An op-ed in Global Times this past April 27, headlined “Why U.S. Will Lose a War with China over Taiwan Island,” was written by a science advisor to the U.S. Marine Corps working in the Pentagon, Franz Gayl – and Gayl says “They [GT] actually toned it down, if you can believe that.” The unusual whistleblower lost his security clearances after a second Global Times op-ed in May, and is resigning from his job for the Marines; nonetheless, as the Washington Post quoted him in a June 13 article, “I’m glad that I did it … but it was probably a step too far for the Marine Corps.”
Strikingly, none of the remarks quoted from Gayl in the Post article are discussing details of the reasons for his judgment regarding a conflict over Taiwan; rather, they are comments on the blooming unreality of Pentagon strategy and all-of-government geopolitical ideas. “If we don’t talk about this now, we are going to sleepwalk into this conflict” between the U.S. and China, he says. And he elaborates: “Any reasonable man or woman would say that it’s outrageous for a civil servant working inside the bowels of the Pentagon to write on a communist news site, right? Under any other circumstances, I’d say yeah. But I needed to get this thing elevated.” His letter submitting the op-ed to Global Times, after it was rejected by many American publications, commented: “I will probably get in some trouble for reaching out to an authoritative Chinese publication to raise issues that counter bad U.S. policy. But the imminent war will be a tragedy we will all regret.”
Gayl is 64, married with three grown children, and in no way an expatriate type although his Pentagon career is clearly over. His previous trouble with military brass was from a whistleblowing episode in 2007, and involved Gayl observing long delays in up-armoring the armored vehicles called MRAPs in Iraq, which resulted in many U.S. service members’ deaths. Several U.S. Senators praised him as a hero for it, including then-Sen. Joe Biden. This time no one is calling him a “hero,” because he’s blowing the whistle on an insane war policy whose ideological grip spans both Houses and both parties in Congress as well as the Executive and military leadership and much of academia. There are legions of sleepwalkers.
Gayl is again quoted: “I knew the things I was saying weren’t going to get approval, but … we are running out of time as a country.”
