CENTCOM Commander Admiral Fallon Resigns (UPDATED)

Apparently rumors have been swirling around for awhile that Fallon was on his way out. Well, today he resigned and the speculation is that it was over a recent interview he did in Esquire, written by Thomas P.M. Barnett (regarding which Josh noted Fallon’s strange reaction last week). However, you can rest assured that a different meme will be floated as to why Fallon is gone:

Adm. William J. Fallon, the top American commander in the Middle East whose views on Iran and other issues have seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon said Tuesday afternoon.

The retirement of Admiral Fallon, 63, who only a year ago became the first Navy man to be named the commander of the United States Central Command, was announced by his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said that he accepted the admiral’s request to retire “with reluctance and regret.”

Despite the warm words, there was no question that the admiral’s premature departure stemmed from policy differences with the administration, and with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.

The bone of contention between Fallon and the Bush Administration, according to this meme (and sometimes, Adm. Fallon himself), is that Fallon refuses to go to war with Iran. From the Barnett profile in Esquire (HT: Allahpundit):

Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon’s statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House.

Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon’s caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.

And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he’s doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn’t do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He’s standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.

The only problem with the meme is that Administration officials who want to go to war with Iran are somewhat hard to come by:

The current issue of Esquire Magazine portrays Fallon as the one person in the military or Pentagon standing between the White House and war with Iran. The article credits Fallon with “brazenly challenging his commander in chief” over a possible war with Iran, which Fallon called an “ill-advised action,” and implies Fallon would resign rather than go to war against Iran.

[...]

Still, the gruff, outspoken CENTCOM commander has his detractors. “How many times can [Fallon] get away with these kinds of remarks,” before he’s forced out the door, asked one senior Pentagon official. The reason may be that on Iran, Gates and many senior military officials happen to agree with Fallon.

Most military leaders against military strike on Iran
Gates has said publicly and privately that under current conditions he’s opposed to war with Iran. Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen is also against it. In fact, almost every senior military officer we’ve talked to is against launching military strikes against Iran, because as one senior official told us, “then what do you do?”

[...]

In addition, military officials dispute the premise of the story that the White House is pressuring the military to go to war with Iran. “Not true,” said a senior military official, despite the anti-Iran drumbeat from Vice President Dick Cheney.

In fact, during a conference in Bahrain last December, Gates had to convince Gulf state Arab allies that the United States was not going soft on Iran, because from their vantage point it appeared the Bush administration was backing away from its tough stand against Iran.

In other words, Fallon seems to have erected a strawman against which to battle, and the Administration was not pleased with the argument being made, nor the way in which Fallon was portraying the CiC.

Admiral Fallon had rankled senior officials of the Bush administration with outspoken comments on such issues as dealing with Iran and on setting the pace of troop reductions from Iraq — even though his comments were well within the range of views expressed by Mr. Gates.

Officials said the last straw, however, came in an article in Esquire magazine by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a respected military analyst, that profiled Admiral Fallon under the headline, “The Man Between War and Peace.” The article highlighted comments Admiral Fallon made to the Arab television station Al Jazeera last fall, in which he said that a “constant drumbeat of conflict” from Washington that was directed at Iran and Iraq was “not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.”

It seems that Fallon saw the writing on the wall, however, leading to his strange “poison pen” comments:

Sources in the Pentagon said Fallon was worried the White House would perceive the magazine piece as a challenge to the president’s authority, and insisted that couldn’t be further from the truth. At the same time the sources said Fallon “doesn’t sound like someone considering resignation.”

In his own defense, Fallon told the Washington Post that the Esquire article was “poison pen stuff…disrespectful and ugly.”

While any policy differences, real or perceived, between top U.S. military commanders and the civilian leadership are not necessarily unusual, it’s rare when those commanders take the debate so public.

Finally, also via AP, Blackfive claims that Fallon’s resignation has been in the works for awhile, and suggests that Petraeus may be headed for the CENTCOM position:

…Wolf’s sources, for months now, have said that this was coming, not for disagreements with the administration about a looming war with Iran, but for some other internal “issues” that have nothing to do with policy or the administration. His replacement has been considered for some time now.

The media is speculating that this is another case of Shinseki-izing - the Bush administration getting rid of another dissenter. They are wrong.

Well, they were wrong about Shinseki too, so that shouldn’t be any surprise.

UPDATE: According to Think Progress (@ UpdateIV), Harry Reid is ready to get the meme rolling:

I am concerned that the resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and a military leader with more than three decades of command experience, is yet another example that independence and the frank, open airing of experts’ views are not welcomed in this Administration.

And Spencer Ackerman jumps on board:

Admiral William Fallon, the bulwark between Bush and a war with Iran, is resigning as head of U.S. Central Command. According to the tidbit I just saw on CNN, apparently Secretary Bob Gates said that Fallon quit for the most postmodern of reasons: Fallon thought a recent, highly-controversial Esquire article portrayed him as in opposition to Bush’s bellicosity over Iran … Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes.

Although, to be fair, Ackerman does offer another explanation:

This sounds like a resignation on principle. Either that or Fallon got caught with “Kristen.”

Heh.

