Shinseki's Defenders Label McChrystal a Threat

Monday, October 05, 2009

BARACK OBAMA

I realize that picking out inconsistencies in Katrina vandel Heuvel's thinking is roughly as difficult as finding beer in Ireland, but I found this observation from her yesterday on This Week as particularly amazing:

I respect President Obama for what he is doing with this review process. I think it shows good judgment. He knows it’s the defining decision of his administration. I think what General McChrystal has done forces us to think very tough — in a hard way in this country about civilian control of the military. And he might go back and read the Constitution, Article II, the president is the commander in chief. I think we’re at a dangerous moment in the civilian-military relationship.

It was left to Afghan war opponent George Will to declare, "It is not, Katrina, a constitutional crisis, for a theater commander, when asked in public a question about a policy the president himself is questioning, to give his opinion."

Anyway, I remember her singing the exact opposite tune back in 2003:

No wonder General Shinseki—the highest-ranking Asian-American in US military history—retired the other day with a blast at the arrogance of the Pentagon's civilian leaders:

"You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader," he said. "You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance."

Read between the lines. The Army chief of staff is telling us that men like Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are arrogant commanders, who not only exaggerated the threat Iraq posed but gravely underestimated the problems of postwar occupation. Americans would do well to heed General Shinseki's final warning.

So a general saying publicly that we need more troops to accompish the mission is bad when we have a Democratic president, but a general saying publicly that we need more troops to accomplish the mission is good when we have a Republican president. Got it.

10/05 08:51 AM Share