So Who's Running This War?

Afghanistan war critic Andrew J. Bacevich:

The leaking of the McChrystal [war] Plan [in September 2009] constituted a direct assault on civilian control [of the military].

Strong words. And that leak, presumably from a high-ranking Pentagon source, was to-- Anyone? Anyone? --him of the peerless Pentagon sources, Nixon hunter Bob Woodward, who figures in theories that Watergate was actually a proto-neocon coup against a Soviet-appeasing, Chicom-loving, Vietnam peace-seeking president.

I misread it at the time, thinking the leak was engineered by a White House that wanted to use McChrystal's seeming pessimism as an excuse to leave Afghanistan. In retrospect, Bacevich is obviously right. The brass were goading, and dissing, President Obama. (They did Richard Nixon even worse: They spied on him.)

So who's running this war, anyway?

"Seven Days In May"? No Way. Transparency!

When is it okay with a liberal-leaning scholar and former White House official that the hawks at the Pentagon were spying on and stealing documents from aides to a President who was trying to end a war and improve relations with Beijing and Moscow? When the scholar is Roger Morris and the erred-against President was Richard Nixon:

[P]olicy power grew so concentrated in a secretive White House that the Joint Chiefs of Staff began their own espionage program against [Henry] Kissinger, the so-called admirals’ spy ring of 1971.

Reaganites Discover Nixon's Virtues

Kim Holmes at the Heritage Foundation:

Once upon a time, American liberals loved to hate foreign-policy realists. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger - the uber-realists of their day - were the betes noires of the left. In the liberal view, stability and Realpolitik were the source of everything wrong with U.S. foreign policy.

No more. In an ideological shift that should make Mr. Nixon turn over in his grave, liberal internationalism is making peace with its erstwhile intellectual enemy, the tradition of realism in U.S. foreign policy. Liberals and realists are joining hands to forge a new vision of American leadership that President Obama may be tempted to embrace.

Why would Holmes think RN would be upset by this development? After all, it was he who went to China, dramatically improved relations with the Soviet Union, ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and balanced our unstinting support for Israel with a new acceptance of the legitimate interests of its neighbors. If RN were rolling over in his grave because President Obama is being tempted to make friendly gestures toward our current antagonists such as Iran, it would presumably be because Holmes and the Heritage Foundation feel that tough old 37 would think 44 was too soft. That's ironic, since at the time, the Goldwater/Reaganites who would soon found Heritage -- as well as their own tactical partners, the nascent neocons -- all feared that it was the vigilantly anti-communist Nixon who had gone soft. Pentagon hawks were so worried that they were actually spying on him.

Holmes sees a coalition forming between liberals (who would've been interventionists in the Kennedy era but now think America's world-changing days are behind her) and Brent Scowcroft-style realists intent on making sure the U.S. doesn't overextend itself on moralistic or otherwise misguided adventures such as Iraq.

Holmes is hopeful that Obama will find a Nixonian middle way:

He seems to sense a need to impose some limits on the inherent pessimism of the new liberal-realist fusion. A vision of America riding off into the sunset of geopolitical decline does not square with his message of hope and change. Americans may not want the U.S. to be the world's policeman, but they also still believe their country has a transformative role to play in the world.

Of course that was precisely Richard Nixon's view and legacy. It is good that the heirs of his often mistrustful conservative friends have come to appreciate it.

Whose Violations Of The Constitution?

Reviewing a posthumous book by Peter Rodman -- Kissinger aide, Nixon Center scholar, and Pentagon official under George W. Bush -- former Sen. Gary Hart takes issue with a surprising turn that Rodman took:

Rodman succumbs to the fantasy that the much-maligned permanent government, frustrated at being systematically marginalized by the Nixon-Kissinger duo, colluded to bring down the Nixon presidency. Other presidents may have been "rogues and miscreants," but Rodman finds "in­triguing" the theory that "the demise of Nixon was due to no less than the revolt of the bureaucracy whose power he had striven so assiduously to break in every sphere."

This kind of nonsense seriously under­mines an otherwise worthwhile and instructive book and, by implication, excuses many troublesome abuses in the current administration. It is one thing to insist on presidential authority in foreign policy. It is quite another to casually accept violations of the Constitution in executing that policy.

Fantasy and nonsense? Pretty harsh language, senator. Here's what we know. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Thomas Moorer, who was worried about Richard Nixon's foreign policy initiatives toward China and the Soviet Union, received and poured over documents stolen from the White House by a Navy yeoman. At the FBI, the powerful federal police agency, several officials and agents, worried because President Nixon had appointed an acting director from outside the agency, responded by illegally giving government secrets to reporters in order to undermine an elected President. Thanks to a suggestion from a book editor to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, these Nixon-hunting FBI officials were gathered together under the name of a pornographic movie. But it was more than lawbreaker W. Mark Felt, which means it was, technically, an FBI conspiracy to damage or destroy the President in order to protect the agency's prerogatives and perhaps keep its own embarrassing secrets under wraps.

Secret, extra-constitutional moves against Mr. Nixon by the military and FBI are certainly not the whole story of Watergate, but they're a part of it that has been neglected so far. Too bad Gary Hart wants to cover it up with name-calling.

Sometimes's A Courier's Just A Courier?

Bob Woodward's secret source, W. Mark Felt, who was worried that President Nixon wanted to rein in the FBI, helped destroy him by illegally leaking government secrets. As a naval officer, Woodward met Felt in the office of Admiral Thomas Moorer. Moorer and other Pentagon hawks illegally spied on the same President and his aides as they tried to end the Vietnam war and improve relations with the Soviet Union and China.

You can easily write all that and never even use the word "Watergate." Go figure.

Hey, Ron: How About "Moorer/Nixon"?

During 1969-73, before he was consumed by Watergate, Richard Nixon redrew the geopolitical map, repositioning the United States in relationship to the Soviet Union and China and helping usher in the era of globalism. His administration also conducted secret talks with the North Vietnamese in the hope of bringing U.S. involvement in Indochina to an honorable end.

These initiatives and others made Pentagon hawks so nervous that they spied on the President and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Papers illegally stolen from the White House over a 13-month period by a Navy yeoman were passed up the line to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Thomas Moorer (pictured here), who eventually admitted he'd read them without inquiring too aggressively where they'd come from. The thefts were uncovered by the famed White House Plumbers, figures of fun for most historians, little-sung heroes in this case.

New details about the Radford affair, which struck at the heart of the concept of civilian authority over the military, are revealed in an article by Fox News's James Rosen, author of a remarkable new biography of John Mitchell whose new insights about Watergate and John Dean, though startling, didn't merit a review in the New York Times.

Perhaps for some of the same reasons, Radford never got as much as attention as Watergate. Those who like to say that Mr. Nixon was undermining the Constitution have never seemed exercised about the tunnel the brass were busy digging under the White House. As "Frost/Nixon" shows, Nixon as sinner is potentially big box office. When he was sinned against? Rarely green lighted.

One reason may be that for the sake of the military's credibility, the President chose not to make more of the affair. According to Rosen, here's how he put it on one of the tapes:

"Admiral Moorer," Nixon told an aide in May 1973, "I could have screwed him on that and been a big hero, you know. I could have screwed the whole Pentagon about that damn thing ... Why didn't I do it? Because I thought more of the services."