Saving face is so important to
some people, they will do anything to have it – including the betting or
mortgaging of the heirloom. You can see an example of this in the column that
Daniel Henninger wrote under the title: “G.I. Joe in Lilliput” and the
subtitle: “The U.S. military
is a giant Gulliver tied down by Washington
lawyers.” It was published on September 18, 2014 in the Wall Street Journal.
Henninger's idea is that America is a military giant but that it is not
allowed to win wars by the Washington
lawyers who tie it down in the same way that the little people of Lilliput tied
down the giant named Gulliver. Stated simply, his point is this: “The U.S. military
has become a giant Gulliver wrapped in a Lilliput of lawyers.” His
recommendation is this: “No serious member of Congress should be a party to
this toxic legacy.”
To elaborate on his point of view,
he gives numerous examples of official behavior he finds objectionable. For
example, when General Dempsey said that if the situation reaches the point
where he believes American advisers should accompany Iraqi troops, he will make
such recommendation. What irritates Henninger is that the White House responded
by saying those remarks were hypothetical. And so Henninger goes on to describe
the give and take as that of lawyers responding to a soldier.
Another example; one in which
Henninger mocks the lawyers poking their noses in military affairs is the one
having to do with a White House proposal, amended by Republican Buck McKeon to
vet the Syrian rebels who will be “swarming the Syrian war zone” to participate
in the war effort. The author sarcastically asks: “Will FBI agents interview
friends and business associates” before training and arming the rebels?
Another angle that Henninger
tackles is that which is caused by the complexities of modern warfare. One such
complexity has to do with the targeting of terrorists using unmanned drones.
Another is the use of electronic surveillance to do metadata sweeps. A third
has to do with the CIA's interrogation techniques when enemy combatants are
captured. The writer does not shy away from calling a mudslide the
controversies that erupt in the news when those national security matters are
discussed.
What he seems to dislike also is
the summary fashion with which some of these controversies are settled. He
mentions, for example, that the day the murder of Sotloff was announced, Eric
Holder wrote Patrick Leahy informing him that he supports the bill to restrict
the NSA's ability to collect telephone data. He also mentions the fact that
Obama has bound the executive branch by saying that before being authorized,
drone attacks must establish near certainty of not harming civilians.
Another development that seems to
irritate Henninger is what he views as being the courts rewriting the rules of
war. He calls this “a major post-Vietnam phenomenon.” He gives as example the
Supreme Court's 2006 Hamdan decision on trials before military commissions, and
the 2008 Boumedienne decision on the habeas corpus rights of captured
combatants whom he calls terrorists.
Having drawn up this list of
objections, Henninger deplores the fact that “each adds another thicket of
legal consideration before, or even during military action.” He reveals that
there are 10,000 lawyers in the Department of Defense in addition to those at
Justice and those at the White House. He also mentions the ongoing debate in
the legal blogs trying to settle whether or not it is correct to call ISIS “our
enemy” which brings up the War Power Resolution of 1973 that places a 60-day
limit on military action. And there is the question of what the Pentagon will do
with captured combatants.
He ends the article by observing
that the Vietnam
engagement is what caused the hyper-legalization of war. He says the intent was
to diminish the U.S. 's
ability to act its superpower status, and that the movement will again mobilize
to tie down the effort to defeat ISIS .