Experience usually counts, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic who had never owned a car (a principle one of my female friends uses to
explain why she goes to a female ob/gyn).
You’d think that same logic would apply to something as
important as, say, a war, wouldn’t you? But we went to war based on a sales
pitch that was touted by a group of officials none of whom had any personal
experience with war, and most of whom never served in the military. This group
has famously been called “chicken hawks,” because they were too “chicken” to
fight for their country, but not “chicken” enough not to send others to fight
for them.
When it came to the wisdom of the war, the advice of people
with experience was discounted. Colin Powell, an experienced warrior, warned
that if we invaded Iraq we would own it, a lesson he learned during the first
Gulf War, and successfully taught to Bush 41 (a decorated war veteran in his own
right) during that war. But other experienced military warriors were
marginalized when they warned that a successful campaign in Iraq would take a
considerably larger force than was eventually deployed, an unheeded warning that
has cost this country dearly.
So it’s no surprise that this administration has continued
to resist the advice of experienced warriors in matters pertaining to the war.
One of them, Congressman John Murtha, is a decorated Viet Nam veteran, and a
retired Marine colonel. He is generally acknowledged to be one of the most
militarily savvy officials in Washington, and a real hawk, as opposed to the
chicken variety. And yet, when he recently advocated a prompt redeployment of
troops from Iraq for factually unassailable reasons, he was promptly vilified,
first as a Michael Moore liberal by the White House and then as a coward by a
freshman congresswoman in an infamous incident on the floor of the House.
Murtha’s experience didn’t count; not to this administration.
Another voice of experience in the wilderness was John
McCain’s in his efforts to outlaw torture. When it became apparent, following
stories from Guantanamo and elsewhere, that the chorus of protestations from
the administration that “we do not torture” rang hollow, especially given the
contrary efforts by the administration’s lawyers to justify its use, McCain
mounted his campaign. McCain knew from painful personal experience that torture
was dehumanizing, barbaric and counter-productive. Yet in spite of his
experience and the resonance of his position precisely because of that
experience, the Bush administration continued to insist that “cruel, inhuman or
degrading” treatment was a legitimate tool in the “war against terrorism,” so
important that the President threatened to exercise the first veto of his
presidency to prevent the McCain amendment from becoming law.
Once again, the voice of experience was, at least
temporarily, being ignored by this administration. Eventually, the Senate’s
veto-proof support of McCain’s position convinced the President to back down on
his opposition to the amendment. This was despite the fact that enforcement of
the new law is in doubt, given the statement issued by the President in
connection with its signing. To wit: He announced his intention to interpret
(and presumably enforce) the anti-torture restriction in the same way he
interprets other laws (i.e., consistent with his constitutional and
commander-in-chief authority).
The most recent voice of experience was heard just this
past weekend — this time on Bush’s warrantless spying on American citizens.
During a TV appearance, William Safire, the New York Times columnist and
unabashed apologist for all things Bush, recounted how he became the subject of
an illegal wiretap during his days as a speech writer for President Nixon.
Safire’s home phone, it turns out, was illegally tapped by the FBI because the
Bureau was simultaneously (and illegally, of course) tapping the phone of a
reporter to whom Safire offered to “leak” advance notice of an upcoming Nixon
speech.
The experience gave Safire, as he put it, a “thing about
personal privacy” and made him an opponent of government’s excesses in the guise
of national security, an attitude that has been echoed by several former (i.e.,
experienced) intelligence professionals. Call me a pessimist, but my guess is
that these voices of experience will be ignored as well.
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