Megan McArdle suggests that it might be a good thing if conservatives and libertarians get stomped in November and go “into the wilderness for a little while, where they can get their heads together without having to worry about the intellectual compromises of actual politics.”

The Corner’s Andrew Stuttaford is befuddled by the suggestion: “As for the notion that there’s merit to be found in stepping out of the arena to think great thoughts, I don’t get it. The most useful ideas emerge from engagement with the world, not withdrawal from it.” Daniel Larison thinks Stuttaford is an idiot.

I’m very much a believer in the healing power of getting away from the minutia of everyday battles to rethink the larger strategic environment. So, as it happens, is the U.S. military, which regularly rotates its leaders out of command and staff positions for stints in places like Carlisle, Pennyslvania. As John Nagl and Charles Dunlap, two of our nation’s most capable warrior-scholars put it, “The ability to think, learn, and adapt is what makes America’s military the finest in the world.”

As to political parties, I’d never voluntarily take a loss in the hopes that the forced reflection time will make us stronger for the next battle. Too much is at stake in the meantime and one never knows the circumstances of the next election cycle. Stattaford is right when he says that we really don’t know “what a stint in the wilderness would be like — and how long it would last.” Christopher Johnson McCandless thought going “Into the Wild” was a keen idea, too. That proved a fatal mistake.

It’s true, though, that the best political thinking often comes when you’re forced to battle back. The Republicans renewed themselves after a [sustained bad stretch]* with Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the “New Democrats” of Bill Clinton rebranded themselves by 1992. And Newt Gingrich led a “revolution” after decades out of power in the Congress.

Photo credit: Katie Knorovsky

UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge observes, “I can’t think of anything more contrary to the spirit of Burkean conservatism than a search for the ‘next big thing.’ Indeed, I would argue that a large part of the problem with modern conservatism is that Bush and the K Street Gang were more concerned with finding something big to do than with standing athwart history shouting stop.” There’s something to that, to be sure.

Then again, the United States doesn’t have the sort of class system that Burke was trying to conserve. Indeed, Burke shuddered at the very idea that the great unwashed masses should govern themselves. To the extent we have a conservative tradition, then, it’s not a Burkean one.

*UPDATE:The original said “sting of presidential defeats,” which of course isn’t true. They’d lost just just one race, a close one, in 1976. But Nixon lost in 1960, Goldwater got crushed in 1964, and Watergate threatened to destroy the party in 1973. Reagan breathed new life into the GOP while also rebranding it as a conservative party.

A “random thought” from Thomas Sowell:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Steven Taylor, who studies Latin American politics for a living, is not a fan of military coups, although he allows in the comments as to how a Babylon 5 scenario might be an exception.

Having spent a good part of my life in and around the military, I can see as to how a coup might improve the degeneracy situation. (Although I hasten to add, the military is not a degeneracy-free institution.) It would, however, come at the cost of virtually all freedom. Not to mention consent of the governed and various rights deemed “inalienable” by the Founders.

UPDATE: I agree with my colleague Steve Verdon and several other commenters that it is unfair to Sowell to suggest he wants a coup. Sowell has a sufficiently long track record that I’m confident that he’s not a “militant anti-democratic extremist.” This is likely just a one-liner by a frustrated man. Still, it’s a pretty silly thing for a man of his intellectual caliber to write — especially in the context of lamenting “degeneracy.”

Steve Bainbridge, who is firmly anti-coup, is nonetheless intrigued by the “alternate history” feasibility angle. Like me (and I suspect, many of you) he’s seen “Seven Days in May” and thinks the plot far-fetched. Not only would it be logistically problematic because of the separation of the military into numerous Services and Reserve/Guard components but the media would be hostile. And, he hastens to add, it would be anathema to the very culture of the United States military.

I agree completely.

Still, Air Force colonel (and JAG) Charles Dunlap pondered this very question in a classic article for Parameters in 1992 called “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” The piece is fiction, starting from the perspective of an old War College graduate looking back from a post-coup future and reflecting on the events that led us there. It is a warning against the politicization of the military he saw rising in the early 1990s as well as some social sentiments that are reflected in Sowell’s random thought.

If we’re ever going to get our freedom back, we’ve got to understand how we got into this mess. People need to understand that the armed forces exist to support and defend government, not to be the government. Faced with intractable national problems on one hand, and an energetic and capable military on the other, it can be all too seductive to start viewing the military as a cost-effective solution. We made a terrible mistake when we allowed the armed forces to be diverted from their original purpose.

[...]

Americans became exasperated with democracy. We were disillusioned with the apparent inability of elected government to solve the nation’s dilemmas. We were looking for someone or something that could produce workable answers. The one institution of government in which the people retained faith was the military. Buoyed by the military’s obvious competence in the First Gulf War, the public increasingly turned to it for solutions to the country’s problems. Americans called for an acceleration of trends begun in the 1980s: tasking the military with a variety of new, nontraditional missions, and vastly escalating its commitment to formerly ancillary duties.

