This#General Stanley
McChrystal# This# President Barack
Obama
The
summary removal by President Barack Obama of
General Stanley McChrystal from command of the
US-led International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in Afghanistan for reported derogatory
remarks by him and his staff about the President
and Vice-President of the US is a lesson in
civilian control over the military in a
democracy.
The reportage on the
basis of which the US President took that fateful
decision was published in the Rolling Stone
magazine by a journalist who
apparently knew that it is standard practice in
military establishments to talk fast and loose
about political personalities and national events.
He fixed an appointment, listened to the talk and
reported it. It is of the same genre as a
Indian publication's expose about corruption
in political and military personalities. Based on
foreknowledge of such tendencies, the publication
used a subterfuge and proved to the world that
there was corruption in the Defence
Minister’s House, in the ruling party
headquarters and in several levels of the military
establishment.
Since then, worse things
have happened like the theft of Indian Navy
secrets. The suspect, a relative of the then Chief
of Naval Staff, fled the country.
More
recently, at the height of the disturbances in
Jammu and Kashmir Chief of Army Staff General
V.K.Singh thought it fit to contradict in the
media Government decision to deploy the Army in
the State in tone and content that was highly
critical of the political leadership. The Chief
should know from his vast experience in
counter-insurgency operations in the North East
and in Jammu and Kashmir that separatism and
terrorism thrive on such public displays of
division and disagreement within the
government.
The fiat
issued by the Minister of Defence to the Chief of
Army Staff to take appropriate action against his
Military Secretary for involvement in what has
come to be known as the “Sukhna land
scam” is an unprecedented act which is being
made out to be unnecessary interference by the
civilian authority in military matters.
The obvious needs to be stated and restated
again and again that if the Minister had not
acted, practically at the nick of time, an
officer, charged by his peer within the military
establishment of grave misconduct and recommended
to be dismissed would have got away with a
disproportionately lower “administrative
action” than what should normally attract
stricter provisions of the Army Act and the Indian
Penal Code. The matter is still under judicial
review.
Of all the pros and cons of
this case one thing is irrefutable: There are
persons within the military establishment who are
not conforming to the basic tenets for which the
Armed Forces personnel are revered, genuinely
revered. These are what are known as
“Officer Like Qualities (OLQ)” a list
of do’s and don’t’s the
adherence to which puts them on the pedestal
that they deserve. Who is out of line? Is it the
military for such transgressions that bring it
into disrepute or the media for reporting it?
In its internal dimension it indicates
that the military establishment is slowly slipping
into disarray with ex-Servicemen and their
representative organizations increasingly taking
on the garb of pressure groups to force the
Government into supposedly sound military advice
by “thinking” Generals like the
campaign of the late 80s and 90s for the
withdrawal of Indian troops from the Siachen
Glacier. Kargil proved how wrong they were.
The internal struggle for improvement
of the 6th Pay Commission recommendations has
drawn forth the statement from one of the
ex-Servicemen’s organizations apparently
with the full approval of serving officers that if
the demands are not conceded things could
“creep into the 1962 kind of
situation”. It is a veiled threat which
ex-Servicemen are holding out on behalf of their
serving fraternity and tends to gain credibility
because, as in the case of the Siachen Glacier
troop withdrawal demand, there is no disclaimer
from the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee
thereby signifying a
“likemindedness”. Books written
on the Chinese aggression of 1962 will put this
comment about creeping into a 1962 kind of
situation in context in all its starkness.
There can be no worse example of the
misuse of the media by the military than the
admission by a former Chief of Army Staff that he
was writing behind the veil of “Military
Correspondent” for an English language daily
while he was Chief. Or of the attitude of certain
persons within the military who leaked the
Henderson Brooke report on the debacle at the
hands of the Chinese in 1962 to author Neville
Maxwell with the intention of denigrating the
political leadership
Maxwell
himself admits in his Preface to
“India’s China War” that:
“I have drawn on material from
unpublished files and reports of the
Government of India and the Indian Army: I was
given access to these by officials and
officers who believed that it was time
that a full account was put together, and
who trusted me to write it fairly. I cannot, of
course, name them nor cite the
documents and files from which I have
drawn the material; I can only thank
them, and hope that they will not be
disappointed.”
The Press in India
is not averse to “being embedded” with
the military in its many counter-insurgency
operations or, as in all the Indo-Pak wars, in
battles against the enemy. It takes genuine pride
and feels honoured at being associated so closely
in the defence of national interests. That the
Press is a force-multiplier in conflict situations
is now an accepted article of faith.
To
quizzical comments by an exasperated military
establishment as to why must the Press report
every transgression by military personnel, the
curt reply was that as in the analogy of
“Man Bites Dog!” it is not the
behavior expected of a person wearing the colours
of the Indian Armed Forces.
