America’s military coup
Donald Rumsfeld has a new war on his hands – the US officer corps has turned on the government.
In an extraordinary editorial, the Army Times, which had not previously ventured into such controversy, declared that “the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons … This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountabilty here is essential – even if that means relieving leaders from duty in a time of war.”
One high-level military strategist told me that Rumsfeld is “detested”, and that “if there’s a sentiment in the army it is: Support Our Troops, Impeach Rumsfeld”.
FireRumsfeld.org (Well, what are you waiting for???)
Arianna Huffington opines:
So being notified by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that U.S. soldiers were torturing and humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners in the very place that had once been Saddam Hussein’s favorite Little Shop of Horrors wasn’t vivid enough to get the alarm bells ringing on Pennsylvania Avenue?
Neither apparently were the non-visual warnings about the mistreatment of prisoners delivered by the Red Cross, Colin Powell and Paul Bremer.
Why not? Is the country being run by a bunch of preschoolers who can’t process all those big words and will only sit still for a colorful picture book?
See Rummy spin. Spin, Rummy, spin.
At the grocery market today, the retiree in front of me was talking to the woman ringing up the groceries, I’m a Veteran for Peace, he said. She said, this war is crazy, we need to get out now. Then she said, that beheading, with what we’re doing there, why is anyone surprised?
It was amazing this discussion was going on in the supermarket. Everyone is talking about this. And the sentiments they expressed may well signal such views are passing into the mainstream. I mean, for a second there I thought I was in an ANSWER meeting…
And check this out:
The neoconservative hour is over. All the blather about “empire,” our “unipolar moment,” “Pax Americana” and “benevolent global hegemony” will be quietly put on a shelf and forgotten as infantile prattle.
America is not going to fight a five- or 10-year war in Iraq. Nor will we be launching any new invasions soon. The retreat of American empire, begun at Fallujah, is underway.
The author is … Pat Buchanan