Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va) (WDCpix)
Rockefeller's Apology Doesn't Excuse Washington Culture
No News Organization Has Corrected the Senator's Military Inaccuracies
By Gregg Easterbrook
04/10/2008
| 9 Comments
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) just apologized for telling the Charlestown Gazette, “John McCain was a fighter pilot who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people.”
Rockefeller is an admirable man who served in the Peace Corps, then settled in West Virginia rather than in an apartment overlooking Central Park because he wanted to use his name and wealth to help that state, long plagued by poverty. So Rockefeller can have a pass for this dopey comment. But his statement regarding McCain reveals many things about Washington culture -- all of them negative.
First, Rockefeller's words betrayed the lack of knowledge of military affairs so common in Washington – including among many Iraq hawks of the George W. Bush administration. To my knowledge no news organization has corrected the factual content of Rockefeller's statement, which betrays the near-total lack of military knowledge in the current public debate.
McCain was taken prisoner, ending his aviation career, in 1967; the first laser-guided bomb was used in 1972, at Thanh Hao Bridge. Even had laser-guided munitions existed when McCain was flying, he could not have dropped one "from 35,000 feet" -- until recently, laser-guided smart bombs had to be released at low altitude, by an aircraft exposed to ground fire. From the advent of laser-guided munitions until recently, far from being "long gone" when the blast occurred, the pilot using such a weapon had to see his target and keep a laser designator trained on the aim point through the missile's flight.
Second, Rockefeller's statement incorporates the fallacy, often heard on the left, that a flight crew who deliver bombs is not at risk and sits in antiseptic comfort pushing buttons without contemplating the consequences. There are callous, or even evil, U.S. soldiers – My Lai was only one of many crimes committed by U.S. armed forces. But in the main, U.S. armed forces show more concern with not harming the innocent than has any military organization in history. I've interviewed military pilots, and found them intensely concerned with the moral ramifications of what they do. Maybe aboard U.S. bombers over Vietnam there were some yahoos who laughed while pressing buttons. But my guess is that most worried every day about the disposition of their souls. And having surface-to-air missiles fired at you is no antiseptic experience: after all, McCain became a captive because he was shot down.
Third, McCain and his fellow pilots were above North Vietnam because Congress sent them there. They did not make up the mission themselves. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress has ultimate authority for starting and stopping wars: Congress never declared war on North Vietnam, but could have stopped the fighting at any time by denying funding.
Rockefeller wasn't a member of the Senate during the Vietnam years. But today, U.S. forces are in Iraq because Congress sent them there, and Rockefeller is among those who voted in favor of the joint resolution authorizing the invasion. (Here is the roster of all those who voted nay.) For a member of Congress to vote to send U.S. bombers to attack another nation, then sneer at the honor of those who fly military planes, is highfalutin hypocrisy. The Congress bears ultimate responsibility for the actions of our men and women under arms.
Here is the October 2002 joint congressional resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Give it a read in light of what is now known. Needless to say, the resolution cites banned weapons as a justification for war; we can stipulate this was a reasonable belief at the time. Other justifications for war cited include that "members of Al Qaeda… are known to be in Iraq." Whether this was true then or not, members of Al Qaeda are known to be in Britain; is the presence in a country of individual criminals a justification for invasion?
The resolution contains such strange complaints as that Baghdad "fail[ed] to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait" and actually says there is risk Iraq will "launch a surprise attack against the United States." Iraq had no navy, long-range aircraft or intercontinental missiles; it would have been physically impossible for Iraq to attack America. In light of subsequent events and knowledge, the resolution, which passed 77-23 in the Senate and 296-133 in the House, seems close to demented. Look at Section 3, clause A. This is the key component of the resolution, authorizing war in Iraq for two reasons. To:
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
Reason (2) has long since been satisfied.
Is there even one person who believes Iraq now poses a "continuing threat" to the national security of the United States? The original war justifications as voted by Congress have expired. Yet the war drags on and Congress takes no action beyond voting more money. Though, senators feel free to insult the pilots who risk their lives by flying the missions Congress requires.
Gregg Easterbrook www.greggeasterbrook.com is a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic, a fellow of the Brookings Institution, a columnist for ESPN.com and author, most recently, of "The Progress Paradox."
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© 2007 The Washington Independent
Comments:
Posted 04/10/2008 08:10pm with
Brookings Institute: Home of pro-war pro-occupation pundits O’Hanlon and Pollack. Perhaps you could ask Pollack how he managed to get so many lies and inaccuracies into his book, the PNAC bible on Iraq – what was it called again? The Gathering Fog? Ah, here it is: “The Threatening Storm.” It was the subject of a glowing New York Times book review by Jack Matlock Jr.:
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“Containment, he argues, is eroding rapidly, has not eliminated Iraq’s nuclear weapons program or weakened Saddam Hussein’s grip on the country, and cannot be sustained much longer. . . .
