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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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HAVE WE FORGOTTEN HOW TO WIN A WAR? (PART II) In an earlier column (1) I reviewed some societal and cultural attitudes that helped America fight and defeat the Axis Powers in World War II, by way of trying to determine if we could still do this. I noted that in the 1940s we committed ourselves completely to winning, and that we were universally averse to doing or saying anything that might weaken our war-fighting ability. The American news media were our full allies, rarely reporting information which might assist our enemies. Hollywood films depicted American soldiers as brave, honest, dedicated and capable. Today, these important attitudes and practices are only sporadically operative as we battle worldwide terrorism. A sizable segment of the American public – including a vocal Democrat faction – advocates abandoning our commitments to defeat terrorism and help Iraq become an orderly democratic republic. Howard Dean, the Democrats’ 2004 anti-war presidential candidate, now chairs the Democratic National Committee. Some Democratic leaders – waggishly called the “surrender now” gang – would quit Iraq immediately, without regard to consequences. Across the country, individuals at every societal level act and speak in ways that hurt our government’s ability to guard the nation’s security and defeat its enemies. Many appear motivated by a hatred of President Bush so deep that causing the country significant harm is a price they seem willing to tolerate if Mr. Bush and his party can be hurt. Perhaps most notably, our news and entertainment media have morphed from whole-hearted supporters of the USA – in the mold of Ernie Pyle and other great WWII front-line journalists – into unaligned “neutral” mountebanks who treat the aims and actions of both the USA and its enemies as morally equivalent. Many media organs, including some of the nation’s biggest, openly oppose Mr. Bush’s government and his war objectives. What and how they report on the war can do real harm to the country, as a recent instance demonstrated. On June 23 the New York Times published a report detailing a covert federal program to discover and track terrorist connections via financial transactions data (“Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror”, by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen (2)). The authors quoted Stuart Levey, an undersecretary at the Treasury Department (which oversees the CIA-run program), as saying “…[the program] has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities.” Lichtblau and Risen say this is one of several Bush administration initiatives designed “…to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers to the government's access to private information about Americans and others inside the United States”. They claim the operation’s classified details were leaked by federal employees concerned about government-overreach. One former official said the “potential for abuse is enormous”. Not disputing the program’s effectiveness, the authors critiqued its legal basis, noting that “Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift”. The 3500-word article goes into great detail on what is and is not part of the data-mining operation. It is undoubtedly well researched and accurate, but accuracy is not the issue. The question is whether details of a secret program that identifies and tracks terrorist money – without which there could be no improvised explosives or suicide bombers – should be published in the nation’s premier newspaper to be seen by our foes around the world. It’s fair to wonder if FDR ever had to deal with anything similar during World War II. Actually, he did, as columnist Jack Kelly (former Reagan Administration deputy assistant secretary of the Air force) noted in a recent column. He relates how the Chicago Tribune published a report on June 7, 1942 that mentioned our advance knowledge about the Japanese attack on Midway Island (“Navy had Jap plan to strike at sea”). It was printed shortly after the US Navy had dealt the Japanese a crushing blow by surprising their navy at Midway and sinking four of their carriers. FDR was enraged over the disclosure, knowing that the Japanese would change their codes if they suspected compromise. (We had, in fact, broken their communications code.) Mr. Kelly cites author Harry Evans’ account of the president’s response to the leak: “[FDR] initially was disposed to send in the Marines to shut down Tribune Tower. He was talked out of that, then considered trying (Chicago Tribune publisher Robert) McCormick for treason, which carried a death penalty in wartime.” Ultimately, McCormick escaped prosecution because military intelligence determined that the Japanese had missed the story and were still using their original codes. Trial publicity would have accomplished what FDR feared had already been done by the untimely news article. In 1950, with the Tribune’s ill-timed report fresh in recent memory, the Congress added Section 798 to the Espionage Act of 1917: i.e., “Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits...or publishes ...any classified information...concerning the communications intelligence activities of the United States...shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.” FDR was plenty mad at the Tribune, and his wartime clout was such that he probably could have prosecuted Robert McCormick. George W. Bush’s public remarks show he is steamed at the Times, too, but I doubt if he could prosecute publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. under the Espionage Act. Pundits say Mr. Bush lacks the political courage, but I believe he simply realizes he can’t win this fight because even the courts are against him on the war. A recent Supreme Court decision shows how radically different today’s political and legal environment is from the one that aided FDR during World War II. On June 29, the High Court struck down Mr. Bush’s Executive order of November 13, 2001, which had established military tribunals to try non-uniformed combatants in the current war – ruling 5-3 that Mr. Bush lacked legal authority to do this. The Court said the tribunals answered no military necessity and also violated the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Bush had ordered the tribunals so terrorist cases would not drag through the civilian courts in long, costly proceedings which might disclose classified