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5 Responses to “CENTCOM Commander Admiral Fallon Resigns (UPDATED)”

  1. on 11 Mar 2008 at 4:17 pm Joshua Foust

    I’m of the opinion that if Fallon retired out a concern of disrupting the chain of command and/or his obvious disagreement with Bush over the merits of attacking Iran in some way, he is behaving with the utmost honor.

    That is, assuming it’s all true. Both Blackfive and Ackerman are working off rumors. Competing rumors (and both claims “sources close to blah blah blah”), but rumors nevertheless.

    Also, a bit earlier, I posted the rumors about Fallon’s connection to the Barnett piece—namely, that Barnett’s high profile exposure of the possible conflict between Fallon and Bush fomented a retirement that may have happened eventually anyway (and I don’t like the buried implication in some reports that Fallon is being pushed out to make way for a cushy and prestigious assignment for Petraeus once his tour is done in Iraq… the man did a good job, but that sort of political maneuvering is distasteful… again, if any of this is true, but I’m not at all sure about yet).

  2. on 11 Mar 2008 at 4:40 pm MichaelW

    I’m of the opinion that if Fallon retired out a concern of disrupting the chain of command and/or his obvious disagreement with Bush over the merits of attacking Iran in some way, he is behaving with the utmost honor.

    Other than the Iran thing, I’m in complete agreement. I don’t believe for a second that Bush wants to attack Iran, even if he does want Iran to think so. Whatever disagreements there are between Fallon and the CiC, I agree that he did the honorable thing in stepping aside. Indeed, I’m of the opinion that doing so “noisily” signals that he is unwilling to follow along with the administration’s plans. As I understand it, this is the only good way to make the statement “I disagree with you wholeheartedly Mr. President, and I’ll have none of it.”

    I don’t like the buried implication in some reports that Fallon is being pushed out to make way for a cushy and prestigious assignment for Petraeus once his tour is done in Iraq

    That bugs me too. Somehow the military seems like it should be off limits to the petty political BS that goes on everyday inside the Beltway. I guess it’s not.

  3. on 11 Mar 2008 at 6:52 pm Joshua Foust

    This was weird, too:

    The perception that Fallon has opposed a drive toward military action against Iran from within the Bush administration dates to his confirmation hearings in January 2007, when he told the Senate that the United States needed to exhaust all diplomatic options in its disputes with the Islamic republic.

    But he also has said that the United States would be able to take steps if Tehran were to attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet of the Persian Gulf and a choke point for much of the world’s oil.

    And he recently told CNN that the United States is looking for a peaceful settlement to disputes “in every case.”

    “We’re trying to encourage dialogue and find resolution,” he said. “In fact, that’s our message to the Iranians out here, given that everybody is nervous and anxious about their activities, is to come forth and explain what they are doing with all the people in the region.”

    On Tuesday, Gates said, “We have tried between us to put this misperception behind us over a period of months and, frankly, just have not been successful in doing so.”

    So do you think Fallon and Gates saw the Barnett piece as a way of fighting “this misperception,” and their jaws dropped when Barnett them not only didn’t diminish, but amplified the probability of an on-going catfight over Iran policy?

    That could explain the “poison pen” comment. And, if true, it would also sink Barnett’s access to other officials at the DoD.

  4. on 11 Mar 2008 at 7:29 pm Synova

    Has there been a drive toward military action against Iran?

    Granted… I *want* Iran to think so, but I really don’t see that there’s been anything much more substantial than fantasies based on the party-line that Bush is out of control militaristic… and *that* was going on prior to 9-11, even if no one remembers it. The rhetoric that certain persons and parties were bound and determined to go to war was, in my opinion, at least part of the plan for 9-11… to provoke a thoughtless and overwhelming response to the terrorist attack that day, that emotionally targeted all Muslims, maybe even Mecca, and so broke the apathy of all those Muslim moderates we were talking about.

    Really classic terrorist tactics of motivating those less prone to extremism to take up the cause.

    That interpretation of mine relies on what no one remembers… that certain people, pre 9-11, loudly proclaimed that certain other people wanted us to go to war and *would* react that way. Of course, Bush didn’t. Not even going on to Iraq was the sort of mindless retaliation that could have been expected by anyone who believed that the people saying such things were doing something other than bloviating.

    And I have to wonder, now, if it’s not a whole lot of the same. Attack Iran? Maybe, but why would we reasonably do anything *but* try to avoid that if at all possible? Because some people are heavily invested in the need to insist that Bush is not in any way reasonable?

    There’s domestic political posturing and then there is the truth… we shouldn’t mistake one for the other.

    We *should* do the macho breast-beating with Iran… but just because that is seen as illegitimate by those who’ve given us the metrosexual male doesn’t mean that this isn’t how humans and groups (and any number of animal species) haven’t worked out dominance *without* warfare since we were amoebas.

    Suggesting that someone *wants* war with Iran is… politics.

  5. on 12 Mar 2008 at 6:20 am Keith_Indy

    I would guess that it is Fallon’s public disagreements, at least those not testimony related, that was behind this.

    And while there may not be any support for attacking Iran, saying so publicaly, may be counter to our diplomatic strategy, and I would think, outside the chain of command and responsibilities.

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