Though not obvious at the time, the cumulative effect of these new responsibilities was to incorporate the military into the political process to an unprecedented degree. These additional assignments also had the perverse effect of diverting focus and resources from the military’s central mission of combat training and warfighting. Finally, organizational, political, and societal changes served to alter the American military’s culture. Today’s military is not the one we knew when we graduated from the War College.

This, too, is not a stretch:

Furthermore, well-meaning attempts at improving service life led to the unintended insularity of military society, representing a return to the cloistered life of the pre-World War II armed forces. Military bases, complete with schools, churches, stores, child care centers, and recreational areas, became never-to-be-left islands of tranquillity removed from the chaotic, crime-ridden environment outside the gates. As one reporter put it in 1991: “Increasingly isolated from mainstream America, today’s troops tend to view the civilian world with suspicion and sometimes hostility.” Thus, a physically isolated and intellectually alienated officer corps was paired with an enlisted force likewise distanced from the society it was supposed to serve. In short, the military evolved into a force susceptible to manipulation by an authoritarian leader from its own select ranks.

Now, for reasons Bainbridge highlights, I think a coup is vanishingly unlikely. But the isolation of the military from society, the fact that most of our elites, including politicians, have never served, and the military’s sense of itself as a bastion of decency and honor in a country going soft and corrupt is not a welcome trend.

Richard Fernandez, noting the wave of retired generals calling for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation for various failings in Iraq, points out that “Secretary Rumsfeld is only the ‘near enemy’. If the criticisms are taken seriously they must be an indictment against the ‘far enemy’ as well — President Bush.” That strikes me as exactly right.

To the extent going to war in Iraq was a bad idea, period, then Bush is responsible–regardless of how much Rummy, Cheney, Rove, or whoever was pushing him in that direction. He hired them. He listened to them. He decided. Of course, Congress backed the move enthusiastically and Bush was re-elected long after the WMD rationale for the war disintegrated and the insurgency got out of control.

If the argument is simply that the war was executed badly–not enough boots on the ground, inadequate planning for counterinsurgency, poor infowar strategy, etc.–then the generals bear as much, if not more, responsibility than Rumsfeld. Post-Goldwater Nichols (1986), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has been the statutory military advisor to the president. The generals therefore have direct and unfettered access to the president and have a voice independent of the SECDEF before both the president and Congress. (Whether that’s a good idea is an open question. See Colonel Charles Dunlap for a negative view.)

Fernandez points out that “One criticism independent of policy holds that Secretary Rumsfeld is a poor manager; a busybody; a man who will not listen and won’t let subordinates get on with their jobs.” He is ambivalent about this, saying history will judge. Certainly, he has managed to ruffle the feathers of many senior leaders and even many field grade officers I have talked to dislike the man. That, however, is either a sign that Rumsfeld is a smug jerk or that he’s standing firm against bureaucratic intransigience. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Two big stories are out today in the major press about a growing and potentially worrisome trend: Public statements by recently-retired flag officers against their former bosses.

Thomas Ricks gives the story page A01 treatment at WaPo.

The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called yesterday for Donald H. Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the defense secretary’s authoritarian style for making the military’s job more difficult. “I think we need a fresh start” at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, said in an interview. “We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork.” Batiste noted that many of his peers feel the same way. “It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense,” he said earlier yesterday on CNN.

[...]

His comments follow similar recent high-profile attacks on Rumsfeld by three other retired flag officers, amid indications that many of their peers feel the same way. “We won’t get fooled again,” retired Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who held the key post of director of operations on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2000 to 2002, wrote in an essay in Time magazine this week. Listing a series of mistakes such as “McNamara-like micromanagement,” a reference to the Vietnam War-era secretary of defense, Newbold called for “replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach.”

Last month, another top officer who served in Iraq, retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he called Rumsfeld “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically.” Eaton, who oversaw the training of Iraqi army troops in 2003-2004, said that “Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.”

Also, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, a longtime critic of Rumsfeld and the administration’s handling of the Iraq war, has been more vocal lately as he publicizes a new book, “The Battle for Peace.” “The problem is that we’ve wasted three years” in Iraq, said Zinni, who was the chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, in the late 1990s. He added that he “absolutely” thinks Rumsfeld should resign.

Peter Spiegel and Paul Richter have a similar piece in the LAT.

