Farewell to Dot.Mil Readers - Column

Byline: William M. Arkin

Four years ago, when I wrote my first Dot.Mil column for washingtonpost.com, "Warring for the Web," the Internet was in full boom, and the world was pacific enough to have a column focusing generally on high technology and the military.

Writing about efforts of Pentagon bureaucrats to crack down on the World Wide Web because it was, Oh my God, worldwide, I said then that "unprecedented openness of information is . . . the primary reason for America's unchallenged strength and vitality in the post-Cold War world."

Coincidentally, in the some-things-never-change-department, my second column, "Losing the Information War With Iraq, focused on Iraq's non-cooperation with U.N. inspections. "Full cooperation is different than full submission," I quoted an Iraq official as saying. "What they want is full submission, and they will never, never get it."

Now the final showdown with Iraq looms and a new administration is busy bringing back Cold War secrecy. Going back to 1998 and thinking about today, one might come to the conclusion that September 11 never happened. The issues that confounded the Clinton administration then haunt the Bush team today: confusion about what makes America great, an autocratic approach to safeguarding national security, an inability to understand our adversaries.

And then there is the constant of the dependence on the use of military force. I wrote in my second column: "A high ranking Pentagon public affairs official quipped that the showdown with Iraq gets such good ratings, it is sure to be picked up next season."

This is my last Dot.Mil column. Since September 11, I've started writing regularly for the Los Angeles Times. Struggling to write two separate and original columns has just proven too demanding, especially given other demands with NBC News, teaching, and consulting. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough time just to think.

If anything has changed in four years, it is the nature of the interaction between journalists and military officials. The post Cold War shift from the nuclear arms race to a new era of conventional (and unconventional) war initially unburdened the military to engage in an open dialogue about the nature of warfare.

The new found openness was partly intrinsic to the nature of the nuclear and conventional weapons: Nuclear weapons, being the ultimate instruments, have always been fully controlled by civilian authorities. No military commander really commanded the weapons under him. The military's job was to push the button when civilian said so, and as much time was spent during the Cold War building more reliable and elaborate control mechanisms for those in uniform as was spent building newer weapons. The struggle between the Soviet and American systems was a part of every aspect of American life, and as a permanent national security establishment took hold, secrecy flourished and dissent and debate was stifled.

All during the Cold War, Vietnam and other "small wars" raged. The very label small war spoke volumes. Civilian officials and government experts were spawned in academia and focused almost exclusively on nuclear strategy. Their control of nuclear war and strategic weapons sidelined the military for the big game. An entire generation of civilian experts emerged who knew increasingly little about conventional military realities.

As conventional military forces came back in vogue with the end of the Cold War, the military once again commanded. Military advice and insight became more important, strategy was once again relevant. How to conduct conventional warfare, historical analogy, and experience in uniform and on the ground mattered. Desert Storm largely disproved Cold War and Vietnam era critics alike: An apocalypse did not occur, weapons worked, and the post-Vietnam military performed admirably.

After the Gulf War, a rich debate emerged: about the nature of airpower, about the interaction between ground and air forces, about conducting warfare in the Windows era, even about the conduct of warfare in accordance with international law. As skepticism about smart weapons and military competence faded, the public debate in turn became less about the competence of the military and more about how best to do things and what pitfalls to avoid. As information technology matured, new questions were asked about not just winning on the battlefield, but also about winning hearts and minds.

I think we will remember the 1990's as a renaissance period of military inquiry and dialogue. All of the concepts that the Bush administration makes believe it invented -- revolution in military affairs, network-centric warfare, effects-based operations, information warfare, transformation -- emerged during this period of free wheeling discussion. "Conventional" views were challenged in often heated and acrimonious debate in the military's own journals, at conferences, and in the war colleges. It was hardly an academic exercise. Wars came in a constant stream and hypotheses were able to be tested. Human rights and humanitarian workers, many of whom spent as much time as military professionals on the battlefield, began to be listened to.

The current Bush administration started down a path of stifling dialogue and marginalizing the uniformed military long before the attacks on September 11. Initially Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went to war against the uniformed leadership under the guise of transformation: The old generals were just too wed to their services and their old notions of warfare, the new administration asserted. But the war on terrorism has unleashed an even greater backwards lurch to the worst of Cold War behavior.

Civilians have implemented an unhealthy firewall between themselves and the military at large. Officers are dissuaded from speaking up. High-level promotions are increasingly made on the basis of political litmus tests and uniformity of thought, not because of military guts or brainpower. Witch hunts are underway to find anyone who has spoken to the news media. Even at the war colleges, uniformity of thought is the new rule, and the environment promoting dialogue and inquiry has evaporated. More and more of the war itself is conducted from ad hoc secret cells, where entry is restricted.

The justification for all of this is that there is a war on. Conveniently, Rumsfeld and company describe this war as so new and so different that old rules don't apply. Internal questions about strategy or tactics in the war on terror are conveniently labeled as products of "service" troglodytes, or worse, independent-minded leakers. And thus I have seen what other journalists have seen: a drying up not just of sources, but also of dialogue, and friendships, of the ability to informally call someone up and get a primer on how an airplane or weapon works, or how the debate shakes out between competing organizations or ideas. For awhile, Pentagon sponsored think tanks such as the Rand Corporation, operated under Stalinist rules that no one could speak to the press.

I supposed Rumsfeld can be proud of the impact of his reign of terror over the American military. Mr. 21st Century warfare would do better, nevertheless, if he spent some time pondering that the strength and vitality of our country comes from openness, and dissent, and debate, and not from some permanent wartime gloss that shields the government from the citizenry.

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