Further on the Iraq front, shifting now from US policy to domestic politics. The Armchair Generalist picks up on press coverage of Democratic disunity on the Iraq war and how it benefits the GOP. Frustrating, agreed. A fatal flaw, not necessarily.

I'm less concerned about Democratic disunity than is the Washington press corps, which loves the "Democrats squabble" script. The main threat from disunity isn't the failure of Democrats to offer an alternative "plan" (the favorite prescription of the punditocracy, see Social Security). Rather, the threat of disunity is only if Democrats waste their ammunition on each other rather than keep it aimed squarely on Bush.

The best candid version of this argument is Digby's "pincer" strategy earlier cited by Eric Martin as an interesting perspective on the political gavotte.

I think that we are seeing a Democratic pincer movement that is going to fatally squeeze the Republican policy. On the one side we have the growing Cindy Sheehan withdrawal movement, very emotional very compelling. It's the right argument, but its main purpose is to weaken Bush --- there is no chance in hell that it will force a complete troop withdrawal. On the other side he has the Democratic establishment calling for more troops and a greater effort to gain international support. Bush cannot do that either. He is trapped. All he can say is "stay the course" which is not adequate to win and ensures that we lose slowly and painfully.

I'm sorry to have to reduce this to politics. It is an absolutely horrible situation that should have been prevented and wasn't. That was our failure. But it has happened and it is what it is. The only thing we can do is ensure that Republicans are held accountable for this failure and prepare the ground for the future. If I thought we could convince the GOP to do anything different, I would put politics aside and say that we should all work together. But that is clearly impossible. They will not listen. They will not admit that they've made any mistakes.

Rodger Payne at Duck of Minerva takes Digby's insight one step further. He explains the merit of advocating escalation as a way of peeling the "Jacksonians" away from their unconditional support of the Bush Admin. It's a way of demonstrating that the Bushies aren't really "fighting to win" -- a mortal sin in the Jacksonian scheme of things. Given the practical impediments to escalation, it's a strategy that's hard to sustain, but it's an interesting way to get past the key first step -- overcoming the "denial" stage that the President's policies are working. Payne's proposal also suggests how Democrats can join their voices to Republicans critics in attacking the objectives and conduct of the war -- a good way to counter attempts by the White House to use Iraq as a wedge issue.

Finally, I continue to try to make the case that "withdrawal" vs "stay the course" is a phony debate, and it's one to be avoided by opponents of the Bush Admin's conduct of the Iraq war. The real challenge is to shift the discussion to how best to achieve the mission -- which has already become one of damage control, despite the rhetoric of the President and Vice President -- while at the same time holding the Bush Admin accountable for the mess they've created.

From the perspective of damage control, the steps being taken by DOD and State in recent months reflect on-the-ground reality and are for the most part moving in the right direction. The risk of a widening gap between rhetoric and reality is that major decisions, such as the constitutional drafting process, will be driven by White House political imperatives rather than best judgments of what's good policy. [caveat -- there are credible arguments for pushing for a constitutional draft on schedule, but the White House's need for "progress" quite naturally raises unhealthy suspicions -- both by Americans and Iraqis -- that US politics are dominating the Iraqi constitutional process.]

As I've argued for months, Bush is out on a limb. I agree with Digby -- since Bush can't admit mistakes, all he can do now is ramp up the "noble cause" and "stay the course" rhetoric. Where I disagree with Digby is that I think the Bush Admin policymakers have already abandoned the "stay the course" strategy -- they're trying to stage manage a gradual withdrawal while minimizing damage to US interests, with an occasional photo-op to boost the claim that "we're making progress" and the phony "stay the course" strategy is working.

With his recently announced schedule of Iraq speeches, Bush will certainly try to turn the war into a wedge issue a la Vietnam. He may succeed again, but it's not going to be nearly as easy as it was in the 2004 elections. The portion of the public that can be mobilized with standard flag-waving is declining, not just because the news from Iraq has been depressing but because the stated objectives (freedom on the march and the 9/11-flypaper theory) are less and less credible. With the growing rhetoric/reality gap, the old arguments aren't going to satisfy an American public that is getting increasingly frustrated, whether they think withdrawal or escalation is the better direction to go in.

I'm not sure what sort of Democratic "plan" would serve to both unify the Democrats and counter the wedge politics of the White House. And I don't think one's necessary. There's an old principle that when your political opponent is drowning in public, don't throw him a lifepreserver by shifting attention off him and onto yourself. Surely the Democrats can remain united on two core arguments against the Bush Admin: competence and credibility.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

I already went ballistic on the first report about Gen Byrnes getting the ax for marital indiscretion. So my outrage meter can't really go much higher. This Huffington Blog entry from Margaret Carlson just confirms my conviction that we've got a "values crisis" on our hands.

