Six Against the Secretary

The nature of civil-military relations in the United States is characterized by tensions resulting from a variety of competing principles including autonomy and subordination, self-interest and communalism, and loyalty and freedom. These tensions sometimes manifest themselves in conflict between institutions and individuals, but the disputes rarely capture the attention of the American public. Last year one such conflict garnered widespread media coverage. Beginning in the spring, six retired general officers spoke out in very quick succession and in very public ways against the performance and policies of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. This paper examines the conduct of these officers and reluctantly concludes that, despite their contribution to the public discourse on the Iraq war, this group eroded the nation’s civil-military relations. More broadly, this paper seeks to define the circumstances in which and methods by which it is proper for retired generals to openly oppose elected and appointed civilian leaders; it finds the bounds of legality regarding their speech to be highly permissive but the bounds of propriety to be rather limited.

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