For real shits and giggles, I ended up doing an interview with David Brooks and Mark Shields for the PBS NewsHour during this time period. Like many interviews I had given, this one had a few unexpected side effects, but had generally proved positive. We had been speaking from the Map Room, and the discussion had been about the war in Kurdistan. Shields was a liberal and a writer for the Washington Post, while Brooks was a conservative writer for the New York Times. They typically sparred on the Friday edition of the NewsHour, but this was taping on Tuesday. Most reporters at that level of journalism are pretty smart fellows, but every once in awhile somebody reverts to their roots, where they started out asking idiotic questions like ‘How do you feel?’ to a mother who just ran over her baby with the family car.
Shields: “What kind of a message are you trying to send with this war?”
Me: (Staring at him briefly.) “MESSAGE?! I’m not sending a message! We’ve been sending messages for months now! If I wanted to send a message I’d call Western Union! No, the time for messages is over! Now I am sending death and destruction! You want to know what kind of message I am sending?! How about this for a message! If you kill my citizens and my soldiers and my diplomats, I WILL SEND DOWN THE THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS! How’s that for a message!”
That was on Tuesday, and Will Brucis looked totally flummoxed by my words, as did Brooks and Shields. Presidents simply didn’t talk that way! I just said, ‘Screw it!’, and we finished the interview. By Friday, though, the segment had been edited and was ready for their regular debate, this time with moderator Margaret Warner. The interview segment was only lightly edited, as much for clarity and timing as anything else. Certainly that segment made its way in, in full. Then, however, they digressed.
Shields: “I was curious about what the actual troops the Commander in Chief commands thought about this kind of talk, so I visited a few Army bases and spoke to them. I spoke to the enlisted guys, not their officers and especially not the Public Information specialists you always get saddled with. By and large, President Buckman is extremely popular with the troops. They loved being called thunderbolts. They all lit up when I played them the interview.”
Brooks: “Not all of our Presidents have been well respected by their soldiers. Bill Clinton in particular was more tolerated than respected. Carl Buckman, on the other hand, is fairly well thought of. He was the youngest battery commander in the 82nd Airborne since Viet Nam and he earned a Bronze Star rescuing his troops while injured and behind enemy lines. That means a lot to these guys.”
Shields: “You saw that when he made that bet with the Navy a few years ago about who would win the Army-Navy Game. The winner would get a deluxe dinner at the White House and the loser would get cold MREs. When Army lost and was scheduled for MREs out in the cold of a New York winter, he showed up in a captain’s uniform and ate with them. That’s the kind of respect troops understand and appreciate, and it means a lot to them. That sure never happened when I was a Marine, let me tell you!”
I had to think about that for a bit. It hadn’t seemed all that significant to me at the time. It was simply standard Management Techniques 101, loyalty up and loyalty down, that sort of thing. On the other hand, I had known a shitload of managers over the years who thought that because they were the boss, their shit automatically didn’t stink.
There wasn’t much happening on the Kurdish front that week, but the domestic front heated up a touch. Carter managed to get a war resolution going. In theory, only Congress has the right to send the nation to war, but the President has the requirement to defend the nation. This was all written into the Constitution at a time when muskets and cannons were high tech, and communications took months to get anywhere. We have actually only had five instances where Congress declared war. Following the debacle in Viet Nam, Congress decided to rein in the President with the War Powers Act. Stripped of all the verbiage, after 60 days, if Congress disapproved, they could stop funding things and require you to bug out of whatever you had gotten into. There hadn’t been a President since who didn’t think it was unconstitutional, but we tended to walk pretty carefully around the subject.
The answer was the ‘war resolution’. You don’t declare war anymore, since wars need victories. It was much more likely that you were fighting to restore the status quo to some shithole, or keep oil and trade flowing, or stop genocide, or simply to do something to show the country that you cared. In this case, we were fighting to defend the Kurds, not to conquer and defeat the Iraqis. Condoleeza Rice had tried but failed to get a U.N. resolution against the Iraqis. The Russians had fought against it by claiming we didn’t have any proof, and when it passed, they vetoed it. I called Putin and told him we were going in anyway, and that I sure hoped the latest weapons shipment had already been paid for, since we were going to destroy them. Chemical warfare really was a trump card on this, and all the neocons were baying at the moon and howling about how I should have done this in 2001. Since the neocons also hated the Russians, I used them to push for the resolution as a poke in the eye to Putin. I got the resolution I needed for funding purposes, and I let the legal types argue on the Sunday morning talk shows about the laws of war.
Christ, but I hated this mess!
Chapter 163: Kurdish Dragon
The Sunday news shows all ran the footage from the Brooks and Shield interview, and the chattering classes all pontificated on what it meant. The liberals were rather unhappy with my barbaric worldview and the conservatives couldn’t understand why I hadn’t gone after Iraq in 2001 when I had my first chance. The only one who seemed to understand, or at least was able to express it cogently, was Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation. He devoted his personal essay piece to it.
“President Buckman’s statement about sending down the thunderbolts of the gods has been one of the most talked about public statements of his presidency, by turns praised and ridiculed. The more bellicose among us loved it but many here in Washington considered it ill-advised and war-mongering. How dare the President make a statement such as that? It must be the sign of a foolish and uncultured barbarian, and they wonder why his press secretary isn’t running around and apologizing for him.
I have known Carl Buckman for almost twenty years, since before he became a Congressman, and long before he became the President. While we don’t agree on a lot of things, he is not a foolish and uncultured barbarian. He is a warm, smart, sophisticated, and civilized man. He is most definitely not a war-monger. He is generous to a fault, and exceedingly gracious. He is loyal to his subordinates, perhaps too much so, and they return that loyalty. He adores his wife, dotes on his children, and even has a big, goofy dog that he drags around with him everywhere.
He is also one of the most ruthless men I have ever known, and I say that in a positive sense. You can see that in his personal life. When, both in junior and senior high school, he was attacked by bullies, he didn’t respond eye-for-an-eye. He destroyed his tormentors, crippling them. He extends that protection to those around him, as well. When his wife was assaulted in the Bahamas and a young mother-to-be was attacked in a diner in his hometown, those attackers were hospitalized and arrested. You may attack him once, but you will never do so a second time. You do not mess with Carl Buckman and get away with it.