And it is on exactly that point that the Post correctly fears a dangerous precedent is in the process of being set. They rightly fear that based on what is currently happening to Secretary Rumsfeld, "will future defense secretaries have to worry about potential rebellions by their brass, and will they start choosing commanders according to calculations of political loyalty?"

The obvious answer to their question is yes -- unless the current insubordinations (if that is what they be) are promptly and severely sanctioned. Once generals start getting selected for their personal loyalty to a president, we are a dangerous step closer to the plague of Caesarism that not only corrupts governments around the world today -- but ended the Roman Republic and brought on Rome's Imperial Age.

Overwrought? Can't happen here? Take a chill pill? Maybe. But bad habits start very innocently and slowly corrupt a person or a country. For example, who would have thought 20 years ago that if a congressman stood up and said that our laws regarding our border and immigration should be enforced, he would be broadly accused of racism? And yet today, after 20 years of incrementally increasing indifference to our border laws, such is the case.

Things have been getting increasingly verbally sloppy in the military for some time. In the lead up to the Iraq War, senior officers were on background in major newspaper articles leaking bits and pieces of then currently debated secret war plans. In our intelligence services -- NSA, CIA, DIA, ONI, etc -- similar loose lips have gone on unsanctioned so long that it is now virtually standard operating procedure.

Rome was neither built, nor destroyed in a day. But it was destroyed.

Of course, sitting around the bar at the officer's mess and letting off steam about the secretary of defense or the president is a time-honored practice. But coordinated attacks on the secretary of defense from active-duty generals to retired generals to cable television and the New York Times is not a time-honored practice -- not yet.

And while I would have wished that the Washington Post editorial had given action guidance (and thus political cover) to our government, the real responsibility for vindicating the principle of military subordination to the civilian government lies with the president and secretary of defense.

Politically unpleasant as it may be, they should promptly order a court of inquiry pursuant to Article 135 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to determine if, as is widely suspected, or if not, the current military clamor for Secretary Rumsfeld to be fired involves any acts of insubordination.