A recent surge in public criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by retired military leaders is the culmination of months of intense but largely private debate among active duty officers about how best to voice dissent over Bush administration policies, according to officers involved in the discussions. A number of officers have been critical of Iraq policy — mostly anonymously — since the administration’s early days. But the calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation are an unusual step for members of the military, who are acutely sensitive to the appearance of challenging civilian leadership of the armed forces.

Displays of public dissension are especially controversial while troops are at war and morale is a concern. In recent months, however, a growing concern that the war’s setbacks may have been predictable as well as avoidable has spilled into public view. The officers said that challenges to civilian policy were not new — similar opposition flared during the Clinton administration, particularly around the issue of gays in the military. But many of the latest condemnations come from officers who served in the Iraq war, and the controversy has split the ranks over whether attacks by those officers so soon after retiring are appropriate.

One current general who has debated the issue with high-ranking colleagues spoke, like others, on condition of anonymity when discussing actions of other officers. “If every guy that retires starts sniping at their old bosses and acts like a political appointee, how do you think senior civilians start choosing their military leaders?” the general said. “Competence goes out the window. It’s all about loyalty and pliability.”

Later, they note the historical context:

Criticism of political leaders by retired generals is nothing new. Historians note that former military leaders dating back to the American Revolution have written criticisms of the conduct of wars, and Rumsfeld dismissed many of the criticisms this week as just the latest in that tradition. “It’s historic, it’s always been the case, and I see nothing really very new or surprising about it,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.

But Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a Vietnam veteran, said he believed it was unprecedented for retired senior officers who had so recently served during a war to criticize civilian leaders while troops were still in the field. “I would take this as evidence that the search for scapegoats with regard to the Iraq war has now been fully engaged by the military,” Bacevich said. “The officer corps doesn’t want to get stuck with responsibility for a war that has already proven to be a disappointment and could result in failure. This is an indication that Rumsfeld has been selected as the military’s preferred scapegoat,” he said.

The debate within the Pentagon has been influenced by the lessons of the Vietnam War, a conflict many current military leaders believe was lost because military chiefs did not stand up to civilian war plans. A 1997 book on the subject, “Dereliction of Duty,” by H.R. McMaster, now an Army colonel serving in Iraq, has been required reading for many Pentagon officers. “There was a deep bitterness over Vietnam and the way the [service] chiefs had been co-opted,” said Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina who oversaw McMaster’s work on the book.

Kohn said it was a lesson sent repeatedly to all Army officers: “They said: ‘We’re never going to put up with this again, we’re not going to be put in that position again by the civilians.’ ” Nevertheless, Kohn, who has discussed relations with civilian leaders with several top officers, said he believed it might be dangerous for such recently retired generals to go public with such criticism. “If they go out and attack the policy after leaving and they get personal about it, they’re undermining civilian control,” Kohn said.

Kohn and others with similar thoughts are also included in the Ricks piece:

Military experts expressed some concern about the new outspokenness of retired generals. “I think it flatly is a bad thing,” said Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina who writes frequently on civilian-military relations. He said he worries that it could undermine civilian control of the military, especially by making civilian leaders feel that that they need to be careful about what they say around officers, for fear of being denounced as soon as they retire. “How can you prosecute a war if the military and civilians don’t trust each other?” Kohn asked.

Also, the generals themselves may be partly to blame for the situation in Iraq, along with Rumsfeld and the White House, said Michael Vickers, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. “It’s just absurd to lay the blame on Don Rumsfeld alone,” he said.

While I sympathize with this viewpoint and agree with the general who expressed fears that it could create a chilling effect in the relations between senior officers and their civilian bosses, this strikes me as a problem without a solution. Retired generals are citizens with every right to speak out. Further, they are in a unique position to do so with credibility.

Whether their pronouncements are helpful are harmful largely depends on which side of a particular fence one sits. Dan Drezner is more-or-less happy about them, for example, because he has long believed Rumsfeld should resign. While I’m not so sure about that, I nonetheless doubt much harm is being done.

Still, the concern over civil-military relations is legitimate. Air Force Colonel Charles Dunlap wrote a provocative article called, “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012” for the Winter 1992-93 Parameters. Still, the nation survived having at least two sitting generals (Winfield Scott and George McClellan) openly criticizing the president of the United States during the Civil War. Indeed, McClellan actually ran against Lincoln in the 1864 election. (Scott ran as the Whig Party nominee in 1852, supplanting his own commander in chief, Millard Fillmore, in that role.) We had the The Revolt of the Admirals in the late 1940s and the row between Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman in the 1950s. Certainly, many retired generals critized Clinton during his term of office. And, of course, we now routinely have former generals and admirals–Norman Schwarzkofp, Colin Powell, William Crowe, and Tommy Franks come to mind–endorsing presidential candidates and even speaking at national political conventions.

I don’t like any of it any more than I like former presidents speaking out against the current officeholder. But those people are entitled to free speech, too.