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. . .As I was reading Pollack’s dismissal of deterrence as a viable strategy, I could not help reflecting that in 1947 a stronger case than his could have been made that the least risky course for dealing with Stalin following World War II would have been to invade the Soviet Union and depose the tyrant before he could acquire nuclear weapons.”
Not much more to say about that. So much for the Brookings Institute – another spin doctor tank spewing filth across the media spectrum. Independent? Really.
If you want to write an article about Rockefeller, you might instead want to focus on the role he played in burying the investigation into the false WMD claims – in his role as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – although Pat Roberts® did play the lead role during most of the Bush years on that.
Posted 04/10/2008 10:46pm with
Rockefeller’s comments were stupid and offensive.
However, for one who nitpicks at the accuracy of others’ pronouncements and calls loudly for correction of errors, Mr. Easterbrook, you really ought to step up the quality of your own fact checking.
Per Wikipedia and http://www.nd.edu/~techrev/Archive/Spring2002/a9.html
the US dropped laser-guided bombs in Vietnam beginning in 1968, not 1972.
Per Wikipedia McCain’s aviation career continued in the 1970s.
McCain is most famous for having been shot down over Hanoi – I find it a stretch to imagine Rockefeller’s comments as intended to support a fallacy that aviators are not at risk. To my mind the obvious point was not having close contact with the people you kill (and estimates of civilian casualties in the Vietnam war are around 2 million) rather than antiseptic safety.
Surely McCain killed many civilians in his bombing missions. He was a member of the military doing the job his country asked of him. Has he expressed contrition or intense concern about the disposition of his soul? This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. I don’t know the answer, but that answer has bearing on the substance of Rockefeller’s accusation, as crude and offensive as it may be. I would have been more impressed with your counterargument had you delved into that.
Finally, you say that “in the main, U.S. armed forces show more concern with not harming the innocent than has any military organization in history.” I don’t have the expertise to evaluate this grandiose claim, but I will note that recent news accounts suggest that this is not the view of our coalition partners in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Posted 04/11/2008 05:13pm with
“we can stipulate this was a reasonable belief at the time.”
Umm, sorry, no “we” can’t. There was never any credible evidence to support any of the claims made in support of invading Iraq. Fuzzy photos of water trucks, intentionally mistranslated phone conversations (of whom?), made from whole cloth allegations of procurement of uranium, and intentionally conflating Iraq and al Qaeda are not supportive of “reasonable beliefs.” Hindsight justifications for support of war crimes and aggressive war seem much more like backing away from culpability. You have to know that, or you are as intellectually dishonest as the neocons and Bush.
Posted 04/12/2008 10:36am with
”. . . in the main, U.S. armed forces show more concern with not harming the innocent than has any military organization in history.” A rat couldn’t trip over that bar.
Posted 04/13/2008 01:40pm with
Mr. Easterbrook should know about Washington culture as this type of condescending “gotcha” on military terminology or accuracy is always one that pro-war defense mavens like to use. I was regular Navy for over 22 years and there is nothing more disgusting than Washington-based military “experts” from Brookings or AEI or the Council on Foreign Relations—all military wannabes without the cajones to actually serve—defending their turf, which is what this is. Rockefeller’s point that air power—dropping bombs from the air—somewhat removes the pilot from the humanity being bombed is a long-standing military debate even within the military community and one that can be contentious and heated. With the increasing use of technology which removes the warfighter from the battle and insulates him or her from the consequences of battle it is a serious ethical question. I would say that Mr. Rockefeller, having earned his bona fides on the ground through his work with Sargent Shriver in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, is probably on solid ground—more so than Mr. Easterbrook—in posing this ethical question given that Mr. McCain hasn’t seen a war or conflict he hasn’t liked. I have found that there is a species of Navy pilot that is vain and arrogant to the point of stupidity. Mr. McCain seems to fall into this category, regardless of the fact that he was shot down and a POW—something that he survived as any of us would try to do. Killing and surviving are elemental impulses borne of our instinct as a species and it can have unfortunate and tragic consequences. To actually reflect on that instinct and critique it, to me, takes more courage. Yes, it would have been nice had Mr. Rockefeller gotten the laser-guided part of the comment right but his point is as old as the debate of over Lidell-Hart’s work on air power and the toll taken on the civilian populace by its application.
Posted 04/14/2008 11:36pm with
The Washington Independent has not corrected Gregg Easterbrook’s military inacuracies!
Posted 05/01/2008 07:09am with
I suspect that a lot of the millions of tons we dropped on SE Asia during the Vietnam War weren’t done in the most caring manner.
Posted 05/01/2008 07:11am with
To follow-up on Wolfboy’s first comment, both Karzai and Maliki have complained that U.S. air power has indiscriminately killed civilians.
Posted 08/19/2008 12:15pm with
Reason 2 has long been satisfied…............
The UN quickly breaks down into World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). Though through military force instead of
Wall Street stealth, WB/IMF has gahered Iraq’s independence (oil),
court houses and economy just like they did with the US 75 years ago
with public laws 89-719 and 94-564.
Hmm!