Spencer Ackerman points us to this Laura Rozen post in which she reports that Maj. General Paul Eaton (Ret.) is in the running to be one of undersecretary of defense for policy Michele Flournoy's deputies at the Department of Defense. Eaton was one of the retired military officials present at the signing of Obama's executive orders confining interrogation methods by American agents to the Army Field Manual, and spoke very critically of the previous administration's interrogation policies.
Ackerman recalls this Washington Post editorial from 2006 titled "The Generals' Revolt," which was printed in reaction to a group of retired military officials who had leveled harsh criticisms of Donald Rumsfeld's conduct of the war in Iraq. The Post fretted that the generals' speaking out "threatens the essential democratic principle of military subordination to civilian control -- the more so because a couple of the officers claim they are speaking for some still on active duty".
It's worth remembering though, what the General's Revolt was about. It was chiefly Rumsfeld's handling of the war and the punishment of officials who disagreed with his approach, but it was also the treatment of detainees, in particular the Abu Ghraib scandal. Although the Post noted that "it was clear that the defense secretary was directly responsible for the policy of abuse toward detainees that resulted in the shocking Abu Ghraib photographs," they nevertheless concluded that the retired generals' behavior was some terrible subversion of democracy. Which when you think about it, is truly bizarre: the Post was more concerned with an extremely abstract potential threat to democracy at the expense of very clear, and very concrete, human rights violations. Which in turn, goes a long way towards explaining why the paper has remained squeamish about prosecutions for those who enabled or ordered those violations.
UPDATE: Laura emails to correct my first paragraph, she says the Eaton is in the running for another undersecretary position, which would make him Flournoy's equal, not her subordinate.
-- A. Serwer
