GUEST EDITORIALS

We are again neck-deep in 'fog of war'

Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley
Guest Opinion

Younger Americans will probably be surprised to learn a ballad about a military maneuver, the fateful attempted crossing of a river could resonate so powerfully that TV officials had it censored when Pete Seeger sang it on the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" in 1968. However the tale of a hubristic captain dismissing his sergeant’s concerns as “nervous Nelly” then tragically ignoring the dangerous reality of knee-deep water turning waist deep and finally neck-deep, “but the big fool said to push on,” served as an effective metaphor in confronting the deepening insanity of the unwinnable war in Vietnam and its needless slaughter of millions.

Paratroopers of the U.S. 2nd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade hold their automatic weapons above water as they cross a river in the rain during a search for Viet Cong positions in the jungle area of Ben Cat, South Vietnam, Sept. 25, 1965.

Although the song lyrics left it to the listener to decide the moral of the story, eventually many of the architects of the Vietnam War, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, admitted to foolish and tragic mistakes, attributing them to the “fog of war.”

Fast forward nearly 40 years and there's really no way to sugarcoat how neck-deep we again find ourselves. After launching post 9/11 wars on Afghanistan and Iraq 14 years ago, in an overarching, seemingly endless “war on terrorism” engulfing the Mideast, we have only succeeded in spreading destruction, chaos, world-wide hatred and terrorism — up 6,500 percent since 9/11, creating one failed state after another.

“We meant well” may assuage those inside the new fog of war. Yet a massive world opinion poll conducted by Win/Gallup international sees the United States as the country posing the greatest threat to world peace, beating out all challengers by a wide margin.

Documents revealing massive NSA spying are only the most recent evidence of how our Constitution has been repeatedly decimated by “emergency” and “law of war” exceptions that have swallowed the rule of law.

Another blowback from endless war is contained in new Department of Defense guidelines which allow commanders to arrest and punish American journalists as “unprivileged belligerents” if commanders think they are undermining war efforts.

In a similar vein, the National Security Law Journal published a long, scary article this spring by a military law professor claiming that 40 some other American professors and academics should be targeted as a treasonous “5th Column.” Although the hysterics permeating “Treason of Professors” were eventually repudiated by the NSLJ, the article was undoubtedly reflective of a wider, dangerous mindset among U.S. military jurists, buttressed as it is by the DOD Manual and already made possible by the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act.

So maybe it is time to point to the moral? But how, after sinking so deep, can we wade back to higher moral ground?

Debate based on factual reality and sensible pragmatism instead of imperialist idealism. We agree with the national commentary that has begun warning about America’s reckless "Foreign Policy By Bumper Sticker" (Aug. 20, in The National Interest and Aug. 25 “The Danger of ‘Foreign Policy by Bumper Sticker'” in the Washington Post) characterized by its “wide gap between the complex challenges America confronts in the world arena today and our wholly inadequate conversation about international affairs. With the outcome of the 2016 election potentially turning on issues of American stewardship of global affairs, this gap has to be understood and addressed with both a sense of urgency and responsibility.”

“The media, meanwhile, lacks the interest and the expertise (particularly in the digital space) to present vital issues to the American people. At the same time, despite a number of national-security setbacks — including in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya — voters appear ready to delegate authority to political elites with few questions or constraints, perhaps because ordinary Americans see no direct negative impacts on their daily lives.”

Decrying the simplistic and triumphalist “idealism” characterized by fearmongering and senseless, reckless aggression, the more conservative realist school of foreign policy notes that the very “warrior intellectuals” who were directly responsible for today’s sorry state of affairs in the Middle East have come to, unfortunately, dominate the foreign-policy advisory groups of nearly all presidential candidates.

Foreign policy is neither a bumper sticker nor a game the American public can leave up to self-interested, profiteer players of 3D “global chess.” The universal legal principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution are a much better guide to pragmatic and judicious decision-making. We, the American public must demand a return to the higher moral ground.

Ray McGovern prepared the President’s Daily Brief during his 27 year career as a CIA analyst. Coleen Rowley is a retired FBI agent and former legal counsel who became one of TIME’s 2002 “whistleblower” persons of the year for disclosing pre-9/11 intelligence failures. McGovern and Rowley are speaking at 7:30 p.m. Monday as part of the Iowa Lecture Series, at the Englert Theater.