President faces a Rumsfeld dilemma

WASHINGTON -- There is no indication that President Bush has anything but the highest regard for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq. But even if he didn't, Bush would have little alternative but to strongly support him or repudiate three years of warfare and the validity of the invasion itself.
In addition, caving in to the demands of a handful of retired generals would establish a dangerous precedent that could threaten the entire relationship between the military and its civilian bosses, including the president's constitutional role as commander in chief. That principle, above all others, has protected the republic and its democratic foundation from the "Seven Days in May" potential that has afflicted so many other nations.
As any school child should know, the most dramatic reinforcement of civilian control came during the Korean War, when President Harry Truman removed Douglas MacArthur as allied commander when the general disagreed publicly with Truman's policies. The president's action came despite wide public and congressional support for MacArthur, and it left no doubt about who was ultimately in charge.
Does this mean those retired generals are wrong about the handling of an increasingly deleterious expedition? No. It also doesn't mean these former commanders, several of whom were in charge of forces on the ground in Iraq, should keep quiet. Having ended their military careers, they now have every right, just as any other American, to publicly challenge the way military affairs are conducted. But did they do it privately while still on active duty?
Too few troops
One would hope that, in counseling civilian leaders in the Pentagon, they were equally as outspoken in their beliefs that far too few troops were involved, and that mistakes were being made in the rush to Baghdad, including the bypassing of major pockets of heavily armed insurgents -- who then began wreaking havoc on efforts to bring stability to Iraq. If the military leaders did not challenge privately the tactics that seem in hindsight so utterly misshapen, they were derelict and bear a large portion of the responsibility.
Rumsfeld sent a message early on that he would not tolerate public disagreement by his generals, even the mildest form. When asked during a congressional hearing how many soldiers he felt would be needed to win the war and secure the peace, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki casually said "several hundred thousand." Very shortly thereafter, Rumsfeld contradicted that estimate in no uncertain terms and Shinseki was on his way to retirement. It was not a lesson that was lost on the rest of the military high command.
Interestingly, the number of troops deployed and other issues have been criticized almost since the beginning of the conflict, and always have been met with pledges from both Bush and Rumsfeld that they would abide by the demands from commanders in the field. Those demands simply never seemed to come. And when asked, most of those officers replied that they had sufficient forces, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
So where does all this late-in-the-day disagreement, with more bound to come, leave us? The president is up against it here. The war is becoming increasingly unpopular, as is he personally because of it. Republican strategists are growing alarmed about the possible impact on the coming elections.
Ineffective rebuttal
Rumsfeld and his associates are more and more the villains in the piece, and that isn't going to get better. Issuing memos, as the Pentagon did recently in noting that the dissenting generals were only a tiny fraction of the 8,000 star-class officers in retirement, is not an effective rebuttal. The memo was a repeat of Rumsfeld's public dismissal of the entire affair.
Bush literally is caught between a rock and a hard place, and it would be encouraging if one could believe he understood this. There is no way for him to gracefully remove Rumsfeld without acknowledging his own mistakes, something he does not do easily. Actually, it would be the absolute wrong thing to do now, anyway, given, as has been noted, the damage that would be done to civilian rule.
Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.