Former SecDef Rumsfled decided to grace the House Oversight Committee with his presence yesterday, and as we've all come to expect, he had nothing important to say about the investigation into what really happened to Army Ranger Pat Tillman. Most see this as an example of how badly broken our system of government is. William Arkin offers a slightly different but much more realistic point of view:
Rumsfeld firmly denied any coverup and said that he did not learn that Tillman was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire until nearly a month after the incident. He said he did not recall ever discussing the death with anyone in the White House. The three blind mice who accompanied the former secretary also said that they learned how Tillman died well after the event and never talked to or coordinated a public relations campaign with the White House.
Badly handled, errors were made, deeply regrettable: We heard it all yesterday. In the end, committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) admitted a certain defeat: "You've all admitted that the system failed," he said, yet "none of you feel personally responsible."By now we know that the Army failed to follow its own rules on informing the family of a possible fratricide within 30 days, and we know from documents and Inspector General reports that officers lied and obfuscated and that the Army mishandled the investigation, destroying evidence and fabricating events. The chronology now shows that when Pentagon leaders were told that Tillman might have been killed by fellow troops, they gossiped about the case among themselves but made no particular move to correct the public record.
Anyone who knows anything about Washington and government knows that "the system failed" is the ultimate coverup. The way the system works, of course, is to ensure that government officials -- particularly high-level government officials -- are always insulated from incriminating evidence. Lower-level flunkies know what to tell their bosses and how to use the chain of command to insulate themselves from higher-up decisions. If each person at each level behaves as mandated, decisions can be made without any real responsibility and accountability. After the fact, everyone can marvel that the decision was made by someone else of which they have no personal knowledge.
After all, key decisions about the Iraq war remain enigmas: to limit the number of U.S. troops involved in the assault, to pay less attention to the aftermath, to carry out a de-Ba'athification program in the Iraqi Army, etc., etc. The very description of the events is so passive because we are describing a system that in fact is working. It remains unclear who made the key decisions and why -- because that is how the participants want it.
My bet is that we'll never really find out. The Tillman episode is just a mini-version of what the nation will experience when and if we finally investigate how things went wrong in Iraq.
Sadly, I think he's right here. One of the major lessons of the Iran Contra affair was that if you can keep your boss in the dark about what you are doing, its highly unlikely that anyone will ever be brought to account. What we're seeing here really is that same philosophy writ large. The political appointees wink and nod at their subordinates, then spend the next several years looking the other way as their clearly unspoken wishes get carried out.
The short version to the solution? Leadership matters. If you can put the right people in the right places, you can create a culture that rewards accountability. But once established such a culture is incredibly fragile, making it far easier to destroy than create. Yet another example, I suppose, of why people who hate government should never be allowed to run one.
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