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

seen as a bulwark of “unbending values.” 9 Or, as an institution that shares the assumption, as RussellKirk posed it, that “there exists a transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conformthe ways of society.” 10 During the period under study, however, there were also indications thatthe military’s orthodox conservatism was itself in the process of morphing into a more ideologicalbrand. As one defense commentator noted, the military appeared to be “both more conservativethan their predecessors, and more politically active. The evidence is skimpy, and the definitions of‘conservative’ are unstated but almost certainly shifting. … The military increasingly appears to leantoward partisan conservatism.” 11The centrality of the role played in Iran-Contra by North, who had limited foreign affairs orintelligence experience, is without question, as was his meteoric ascent within the national securitybureaucracy. (As one of three military officers secunded to the White House, in 1981 North wasstill making and holding charts used by Reagan’s first national security advisor, Richard Allen,in briefings.) 12 Writing six years after the scandal broke, one military observer noted that if onlythe decorated combat officer had remained a Marine Corps leader—staying at the margins of highpolitics—the Marines would have retained “a highly competent senior officer” and the country likelyspared the trauma of Iran-Contra. “For make no mistake, without Oliver North the Iran initiativewould certainly have developed differently and the profits from the arms sales to Iran most probablywould not have been diverted to support the Contra resistance in Nicaragua.” 13While the unorthodox, off-the-books actions taken by North and his superiors have beenjudged by often partisan and leftwing critics to be illegal and setting a dangerous precedent, othersmight contend that they were only an extreme byproduct of the shifting sands of responsibility fornational security and defense between the Executive and Legislative branches, where bureaucraticmaneuvering outside public scrutiny allowed for both questionable innovation and unbridledpersonal protagonism. Such an examination is particularly useful given the preference of anotherconservative Administration—that of President George W. Bush—for an operational NSC to dealwith an even larger issue, the conduct of the war in Iraq, despite the cautions available from theexample of the Reagan presidency. 14 It is within that context that this paper will explore the tensionsbetween institutional versus political conservatism—as well as those institutional practices—thatfacilitated North’s shift away from the instincts and training of the military sphere to a lone wolfconservative activism, at the same time becoming, in the words of one observer, “the most powerfullieutenant colonel in the world.” 15NORTH SERVED AS DEPUTY DIRECTOR of political-military affairs at the NSC under twoNational Security Advisors, Robert “Bud” McFarlane and Adm. John Poindexter. During thattime, they and several other members of the Administration of Ronald Reagan helped sell arms toavowed enemy Iran; implausibly reaching out to Iranian “moderates,” and using the proceeds tofund, against Congressional prohibitions for doing so (the Boland Amendment) 16 , the Contra rebelsin the Nicaraguan civil war. It was North who promoted a secret mission to Tehran for the purposeof directly negotiating with the Iranians, and it was the Marine who directly disobeyed an orderfrom National Security Advisor Adm. John Poindexter not to release any arms to the Iranians until9Steven Lee Myers, “Scandal Kept in Military Perspective,” The New York Times, Dec. 1, 1998, A27.10Muller, op. cit, pp. 4, 11; Russell Kirk (ed.), The Portable Conservative Reader, New York: Penguin, 1982, p. xv. Tellingly, the index in Muller’santhology lists neither “military” nor “armed forces” despite ubiquitous popular reference to both as “conservative” institutions in the U.S. context.11Ricks, Making the Corps, New York: Scribner, 1997, pp. 279-282.12Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, op. cit., p. 50.13Anthony E. Hartle, “The Ethical Odyssey of Oliver North,” Parameters, Summer 1993, pp. 28-33. At the time he wrote the article, Hartle was directorof the philosophy program at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.14For example, an assessment of the role of activist National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, whose “ardent support for the invasion” rendered herunable to play the traditional role of … impartial broker in the rough-and-tumble of interagency government,” is contained in Chitra Ragavan, “WhoLost Iraq?” U.S. News and World Report, Nov. 27, 2006.15Hartle, op. cit.16The Boland Amendment was enacted due to concerns of widespread human rights abuses by the Contras, who received their initial military trainingfrom “dirty warriors” sent by Argentina’s brutal defacto regime.Security and Defense Studies Review 2010 Fall-Winter Issue / Edicíón Otoño-Invierno 2010 / Edicão Outono-Inverno 2010 / Volume 11 133