Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Last Men Standing
[Note to TomDispatch Readers: We’re back from a rare break and ready to roll. Don’t forget to order a copy of Dispatch Books’ latest volume (due out next week), historian Alfred McCoy’s remarkable and all-too-timely exploration of the waning of imperial America, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power. And if you weren't online in the last days of August, make sure to check out McCoy's most recent TD piece on his half-century of adventures with the CIA. Like his book, it’s an instant classic. Tom]
It was bloody and brutal, a true generational struggle, but give them credit. In the end, they won when so many lost.
James Comey was axed. Sean Spicer went down in a heap of ashes. Anthony Scaramucci crashed and burned instantaneously. Reince Priebus hung on for dear life but was finally canned. Seven months in, Steve Bannon got the old heave-ho and soon after, his minion, Sebastian Gorka, was unceremoniously shoved out the White House door. In a downpour of potential conflicts of interest and scandal, Carl Icahn bowed out. Gary Cohn has reportedly been at the edge of resignation. And so it goes in the Trump administration.
Except for the generals. Think of them as the last men standing. They did it. They took the high ground in Washington and held it with remarkable panache. Three of them: National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense and retired Marine General John Mattis, and former head of the Department of Homeland Security, now White House Chief of Staff, retired Marine General John Kelly stand alone, except for President Trump’s own family members, at the pinnacle of power in Washington.
Those three generals from America’s losing wars are now triumphant. One of them is the ultimate gatekeeper when it comes to who sees the president. All three influence his thoughts and speeches. They are the “civilians” who control the military and American war policy. They, and they alone, have made the president go against his deepest urges, as he admitted in his address to the nation on the war in Afghanistan. (“My original instinct was to pull out and historically I like following my instincts.”) They’ve convinced him to release the military (and the CIA) from significant oversight on how they pursue their wars across the Greater Middle East, Africa, and now the Philippines. They even convinced him to surround their future actions in a penumbra of secrecy.
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