Crazy Talk

"Top military leaders" at the Pentagon are bending LA Times defense correspondent Julian Barnes' ear with all kinds of crazy nonsense. Some people think official military assessments of the situation in Iraq should reflect the full range of views held by senior officers, rather than the opinions of a single general. Others feel the President of the United States and the other civilian policymakers whose orders the generals follow ought to take responsibility for their own policy decisions.

One wonders why so many troops hate the troops. Must be phony soldiers. (Look! A MoveOn ad! How disgraceful!)

Comments

I missed something. How do you get from "Bush hid behind Petraeus" to "why so many troops hate the troops"?

Go ahead and criticize the President for trying to hide behind Petraeus. He was wrong to use a serving military leader as window dressing for his political decisions. But the troops-hate-the-troops comment doesn't make any sense.

And this doesn't make any sense either:
"I would hope they wouldn't put anyone through what we put Petraeus through. I would hope next time, we would not have the same level of attention," said the senior military official.

It's absolutely right that U.S. military leaders report on their service. The problem wasn't that there was too much attention, the problem was the politicization (started by the President but continued by Congress) of what should have been an operational report.

Posted by kwo | November 26, 2007 1:26 PM

I loved the concern in this story about "undermining the public's faith that military leaders will give honest assessments of the war's progress."

I suppose "faith" -- as in, the "evidence of things not seen" -- would be the correct term for that state of mind, assuming it exists.

Posted by Glenn | November 26, 2007 1:36 PM

Right. If the public has any faith in US military leaders, it's clearly a pathological condition that should be treated immediately.

Because no military leader should be trusted to deliver an honest assessment of the situation - unless his ass is directly on the front line and subject to getting it shot off.

Which NO US general has been since WWII if I'm not mistaken. Anybody know any generals in Korea or Vietnam who ever got near actual combat?

They stopped that shit after WWII when it became clear that officers really could get killed in a war.

Since then, it's been a matter of sucking up to the politicians for career purposes.

I'm not saying there aren't any generals in the military now who might be trustworthy. I'm just saying I don't know any and I don't know how you'd know they were at this point.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 26, 2007 9:48 PM