The Revolt of the Generals

The immense significance of Rep. John Murtha's Nov. 17 speech calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq is that it signals mutiny in the US senior officer corps, seeing the institution they lead as "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth," to use the biting words of their spokesman, John Murtha, as he reiterated his denunciation of Bush's destruction of the Army.

A source with nearly 40 years experience working in and around the Pentagon told me this week, "The Four-Star Generals picked Murtha to make this speech because he has maximum credibility." It cannot have taken Vice President Cheney, a former US Defense Secretary, more than a moment to scan Murtha's speech and realize that is was, basically, an announcement that the generals have had enough.

Listen once more to what the generals want the country to know:

"The future of our military is at risk."

"Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care.... We cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care to be negotiated away...."

"The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls in our bases at home"

"Most importantl ... incidents have increased from 150 a week to over 700 in the last year.... Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled."

What happened on the heels of this speech is very instructive. The Democrats fell over themselves distancing themselves from Murtha, emboldening the White House to go on the attack.

From Bush's presidential plane, touring Asia, came the derisive comment that Murtha was "endorsing the policies of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

It took the traveling White House about 48 hours to realize that this was a dumb thing to have said. Murtha's not the kind of guy you can slime, the way Bush & Co. did the glass-jawed Kerry in 2004. The much-decorated vet Murtha snapped back publicly that he hadn't much time for smears from people like Cheney who'd got five deferments from military service in Vietnam.

By the weekend Bush was speaking of Murtha respectfully. On Monday, gritting his teeth, Cheney told a Washington audience that though he disagreed with Murtha, "he's a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion."

One day later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News, "I do not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now ... for very much longer, because Iraqis are stepping up." A week later Bush was preparing a speech laying heavy emphasis on US withdrawals as the Iraqi armed forces take up the burden.

The stench of panic in Washington intensified. It stems from the core concern of every politician in the nation's capital: survival. The people sweating are Republicans and the source of their terror is the deadly message spelled out in every current poll: Bush's war on Iraq spells disaster for the Republican Party in next year's midterm elections.

Take a mid-November poll by Survey USA: in only seven states did Bush's current approval rating exceed 50 percent. These consisted of the thinly populated states of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Mississippi. In twelve states, including California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, his rating was under 35.

You have to go back to the early 1970s, when a scandal-stained Nixon was on the verge of resignation, to find numbers lower than Bush's.

No one expects Bush to resign, or even to be impeached (though Vice President Cheney's future is less assured) and his second term has more than three years to run. But right now, to use a famous phrase from the Nixon era, a cancer is gnawing at his presidency and that cancer is the war in Iraq. The American people are now 60 percent against it and 40 percent think Bush lied to get them to back it.

Hence the panic.

But more unsettling is that amid this potential debacle, the Republicans' only source of comfort is the truly incredible conduct of the Democrats. First came the Democrats' terrified reaction to Murtha, exemplified by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's cancellation of a press conference supporting Murtha. This prompted the Republicans to call the Democrats' bluff with the Republican-sponsored resolution calling for immediate withdrawal, which only three Democrats voted for, while so-called progressives like Kucinich, Sanders, and Conyers ran for cover.

Listen to any prominent Democrat senator, like Kerry or Clinton or Feingold or Obama, and you get the same adamant refusal to go beyond Obama's address to the Council on Foreign Relations, savagely characterized by Glenn Ford and Peter Gamble in the Black Commentator: "US Senator Barack Obama has planted his feet deeply inside the Iraq war-prolongation camp of the Democratic Party, the great swamp that, if not drained, will swallow up any hope of victory over the GOP in next year's congressional elections. In a masterpiece of double-speak ... the Black Illinois lawmaker managed to out-mush-mouth Sen. John Kerry--a prodigious feat, indeed.... In essence, all Obama wants from the Bush regime is that it fess up to having launched the war based on false information, and to henceforth come clean with the Senate on how it plans to proceed in the future."

"Withdrawal" and "timetables" are bad words, and Obama will have nothing to do with them.

The Black Commentator concludes its excoriation of Obama and his fellow Democrats with these words: "By late summer of 2006, when voters are deciding what they want their Senate and House to look like, if the Democrats have not caught up to public opinion to offer a tangible and quick exit from Iraq, the Republicans will retain control of both chambers of Congress. All that will be left in November is mush from Kerry, Hillary, Biden, Edwards--and Obama's--mouths."

We heartily endorse this sentiment.