Security and Defense Studies Review 2010 Fall ... - Offnews.info

Parsing Ollie: How Conservatives and the MilitaryViewed Honor, Loyalty and Duty Through the Prismof Lt. Col. Oliver North’s Role in Iran-ContraMartin Edwin AndersenABSTRACTMore than two decades after Oliver North’s role in the Iran-Contra affair exploded into publicview as part of one of the most important political scandals in the United States in the latter halfof the twentieth century, the imbroglio continues to offer critical insights into contemporarydebates about foreign policy mechanisms and the role of the military. North’s responsibility asan individual, combined with certain institutional enablers that flourished within the ReaganAdministration’s conduct of foreign policy, resulted in an inexorable bifurcation between thetraditional ethos of the U.S. armed forces and the foreign policy aims and practices of aconservative administration, despite their sometimes conflation in the popular mind. Thispaper will explore the tensions between institutional versus political conservatism, as well asthose institutional practices, that facilitated North’s shift away from the instincts and trainingof the military sphere to that of a lone-wolf activism.“I want to make it clear beyond any question that absolute integrity of an officer’s word, deed,and signature is a matter that permits no compromise.”-- Gen. William C. Westmoreland 1“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk are insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaningbut without understanding.”-- Justice Louis Brandeis“He presumed to save his country without the consent of the emperor.”-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XLVThe boyish, ramrod straight Marine Corps officer emerged in July 1987 in full dress uniform toface a joint Congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, in a Senate CaucusRoom where prior inquiries into the sinking of the Titanic, Teapot Dome, Joseph McCarthy’s libelsagainst the Army, and Watergate had been held. As he later recalled it, he had first entered the Senatechamber thinking, “Who are these people and what am I doing here?” 2 A lieutenant colonel whohad operated out of the basement of the Old Executive Office building as “a sort of undergroundSecretary of State” 3 and who was about to become a media sensation-cum-American icon, OliverL. North was stepping out front and center in the middle of a constitutional crisis that was arguablylargely of his own making. With a stern and, at first, “insolent” (the word is his) 4 demeanor, for thenext several days North parried the queries of solons and committee lawyers, ducking into the FifthAmendment when counseled by his lawyers to do so. He was, he told his accusers and the rest of thecountry riveted by televised coverage of the event, a soldier who would take a spear for God, countryand President Ronald Reagan.Today, more than two decades after North’s appearance before Congress, the role he played in1Richard Halloran, “Washington Talk: The Armed Services; Officers and Gentlemen and Situational Lying,” The New York Times, August 6, 1987, p.A24.2Oliver North, Under Fire: An American Story, New York: HarpersCollins, p. 351.3The description of North in Philip Weiss, “Oliver North’s Next War,” The New York Times, July 4, 1993, p. A. 124North, op. cit, p. 362.Security and Defense Studies Review 2010 Fall-Winter Issue / Edicíón Otoño-Invierno 2010 / Edicão Outono-Inverno 2010 / Volume 11 131