material in the discovery process afforded to criminal defendants. (Trial proceedings would not have been public.) In disputing Mr. Bush’s authority in this way, the Court ignored its own 1942 ruling in Ex parte Quirin (317 U. S. 1), which upheld U. S. military tribunal jurisdiction for the trials of several German saboteurs apprehended in the USA. (Quirin has been cited as precedent for execution of any non-legitimate combatant against the United States.) In part, the decision states: “…the law of war draws a distinction between the armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.” (Emphasis added) As a result of this decision, eight German saboteurs caught out of uniform within the borders of the United States were secretly tried and sentenced to death by military tribunals. President Roosevelt commuted the sentences of two, but the other six were executed in the electric chair in August 1942. The Court gave Mr. Roosevelt the tools he needed to deal decisively with such illegal combatants, but the 2006 Court took them away from Mr. Bush. He cannot try terrorists in a way that preserves the country’s security. Various objections can be raised about the recent ruling. One is that the Court has now done the very thing it claims is most abhorrent to it: changing one of its own rulings. Haven’t we been hearing, ad nauseum, how “disruptive” it would be to reverse a long-standing ruling (e.g., Roe v. Wade)? My previous observation holds true: the Court never reverses a ruling except when it thinks it needs to. (Do you feel safer because the Court has protected the “right” of terrorist-saboteurs to have an American civil trial with all the trimmings?) A more substantive objection centers on the Court’s ruling that the military tribunals answered no military necessity and contravened the Geneva Convention. Five justices of the Supreme Court have thus substituted their judgment for the Commander-in-Chief’s on fighting a war. They certainly have no Constitutional authority to do so. The president commands the nation’s military forces. In that capacity he can issue directives he deems necessary. The Supreme Court has no authority to strike them down except when it finds one contrary to the Constitution. You don’t have to be a lawyer to see that “we don’t see a need for this” is not an objection that passes Constitutional muster. Furthermore, the Geneva Convention’s provisions are entirely harmonious with the Supreme Court’s 1942 Quirin ruling on illegal combatants. If FDR could establish military tribunals to try spies and saboteurs, certainly Mr. Bush should be able to. The Supreme Court has essentially undertaken a unilateral revision of the Geneva Convention’s Rules of War. The niggling suspicion is that most of the foregoing is simply political. Could Mr. Bush’s troubles with an adversarial media and even an adversarial Supreme Court derive mainly from the fact that he is not FDR and is not a Democrat? Would the New York Times really give a President Bill (or Hillary) Clinton this much grief about finding and zapping Islamic terrorists who want to fry New York (including the Times building)? Would the Supreme Court micro-manage a Democratic-run war effort? Is a Republican president automatically regarded as suspect on civil liberties issues by our most powerful institutions? These questions are probably unanswerable. But if the shoe fits, I say “wear it”. Every citizen should be concerned if the president is impeded in his efforts to protect the country and defeat its enemies simply because he is of the “wrong” political stripe. And preferring defeat for the sake of partisan gain is intolerable. The stink emanating from it smells like treason. Can we win a war this way? On the basis of history, I should have to say it does not look good. Some pretty good countries – including Germany, France (no laughing: they kicked butt under Napoleon), Japan, Russia, Austria, and England – have lost wars they might have won. We whipped some of them because we had greater resources and war-production capacity, but mostly because our will to persevere was greater. War is a hard business. In its modern manifestation, the commitment of a whole nation is required to achieve victory. Our Civil War – often called the first “modern war” – was like that. It was “total war”, 19th century style. It ended when only one side was left standing. Young “journalists” who were in diapers when Saigon fell to the forces of Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh like to say Vietnam was the only war America ever lost. In a sense that’s true, but we didn’t lose the war in the field. We administered a serious military licking to both the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regular army. But then we quit the field. And when the North Viets broke the treaty they had signed, we lacked the fortitude to return and kick them back to where they came from. We lost the war at home because we lost the will to win. Myriad excuses can be contrived to explain why this happened, but the plain fact is that Vietnam exposed a flaw in the national character. That flaw involves both an inability to recognize danger and an unwillingness to sacrifice for the nation when the danger is nigh. For a few delirious weeks after 9/11/2001 I thought the flaw was gone, but I was wrong. It’s still there. I am all but convinced that if terrorists should destroy an entire American city, we would be angry for a while. But soon political factions would arise denouncing war and urging Americans to “move on”. Others would find reasons to blame America for being attacked. I’m not sure we could stay mad enough to fight to victory even if half the country was destroyed. In his speech to the Congress on December 8, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke these memorable words: “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. “There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. “With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding [sic] determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.” Righteous might…grave danger…confidence…determination…inevitable triumph, so help us God! May God grant us this kind of moral clarity and will again. Without it, we’re toast. ******* (1) “Have We Forgotten How to Win a War?” ( http://www.ahherald.com/atlarge/2005/051201_win_war.htm ) (2) The complete Lichtblau/Risen article ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22cnd-intel.html?ex=1151985600&en=52077e2a16453ac1&ei=5070 )
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