But here's what grabbed my attention. Way down in the [NYT's] piece, we learn that the officer appointed to determined if Byrnes should be court-martialed for a consensual affair is Gen. Dan K. McNeill. The Army has it wrong. If anyone should be court-martialed, it should be Gen. McNeill. Two prisoners were murdered on his watch and he covered it up.

I came to know McNeill when he was just a Lt. Gen. commanding forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, oversaw Bagram prison and then, the polite word is misled, officials about what happened to two innocent prisoners there. He claimed the two died of natural causes. Both were murdered.

McNeill kept stonewalling even after an autopsy showed that there'd been no natural causes in the death of a peasant named Dilawar. Rounded up in a bad sweep of Khost, Dilawar, who had never been away from his parent's home and was innocent of any animosisty towards America, much less violence, was hung from the ceiling of his cell for five days in between bouts of interrogation where he was kicked and beaten so badly the coroner's report said his leg had turned to pulp.

After natural causes became suspect, McNeill claimed Dilawar had died from coronary disease.

After McNeill left Afghanistan, a new inquiry was reopened in Washington (thanks to a New York Times investigation). Low-level soldiers and MP's have been indicted; some are on trial now. But guess what? McNeill was promoted to full general.

And now he sits in judgement of Byrnes.

Let's be clear what I'm not arguing about. It's a discussion for another day whether the US military should consider modifying its code of conduct when it comes to highly personal matters that don't directly involve one's job performance. Nor am I questioning the right of a superior to discipline a subordinate for disobeying an order. Finally, I am not endorsing Carlson's view that Gen McNeill should be court-martialed. I have no informed opinion. Most of the military's snowstorm of investigations on detainee treatment have taken a narrowly legalistic approach, looking for direct orders and smoking guns. I am willing to believe that the investigators didn't ignore glaring grounds for prosecuting McNeill.

The juxtaposition of Byrnes/McNeill has far more serious implications for our society's values than the actions in either case, taken in isolation. One of the purposes of conduct standards for officers is to promote confidence in the military's leadership -- confidence essential both to subordinates' willingness to follow and to civilians' trust in the judgment and competence of the military's leaders. Discipline in any specific case is a matter of discretion within a broader system of conduct. Confidence in the way standards of conduct are enforced -- that discretion will not be "abused" -- is essential to confidence in the system as a whole. Discretion is abused when those with power or with privilege of some sort are able to escape discipline applied to others. But discretion is also abused when discipline (or lack of discipline) fails to be proportionate, not only to the specific offense but to other disciplinary decisions.

There's been a lot of talk about accountability or lack thereof in the military's handling of detainee abuse and torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. "Command responsibility" is certainly an important element of ensuring integrity of performance, as I've learned in some detail from Phil Carter. Setting abstract ethics to one side, in purely instrumental terms, failure to hold higher-ups accountable is corrosive for morale and discipline up and down the line. Cover-ups, lack of candor and shoddy excuses, which go hand in hand with lack of accountability, drive a poisonous credibility wedge not only between military leadership and those they lead but between the military and society at large.

But the enforcement of conduct standards is not simply a matter of punishment, or weeding out people who don't meet the standards. Just as with rewards, such as promotion, disciplinary actions are also an important means to collectively define and reaffirm, within the military and for society more broadly, the types of behavior and results that are valued. Specific decisions about how to enforce the standards necessarily reflect a priority of values -- how seriously an institution's leadership holds certain values and how they try to reconcile values that may conflict.

Both promotions and disciplinary actions speak louder than words when it comes to communicating which values are most important to the military's current leadership. And the current leadership is saying that conflict with a superior over one's sexual behavior is a terrible, terrible thing. But you don't even blot your copybook if you're involved in command failures that include murders on your watch and the destruction of the military's public credibility on sensitive matters important to the nation's security. Apparently "necessities of war" as defined by the Secretary of Defense overrides all other values if you're a senior enough officer, even if it doesn't serve to absolve underlings. I certainly hope the Byrnes episode is not simply a display of the growing obsession with "sexual morality" as the touchstone for American "values."

So whether the military means to or not, it's sending out three strong messages. The lives of foreigners who get caught up in our war against terrorists are less important than an officer's marital indiscretion. Little guys will take the fall when things get messy. And our values don't actually reflect principles of ethical behavior and integrity, they're whatever the political masters of the day determine.

Somehow one of America's most important institutions has lost perspective on what's important. And it's lost sight of the fact that its actions speak far more loudly than words, reflect on our country as a whole, and are being heard round the world.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism