By Dave Lindorff

If an article by Gareth Porter in run by InterPress
is correct that CentCom Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq
Commander Gen. Ray Odierno, backed by a group of lower-ranking
generals, are planning to mount a public campaign to try and undermine
President Obama’s plan for a withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months, Obama
needs to act fast and nip this dangerous act of insubordination in the
bud.

It was a similar act of insubordination on the part of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff that effectively destroyed the Clinton administration
almost from day one. Recall that one of President Clinton’s first acts
following his inauguration was to make good on a campaign promise to
end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military. His
initial order was to simply end the ban on homosexuality in the
military. But the Joint Chiefs publicly rebelled, and Clinton caved,
coming up with the ridiculous and unworkable “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
policy, under which gays and lesbians could serve in the military, but
had to hide their sexual orientation or face ouster.

When Clinton, as commander in chief of the armed forces, allowed
his generals to defy his orders, and, instead of sacking them all for
insubordination and stripping off their stars, left them in their
offices and surrendered to their objections, he didn’t just cave in to
the military. He also alerted the Republican opposition that he was a
political pushover.

Obama, on a much more serious issue—the conduct of and termination
of a war—is now apparently being more or less openly defied by his top
generals, who after all get their glory and power by having troops in
battle, and who are also worried that a collapse of the puppet regime
in Iraq could leave them looking like losers. They are thus opposing a
pullout from Iraq (and a hardly precipitous one at that!) out of
self-interest and self-preservation.

If Commander in Chief Obama allows this insubordination and
political opposition to exist among his senior generals, his presidency
is toast. He will be a prisoner to a militarist policy in Iraq and
Afghanistan that will drag down his presidency in the same way that
Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was destroyed by the generals running the
Vietnam War. Furthermore, just as Republicans in Congress saw Clinton’s
weakness in his dealings with the Joint Chiefs and began dogging his
every move, they, and Obama’s opponents among the Blue Dog Democrats in
Congress, will see weakness and move against him.

There is only one answer to this challenge to presidential
authority: President Obama must sack both Petraeus and Odierno, and any
other general who tries—openly or behind the scenes--to move
politically against his military strategy and orders. The model for
this action is President Harry Truman—widely viewed, whatever his
faults, as a forceful leader—who fired the popular Gen. Douglas
McArthur when McArthur went behind his back to Republicans in Congress
to push for a wider war in Korea.

This is not just a matter of salvaging an Obama presidency. It is
also a profound constitutional issue. There is no greater threat to
democratic freedom than a military that refuses to accept, or that
actively works to undermine civilian authority. Generals and admirals
certainly have a right to object to the decisions made by their
commander in chief, but they cannot act in defiance or those decisions
while in uniform. Admiral William Fallon took the right course of
action. Opposed to Bush/Cheney administration plans to attack Iran, he
chose to resign his post as CentCom Commander and to resign from the
military. If Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Odierno oppose Obama’s plan for a
pullout from Iraq, they should do the same and then speak out if they
wish.

For the past eight years, the biggest threat to American democracy
was that a president and vice president attempted to convert the office
of president into a military dictatorship, with the position of
commander in chief subsuming and replacing the position of president.
Now the danger is that the nation’s top generals are trying to
eliminate or emasculate the president’s role as commander in chief,
making the generals the leaders of the nation’s military. Both dangers
are equally threatening to constitutional government.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now
available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net