Wilkerson's WH Cabal

The former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State has an outraged op-ed piece in today's LA Times. "The White House Cabal" by Lawrence B. Wilkerson begins with this supposedly shocking revelation:

In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Well, yes, was my first response--this so-called cabal is called the National Security Council, and its purview is, not surprisingly, national security issues. Wilkerson notes that this cabal's workings were "efficient and swift"--both good things in my book, especially when dealing with military and terrorism matters.

Only later in the piece, after much of the emotionally charged rhetoric of dictatorship, secrecy and shadowy figures making clandestine decisions behind closed doors, does Wilkerson acknowledge that the constitution and processes of the National Security Council are ultimately up to the whim of the President of the day.

Wilkerson's major gripe seems to be twofold: 1) he and his boss were marginalised from the decision-making process by more forceful personalities, and 2) he does not like the decisions that were made. The first is hidden behind the second, however. He faults the process because of the outcome, which I think is the wrong way to go about making his point.

Rather, he should be making two arguments: 1) The Sec-State deserves to have more input into the making of national security policy, and/or that it should be a more transparent or deliberative operation; and 2) the decisions that were made were wrong. The first is procedural, the second is substantive. By conflating the procedural and substantive, Wilkerson's position is weakened. Some people may agree with him that the way the decisions were reached was flawed, but that the outcome was right. Some people might not see a problem with the nature of the process, but agree that the decisions reached were wrong.

All said, though, it is an important piece by a well-placed and knowledgable writer that deserves to be read.