much more confidence in the armed forces than they do in other institutions. The most recent poll, just this past spring, had trust in the military at 74 percent, while Congress was at 22 percent and the presidency was at 44 percent. In other words, the armed forces are much more trusted than the civilian institutions that are supposed to control them."
-- p. 47
Next, this exchange about the jockeying for influence between the State Department and the Department of Defense; here's a hint: Foggy Bottom isn't winning....
DUNLAP: Well, I don't think it's anything new that the State Department is underfunded. The State Department has no bases in any state, so it does not have a constituency. But in terms of the expenditure of resources in the Department of Defense, that is very much controlled by civilians and not military commanders.
LUTTWAK: But it is still the military that has the resources.
BACEVICH: And so over time -- because this has happened over time -- you create a bias for military action. Which agency of government has the capacity to act? Well, the Department of Defense does. And that bias gets continually reinforced, and helps to create a circumstance in which any president who wants to appear effective, and therefore to win reelection, sees that the opportunity to do so is by acting in the military sphere.
-- p. 48
Next, topic, partisanship in the military:
WASIK: ...Insofar as there is a 'culture war' in America, everyone seems to agree that the armed forces fight on the Republican side. And this is borne out in polls: self-described Republicans outnumber Democrats in the military by more than four to one, and only 7 percent of soldiers describe themselves as 'liberal.'
KOHN: It has become part of the informal culture of the military to be Republican. You see this at the military academies. They pick it up in the culture, in the training establishments.
....
DUNLAP: Which brings up a crucial point. Let's accept as a fact that the U.S. military has become more overtly ideological since 1980. What has happened since 1980? Roughly, that was the beginning of the all-volunteer force. What we are seeing right now is the result of twenty-five years of an all-volunteer force, in which people have self-selected into the organization.
BACEVICH: But the military is also recruited. And it doesn't seem to me that the military has much interest in whether or not the force is representative of American society.
KOHN: I don't think that's true.
BACEVICH: Where do you think recruiting command is focused right now? It's focused on those evangelicals, it's on the rural South. We are reinforcing the lack of representativeness in the military because of the concentrated recruiting efforts among groups predisposed to serve.
DUNLAP: They are so focused on getting qualified people. The military is going to the Supreme Court so that it can recruit on campuses where currently we're not able to.
KOHN: That's just law schools.
DUNLAP: But it has implications across the armed forces.
BACEVICH: The recruiters go for the rich turf, which is where the evangelicals are. You have to work a hell of a lot harder to recruit people from Newton and Wellesley, Massachusetts.
KOHN: Or anywhere in the well-to-do or even middle-class suburbs.
BACEVICH: In an economic sense, the services are behaving quite rationally. But in doing so they perpetuate the fact that we have a military that in no way 'looks like' American society.
-- pps. 48-9
This topic concludes with the following exchange:
KOHN: ...Not only are military officers more partisan than the general population; they're more partisan than, say, business leaders and other elite groups. I've tracked the numbers of retired four-star generals and admirals endorsing a candidate in presidential campaigns, and it's vastly up in the last two elections.
BACEVICH: Remember at the Democratic National Convention, where General Claudia Kennedy introduced General John Shalikashvili to address the delegates? Why were they up there? There was only one reason: to try to match the parade of retired senior officers that the Republicans have long been trotting out on political occasions.
KOHN: But is that to get military votes? Or just to connect with the American people on national security and patriotism?
BACEVICH: It's both. In 2000, the Republican National Committee put ads in the Army Times and other service magazines attacking the Clinton/Gore record. To me that was, quite frankly, contemptible.
WASIK: It seems as if the two are related: if it's reported that you have the support of the military -- as was the case before the 2004 election, when newspapers noted that [Senator John F.] Kerry had less than 20 percent support within the military -- then you get a halo effect around the rest of the voters. Does the partisanship of our military present a danger to the nation?
KOHN: One of the great pillars in our history that has prevented military intervention in politics has been the military's nonpartisan attitude. That's why General George Marshall's generation of officers essentially declined to vote at all, as did generations before them. In fact, for the first time in over a century we now have an officer corps that does identify overwhelmingly with one political party. And that is corrosive.
-- p. 49
The last topic that the panel discusses is the military's adeptness at playing politics:
KOHN: Consider this glaring example of political manipulation by the military: After every other American war before the Cold War, the country demobilized its wartime military establishment. Even during the Cold War, when we kept a large standing military, we expanded and contracted it for shooting wars. But in 1990 and 1991, the military -- through General Colin Powell, who was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time -- intervened and effectively prevented a demobilization.
BACEVICH: More accurately, I'd say that he prevented any discussion of a demobilization.
KOHN: That's right.
DUNLAP: We did have a reduction in the size of the military. There were cuts of around 9 percent, in both dollars and manpower.
KOHN: But it was nothing compared to the end of the great American wars prior to that.
BACEVICH: Powell is explicit on this in his memoirs. 'I was determined to have the Joint Chiefs drive the military strategy train,' he wrote. He was not going to have 'military reorganization schemes shoved down our throat.'
KOHN: This was not a coup, but it was very clearly a circumvention of civilian military authority.
BACEVICH: Let us also consider the classic case of gays in the military. Bill Clinton ran for the presidency saying he would issue an executive order that did for gays what Harry Truman did for African Americans. He wins the election. When he tries to do precisely what he said he would do, it triggers a firestorm of opposition in the military. This was not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff merely saying, in private, 'Mr. President, I would like to give you my professional opinion.'
KOHN: It was the most open revolt the American military as a whole has ever engaged in.
LUTTWAK: Ever?
KOHN: Open revolt, yes.
BACEVICH: Now, Clinton's actions were ill-advised, to put it mildly. But what we got was something like rebellion. Two Marines published an op-ed in the Washington Post, warning the Joint Chiefs that if they failed to stop this policy from being implemented, they were likely to lose the loyalty of junior officers. I mean, holy smokes.
-- pps. 49-50
Last excerpt, one directly tied in with what is usually the lead international story on any given day in the U.S. media for lo, these past three years: the war in Iraq:
LUTTWAK: ...One day General Eric Shinseki, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, happened to be testifying on Capitol Hill. Somebody asked him about a possible invasion of Iraq, and General Shinseki -- reflecting what, as I understand it, was the view of anyone who had ever looked at that country and counted its population -- said that it would take several hundred thousand troops to control Iraq. Whereupon Shinseki was publicly contradicted by his civilian superiors, who ridiculed his professional opinion.
DUNLAP: Right. Dick, do you consider that to have been appropriate feedback for him?
KOHN: No, Shinseki behaved appropriately. In contradicting and disparaging him, the civilians signalled to the military that they did not want candor even when it is required, which is in front of Congress.
-- p. 50
Let's consider two of these superficially innocuous, but oh-so-ominous statements:
"Our military doesn't need to overthrow the government, because it has learned how to play politics in order to achieve its interests." Well, there you go. It's not subornation; it's politics. Next one:
"This was not a coup, but it was very clearly a circumvention of civilian political authority." This, in reference to the man deemed by many in the punditocracy to be the first electable African-American candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. (He also happens to be the man largely responsible for whitewashing the My Lai massacre of 1968.)
Not with a bang; with a whimper.
The transcribed proceedings close with Mr. Bacevich allowing that the current climate makes possible "the military making deals with politicians whose purposes may not be consistent with the Constitution" (p. 50).
Not a cleft-chinned General James Mattoon Scott; an oleaginous Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip.
Again: how --- comforting.