And another thing...

Dear Lord, save us from our infallible generals

In the last post I was whining about whiny white folks whining.

In this one I'm going to gripe a little about who Democrats need to be defending and who not. I'm thinking in particular of this (from Kerry's gibe, GOP reaction stir up perfect political storm by Marc Sandalow San Francisco Chronicle 11/02/06):

House Majority Leader John Boehner distributed a statement on Kerry that said: "He is liberal, a leftist, and this is the typical attitude they have toward our military."

"What the John Kerry's misquote did is remind us that in the drawing salons of Boston and New York, when they drop their brandy and their cigars, interrupt their watching of the Lehrer news hour - they really don't have a great deal of respect for the military," said Republican strategist Michael Collins. ...

By the end of the day, it was Democrats who were voicing outrage over a comment Boehner made on CNN when asked whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is to blame for failures in Iraq.

"The fact is the generals on the ground are in charge, and he works closely with them and the president," Boehner said.

All of which was pure Republican demagoguery, of course. But Josh Marshall, who is normally very sensible about these things, wrote in this 11/01/06 post criticized Boehner's bonehead statement by summarizing it this way:

Don't blame Rummy. It was the friggin' soldiers who screwed up. ...

It's bad enough Boehner wants to place blame on the soldiers in the field.

Let's take it slow and easy: Criticizing-generals-is-not-criticizing-the-soldiers-who-serve-under-them.

Yes, it's perfectly legitimate to knock Boehner for trying to shunt the blame off onto the generals. But the last thing Dems need to do right now is try to equate criticism of our infallible generals to criticism of the soldiers. For decades, our noble generals have managed to hide staggering amounts of waste and incompetence behind the idolotrous glow that both parties have tacitly agreed to put over "the troops".


Boehner is dead wrong on Rummy. He's awful in so many ways it's mind-boggling. He deserves to be impeached and shipped off to the International Criminal Court for prosecution on various war crimes.

But the generals have their share of blame for the Iraq War disaster, too. For one, they've spent the three decades since the Vietnam War preparing to fight Soviet Army Central in Germany. Their solution for guerrilla wars like the Vietnam War was, let's not fight another one. Sensible enough up to a point. But now they're fighting a counterinsurgency war as though their determined to repeat every mistake the British, the French and the Russians have made in doing so.

And let's not forget that the Abu Ghuraib and other related torture incidents could not have happened without at least the connivance of senior military leadership. There are a number of civilian officials who bear responsibility for that. But it wasn't a bunch of civilians who conducted the torture center known as Guantánamo's Camp De Sade, or whatever they call that prison camp where they tortured their victims repeatedly over months and even years.

Generals are not beyond criticism. Neither are individual soldiers for that matter. Good God, there are bad apples in every army and they shouldn't get a free pass from anyone because of some mauldlin, phony reverence for The Troops.

But it's especially important in the case of generals, who really hold tremendous power, to remember that they really are fallible human beings like the rest of us. Hopefully more competent in military matters and management. But subject to all the failings of our species. Including the tendency to mistake deference from subordinates for a sign of one's own special virtues.

Tags: john boehner

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