Wrong - The National Review

Wrong - The National Review is calling for the ouster of General Boykin.

They're wrong:

During the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur wanted to attack Manchuria, and he let that be known to everyone who would listen. That was not U.S. policy, however, and President Truman promptly sacked the great man.

True enough, and...well, more later.

During the Cold War — in fact often pretty hot — NATO general Edwin Walker was instructing his troops in the theorems of the John Birch Society. That the U.S. government was 60 percent under Communist control was not the view of the Kennedy administration, and Walker was gone.

Again true, and again...well, we'll get back to that.

Flash forward to today. A three-star general, William "Jerry" Boykin, has been lecturing, in public and in uniform, to the effect that we are in a war with Islam, than whose god his God is bigger, that this is a war against Satan, of whom he has a photograph in the sky above Mogadishu.

Again, true. And again...well, again, we'll get to it.

President Bush has made it national policy that we are not in a war with global Islam. Furthermore, it is hardly good for the morale of troops to understand that their commander is a wacko who goes around photographing Satan zooming overhead. General Boykin is manifestly insubordinate, and should be sacked. Yesterday.

The comparisons to MacArthur and Walker are wrong. Boykin is not advocating any change in the government's strategic or operational policies; in fact, he is a key instrument of them.

And he is not directly instructing his troops in any "wacko" ideologies, as did Walker. Boykin's theology is not part of his troops' training.

As to the "wacko" claim - was Patton a wacko? After all, he said:

• •Perpetual peace is a futile dream. Think Patton would have lasted long under Bill Clinton?
• As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest mother fucker in the valley!- NOW might have had trouble with that.
• It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospitals on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards, and they bring discredit to the Army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle, while they, themselves, use the hospitals as a means of escape. - Can you imagine an officer saying such a thing today? Yes, of course Patton's war career was shunted aside over this incident - but not permanently.
• One can only conclude that where the Eighth Army is in trouble we are to expend our lives gladly; but when the Eighth is going well, we are to halt so as not to take any glory. It is an inspiring method of making war and shows rare qualities of leadership, and Ike falls for it! Oh, for a Pershing! - Insubordinate? Beyond doubt! And yet - he was right.

But here's the most germane Patton quote of all:

•There's a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.

Taken in context, Boykin said nothing that fits any definition of "insubordination". For the President or Rumsfeld to sack one of the world's leading practitioners of his art of intelligence and special operations because of the media's trumping up of bogus chargers of crusaderism would be to violate Patton's dictum, putting the dreaded "chilling effect" on officers who lead, as Patton led, by creating a larger-than-life example of the warrior ethic, especially the Christian Warrior ethic.

Don't do it.

UPDATE: Apparently the Boykin editorial was a mistake - fallout from a debate among the National Review's editorial staff. It made it into print due to a production error.

Which doesn't change my opinion about the notion of sacking Boykin one bit, whether broached from the left or the right.

Posted by Mitch at October 24, 2003 01:08 PM