GEYER: Straight-shooting Jones

COMMENTARY:

You have in Gen. James Jones an exemplary military man who always accomplishes his mission and repeatedly risked his life - but also (and this is the really interesting part) you have a man who let it be known in his own way that he was totally against American policy in both Vietnam and Iraq, and yet stayed in office and never lost his integrity. That is almost a unique accomplishment in the morally (to put it kindly) “diffuse” world of these last years.

Let’s start with personal memories. In October 2004, I was privileged to attend a small dinner Mr. Jones gave at the NATO commander’s home in Belgium, the Chateau Gendebien in Mons. The conversation inevitably turned to Iraq and the war that was then all but failing.

We pressed him on Iraq, and we particularly pressed him on the responsibility of the military man to speak out. He was very careful in his answers. He finally said there is a law in America that military men have “the obligation to speak their own minds … when they testify before Congress.” There is such a law, although few invoke it.

I always think of that moment as the moment when a man, long put-upon to fight and lead in wars he did not believe in, deftly pointed out to us, by inversion if you will, the military man or woman’s real responsibility.

The tall, imposing, but somehow serene man who is 6 foot 5 inches and exemplifies the bearing of the professional soldier, had told me that afternoon in one of my several formal interviews with him, “In Iraq, you can’t imagine it getting any worse.” But, he said at another point, “The political dialogue [in Washington] is what it is, and we salute smartly and move on. … I’ve never been challenged because I’ve always been very correct. My attitude is let’s get through this so we can get back to other things.”

Two other points about Mr. Jones:

c He talked knowingly about “fourth-generation warfare,” the military’s moniker for today’s version of guerrilla warfare against the state that is even older than Caesar’s ghost. He then went into “maneuver warfare,” which simply means soldiers being deployed not in lines of regimental splendor but in more open, maneuverable guerrilla-style warfare.

Recalling his time in Vietnam, Mr. Jones said: “The worst possible outcome in Iraq is that you could win every battle and lose the war. At the strategic level, we need to think through that message. … I think we’re learning, but slowly. The Marines are the only ones really talking about ‘maneuver warfare,’ and that’s only after the Gulf war. We’re using words like ‘maneuverability,’ like ‘expeditionary warfare.’ This is the last piece of the transformation of the U.S. Army. … People are learning, but these ideas are not codified yet.”

c He could not have made clearer that day in Mons, a town just outside Brussels, that America needed European allies. (Remember, this was when the Bush administration was insulting the Europeans left and right.) “We couldn’t have done anything in Afghanistan without the Germans and French,” he said firmly. “That is a point we should remember.”

Since that interview, as the war in Iraq became somewhat better and the Afghan war worse, the Marine general, now retired, has been more explicit in his feelings that were so contained, but evident, that night in Mons. He warned against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “systematic emasculation” of the military’s top men, and recalled recently on television that he stood up one day in Vietnam and asked himself, “Why are we here?” According to recent books, he derided the war with Iraq as a “debacle” and recently told Congress, “Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan.”

Gen. Jones is also known for simply turning down jobs - the U.S. Central Command, for instance - that others would have given anything even to be nominated for. Because of Mr. Rumsfeld’s dictatorial management style, others - like the highly respected Gen. Eric Shinseki, who early on in the war told Congress we needed more troops in Iraq and was immediately sacked by Mr. Rumsfeld - have chosen to, or been driven to, take that other road, that of the public martyr. Many more middle-level officers, in particular, have quietly resigned from the military, leaving the country absurdly and unnecessarily unprotected.

But the martyrs are quickly forgotten and resignations don’t excite, or even reach, the American public in general. Jim Jones, as everyone calls him, chose a different route - just enough protest so everyone knew where he stood, and yet not so much that he had to leave his beloved life in the military, and particularly the Marine Corps.

And now, far from the obscurity that awaited others, he is national security adviser to the popular young president-elect whom so many expect so much from.

This is a key position, perhaps the key position, perhaps more influential than that of secretary of state. He will stand right next to the president, probably not often in the public eye, but day to day, giving the president information and advice on the world situation as his impressive experience forms it.

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