Woodward lifts veil on civil-military discord

Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," has political junkies everywhere chattering. Along with its gossipy insider revelations, the book casts light on at least one important substantive issue: the abysmal state of relations between the nation's top generals and the Pentagon's senior civilian leaders, most notably Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The debacle that is Iraq today has many sources. Among them, civil-military dysfunction may well deserve pride of place. At the pinnacle of the U.S. national security establishment, mistrust and mutual manipulation rather than candor and mutual respect form the basis of interaction between civilian and military chiefs.

This has been true for decades, although the generals and the politicians have pretended otherwise. Now Woodward has let the cat out of the bag.

An anecdote from "State of Denial" makes the essential point. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones was asking fellow Marine Gen. Peter Pace, at the time the leading candidate to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he really wanted a job that had become so emptied of authority. "You should not be the parrot on the secretary's shoulder," Jones reportedly said.

Jones accurately described the role of generals like Pace (now perched compliantly above Rumsfeld's lapels) and the other Joint Chiefs. In determining the conduct of the Bush administration's global war on terror, the civilians in the office of the secretary of Defense call the shots. Apart from being trotted out on ceremonial occasions, the Joint Chiefs have become all but invisible. Certainly, on questions related to basic national security policy, they have become irrelevant.

Some of this qualifies as payback. During the 1990s, in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the Joint Chiefs were riding high and used their clout to show their civilian "masters" who was really boss. During the largely contrived controversy over gays in the military, the Joint Chiefs publicly humiliated the newly elected president, Bill Clinton.

When the Army botched the raid leading to the famous Mogadishu firefight of 1993, leaks coming from within the armed services quickly foisted blame on Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. No generals lost their jobs over Mogadishu, but Aspin lost his. Throughout the Clinton era, the Joint Chiefs continued to exercise a quasi-veto over matters related to national security.

When Rumsfeld took office in 2001, he was intent on shoring up the principle of civilian control. He has done that — although Rumsfeld's idea of control amounts to emasculation. He has bludgeoned generals into submission, marginalized or gotten rid of those inclined to be obstreperous and selected pliable replacements such as Pace.