Birds migrate; policies don't.
I haven't read the Fay and Schlesinger reports in their entirety yet (unlike Don Rumsfeld's seeming rapid-fire skim of the Taguba report--I will read each and every page as soon as time allows). But my gut tells me, and this happens pretty rarely, that the NYT has got it pretty right on this one.
So, yeah, I'd like to see accountability above the Pappas/Karpinski level.
Might that happen? I doubt it; but who knows?
On Capitol Hill, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) said the Armed Services Committee, which he chairs, will seek to review officer promotions."We're going to ask the Department of Defense to examine this promotion system to determine whether or not some who are unqualified for higher responsibilities are slipping through the network," he said at a news conference.
Asked whether Rumsfeld should resign, Warner said he "essentially" agreed with Schlesinger's rejection of the idea Tuesday. But Warner noted that "the commanding officer has to take responsibility for those actions of his subordinates that are proven to be unprofessional or downright wrong."
Senate hearings, pre-trial discovery, more digestion of these reports--this story will be with us through the Fall. It's far from over. Rummy won't resign, of course (though he should have many months back). As George Will had memorably put it:
This nation has always needed an ethic about the resignation of public officials. Such an ethic cannot be codified. It must grow in controlling power from precedent to precedent, as an unwritten common law, distilled from the behavior of uncommonly honorable men and women who understand the stakes. A nation, especially one doing the business of empire, needs high officials to be highly attentive to what is done in their departments -- attentive far down the chain of command, as though their very jobs depended on it."
To be sure, Rummy had a helluva lot on his plate during these years. But that doesn't excuse repeated episodes of torture occuring on his watch. And despite his arrogance and seeming insouciance about Abu Ghraib, I'd bet--in his heart of hearts--he knows he has failed the American polity badly on this score.
History will not remember him kindly for it. It is now too late for him to resign, of course. But Donald Rumsfeld, should Bush prevail in November, does not deserve a second term as Secretary of Defense--despite his often sterling service during these past three exceptionally trying years.
A better man needs to be in that job. That man, for my money, is John McCain.
NB: Some will be concerned that, like Dick Holbrooke, a McCain type might not be controllable. But both Holbrooke as a potential Kerry SecState and McCain as a potential Bush SecDef are professional enough Beltway operatives to serve within the parameters of the President's policy goals and wishes. They may be a bit on the swashbuckling side--but they are not rogues.
Further, Bush announcing (say, in October, especially if UBL wasn't delivered up by the ISI on sched) that John McCain will be his SecDef in a second term would be a masterstroke. For one, it will finally force John Kerry to quiet up about how Band-of-Brotherish he is with McCain. And, more important, such a move would get more independents on board for Bush--whilst signaling a new course at a Pentagon that, because of its 'transformationalist' experiments (too few, and too untrained, troops milling about Mesopotamia) and lack of supervisory controls--helped lead to a great moral stain on America (as avatar of human rights) with Abu Ghraib. Nor, it bears mentioning, would Bush be violating any Kennebunkport loyalty codes. Rummy would have served out his full term. No one got canned. There will doubtless be a new SecState; why not a new SecDef too?
On that score, I also think Bush should announce who his next Secretary of State (assuming Powell does indeed leave) would be at the same time. For one, it makes it look more like Bush was merely signaling who will be in any prospective new Cabinet rather than solely an out and out Rummy-banishment. Coming soon--my proposed foreign policy cabinets for both Kerry and Bush.