“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America…The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States."  -- the Constitution of the United States

It seems that at least six retired military generals have not read the Constitution of the United States.  These are the generals, four Army and two Marine, who have recently spoken out against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

Their complaints include Rumsfeld is brusque and arrogant; Rumsfeld doesn’t listen to the military, they say; and, Rumsfeld has made many mistakes in prosecuting the Iraq war and its aftermath.

What they don’t say is that they had more say than they should have.  A French politician, Clemenceu, once stated that “War was too serious to be left to generals.”  That statement is mostly true.

Another statement that is true is that generals and all officers have a duty to not obey illegal orders or to resign their commissions when they disagree with the policies that they are ordered to implement. I did not say retire, I said resign.

If these generals had a problem with how the Iraq war was conducted, why didn’t they resign their commissions and speak out at the time?  No, they retire then come forth to criticize three-year old events. They do so while collecting their thousands of dollars-a-month pension checks. 

All but one of these generals never spoke up about what they now call problems.  Nor have any of these men even acknowledged that the President is the Commander-in-Chief, nor that the military boss is his Secretary of Defense as defined by law, a law crafted carefully within the Constitution.  The President is the Boss and his right hand man is his Secretary of Defense.  When a lesser officer in the government, or in the Army or Navy disagrees with either of these two, he is free to leave and should and must leave.

More important, as war is too serious to leave to generals, they must not be allowed to run the show; they must only advise and implement their orders, not to make them up.

Example:  General Douglas MacArthur conceived a military dash to the Chinese border during the Korean War when the invading North Korean Communist Army collapsed after it initial successes in 1950 invasion of South Korea.

Washington ordered him to stay away from the Chinese border because it feared the Chinese Army would intervene on the side of the North Korean Army.  MacArthur claimed that the Chinese would never enter the war.  He sent his troops to the border. His staff ordered the Marines to leave the coast and enter the interior of North Korea.  They

were sent to the Chosen Reservoir. Washington was not pleased. Nonetheless, President Truman left the generals alone. His popularity was falling drastically to the lowest levels in history. The more popular generals had their way.

The Chinese did enter the war and thousands of Americans died needlessly because the Generals thought they knew best.

J. Robert Moskin writes in THE U.S.MARINE CORPS STORY “He (MacArthur) reported to Washington that he had gone on the defensive against ‘overwhelming force.’ He said, ‘We face an entirely new war.’ He gambled and lost.”

Moskin quotes Newsweek magazine: “America’s worst military licking since Pearl Harbor,” and Time magazine—“the worst defeat the United States ever suffered.” To those comments, MacArthur responded that these assessments were “the emotional reaction of irresponsible writers.” e later wrote:  “

He later wrote that Chosen Reservoir fight and retreat was “the most successful and satisfying I have ever commanded.”

Moskin sums up the Chosen Reservoir fight and retreat this way: “The 1^st Marine Division alone from November 30 until December 11 (1950) had 2,103 casualties—342 dead, 78 missing and 1,683 wounded.  And the United Nations forces had been ignominiously thrown out of North Korea.”

So much for generals knowing best.

Where should we, the American citizenry, come down on this controversy?  Simply put, on the side of the Constitution of the United States and on the side of history.

Lincoln had great difficulty in finding a general who would even fight much less win the Civil War.  Army General Billy Mitchell was court-martialed and convicted by generals because he spoke the truth about their ignorance that was dangerous and injuring the United States. Franklin Roosevelt had to fire more than one general because they flopped in command (Anzio comes to mind).  Truman fired MacArthur because despite the worst American defeat in history, General MacArthur kept yapping in public about his complaints about Washington policy.

Now, six generals of over 7,000 flag officers, active and retired generals and admirals, call the Secretary of Defense arrogant and brusque and that he shows a lack of respect towards them, the “experts” on war. 

I’m with Clemenceu; given history, I stand by the Secretary of Defense.  He’s fighting today’s war, not the last one. If the generals don’t like that, they can leave.  There are plenty more where they came from.  More importantly, they aren’t civilians. In the United States, it is the civilian who controls our military.

The Constitution is clear -- the chain of command goes down, not up.

Contreras’s newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA published by Floricanto Press is available and reviewed at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com