Hope or High Water

Admiral Fallon, chief of the United States Central Command, was forced to resign on March 11th after comments attributed to him were published in Esquire magazine. If you have no idea how important this man was in terms of the military chain of command, let me lay it out for you. Admiral Fallon replaced four-star General John Abizaid in his role as chief of Central Command. General Petraeus, the current commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, answered directly to Admiral Fallon.

So why was Fallon fired? Because he made comments urging less saber-rattling and more diplomacy with Iran in a magazine interview. I realize that the chain of command exists for a reason. I also understand that the civilian administration at the top of that chain of command should not be publicly contradicted by military leadership, but the forced resignation of one of the best commanders we have over comments he made about a war we have not even begun is ludicrous.

Now, beyond the Bush administration allowing a modicum of leeway on public comments, there is another solution to this problem. If military officers disagree with administration policy, they should resign of their own volition. There are such powerful beliefs about duty and honor in the U.S. military that only extreme circumstances would lead military leadership to choose this path, but currently no such option seems available to our military officers. In other countries in which the military has to answer to civilian leadership, resignations are frequently used as acts of protest, but such resignations are taboo in our own military culture. The administration and upper-echelons of military command have grown worrisome after such resignations began rolling in, so much so that they began to disallow resignations, starting with over 400 reservist officers. If we are running into troops shortages so extreme that the resignations of small numbers of officers cannot be granted, then the administration might want to reconsider the military adventure that left us with such low numbers of soldiers.

I believe that if we are fighting a war that is even remotely justifiable, then we will have enough soldiers to fight that war. During World War II, plenty of future soldiers signed up at recruitment centers even though there was a draft underway. Currently, the only way for military officials to even remotely criticize any military policy, is to wait until they are retired. There are plenty of retired officers, generals included, who have used their retirement to criticize the current administration. The problem is that these criticisms are muted because they waited until after they left the military to make these statements. The comments of someone with the courage to resign because they don’t believe in the policies that they would be ordered to carry out stand courageous in comparison with the comments of officers who have already carried out those same policies and only now begin to criticize them.

I want to end this post by simply saying that I have a deep and abiding respect for our military men and women, especially those serving in Iraq today. Most of these people have no way to resign and many of them would not even if they could. These brave soldiers serve us, the people of this nation, so the least we can do is to serve them the best that we know how. I am writing this post because I believe one way to serve our soldiers is to give them some voice, some choice, in the conflicts in which they find themselves.