GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR (Medal of Honour; Distinguished Service Cross; Army Distinguished Service Medal; Navy Distinguished Service Medal; Distinguished Flying Cross; Silver Star; Bronze Star; Purple Heart) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1880. From the day he graduated first-in-class at his army academy, he positively blazed with military genius. Promoted to brigadier-general in the First World War, cited for extreme battlefield bravery, gassed and wounded in action, he was soon the youngest major-general in the US Army. In 1928 he was given command in the Philippines, and made Chief of Staff by President Herbert Hoover in 1930. He liberated Manila from the Japanese in 1945 after a brilliant campaign, beating off the assaults of an army many times the size of his. After the invasion of South Korea he was made commander of United Nations forces, personally directing the amphibious landing at Inchon in 1950, often seen as one of the greatest manoeuvres in military history.
Next, MacArthur’s desire was to press the military advantage, take up arms alongside Taiwan, and attack Communist China with nuclear weapons. President Truman disagreed. MacArthur started issuing statements to the press. Truman relieved him of his command. And that was the end of General MacArthur.
Many then thought the President’s policy was wrong and General MacArthur’s right; fewer argued that any general had the right to undermine the authority of a democratically elected president. MacArthur was way out of order, and had to go.
There can be no ifs or buts about General Sir Richard Dannatt’s position this weekend. This is not a finely balanced question. The general should resign, and if he will not, then the Prime Minister should instruct the Defence Secretary to remove him. If neither Tony Blair nor Des Browne dare do it, then we have learnt all we need to know about the paralysis now afflicting the Government.
That some of us might agree with every word Sir Richard said to the Daily Mail about Iraq and about the Government’s treatment of wounded servicemen is beside the point. There is a constitutional principle at stake, and it is fundamental. The Armed Forces are not in charge of government policy; ministers are — democratically elected ministers. The Armed Forces are there to implement policy, not attack it. They can and must offer advice, of course, but the advice that Service chiefs offer ministers must be absolutely private. It is not their job to try to influence public debate by making statements to the news media. The general knows HM Government’s policy in Iraq: the Prime Minister has made it very clear. It is to stay for as long as it takes to establish and guarantee a democracy there. There is absolutely no way this can be reconciled with an imperative to withdraw “some time soon”.
I happen to think the aims of government policy in Iraq are unachiev- able to the point of folly. Clearly the general does too. In which case he has a duty, and then a choice. His duty is privately to warn the Cabinet that he thinks its aims cannot be delivered by the deployment of the troops over which he has command. No doubt this private warning has been given, and ignored.
In which case a chief of general staff has a choice. He can resign; or he can soldier on, determined to do the best he can even though he suspects the attempt is doomed. Either course of action would be perfectly proper. What is wholly improper is to try to undermine his masters in public. Of all people, a soldier ought to understand this: is it not central to our understanding of a soldier’s duty that he obeys commands, even it he thinks them unwise? For the top soldier the commands come from an elected government. The general should expect no more quarter from his Prime Minister than he would give a junior officer who stirred up doubt about the wisdom of his own judgment.
That the general may still not appreciate this was made all the clearer by the interview yesterday morning on the Today programme in which he was plainly trying to row back from his newspaper interview. The general told James Naughtie that the allies might have to lower their sights in Iraq, aiming only — but at least — to keep a unitary state in place. Indeed so, but it is not a general’s job to propose such things on the radio. He then went on to say that the ultimate disaster would be for Iraq to split into three or more smaller states. This statement, too, is beyond his remit. It may finally (and in my view probably will) become US-British policy to allow a northern Kurdish, a southern Shia and perhaps a mixed state around Baghdad to emerge as self-governing entities. If or when this happens, we shall then have interviewers reminding the Prime Minister that his CGS once described it as the ultimate disaster.
The opposition parties’ response has been pathetic. Sir Menzies Campbell, who ought to know better, seemed yesterday to be siding with the general. How would Sir Menzies have felt if the general had lambasted Liberal Democrat defence policy? I rather think that Sir Menzies would have taken issue not only with the criticisms themselves, but with the appropriateness of a Service chief’s having entered the fray at all.
Sir Menzies, at least, may plead that the CGS was echoing Liberal Democrat concerns. Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, can make no such claim. Except that, incredibly, he now seems to be doing so. Until yesterday we understood Tory policy on Iraq to be four-square with the Government’s: “Tough it out”, “Stay for the duration”, “As long as it takes” etc. But Dr Fox is now claiming he reached similar conclusions to the general’s when he himself visited Iraq.
The cheek of it! What dolts does Dr Fox suppose us to be? So the Tories think we should leave Iraq some time soon, and that our presence is only making matters worse, do they? If so I must have missed the announcement at what I took to be their conference in Bournemouth last week. You would have thought this spectacular U-turn might have attracted some attention.
Craven stuff. Both Sir Menzies and Dr Fox appear to have concluded that in a dispute between a soldier and a bunch of politicians, favour is most likely to be found by supporting the soldier. Most of the British media will conclude likewise. All of them should look to their credentials as democrats, and look to their responsibilities towards our precious and delicate unwritten constitution, before they go crawling to people in uniforms.
A little, if not most, of this can be blamed on General Dannatt’s predecessor as CGS: Sir Mike Jackson. Much is being made of the contrast between General Dannatt’s awkwardly outspoken opinions about policy and General Jackson’s adroitly helpful interventions concerning the rightness of the Blairite cause abroad. But, while never embarrassing ministers, General Jackson pushed forward the boundaries of commentary beyond operational matters by publicly endorsing the moral and political purposes of defence and foreign policy. I wondered at the time whether this was appropriate.
“OK,” I thought, “so Jackson approves, and is on the radio to say so. But what if — or when — he doesn’t approve?” In giving an interview to the Daily Mail about the prospects and purposes of British military intervention, General Dannatt has done disastrously what General Jackson used to do cleverly. But should either of them have been doing it at all?
It is possible, of course, that I have missed the key point: that General Dannatt believed his outburst would, and knew it should, cause Mr Blair to sack him; and has the guts to go through with it. General Dannatt may. Whether Mr Blair has, we shall see.
