With President Barack Obama’s July 2011 timetable for beginning the pullout from Afghanistan already thrown into serious doubt less than a week after being announced, top Congressional Democrats are expressing growing disquiet over the increasing willingness of top generals to publicly question the president.
“It concerns me when I see my president, the commander in chief, having to debate with generals,” noted Sen. Inouye (D-HI). Indeed, much of the criticism from the Republican opposition in the Senate is stemming from President Obama not going along with the very public demands of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for an even larger escalation.
So when Gen. McChrystal comes to testify before Congress later this week, scrutiny will be given not just to the status of the war (pretty much universally negative) but also to the general’s reaction to not being given everything he wanted by the president, and a sense of what remains of the chain of command.
And even though President Obama didn’t follow the general’s recommendations to a tee, it was a retired general, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, whose public criticism of McChrystal’s plans made much of the difference (to the consternation of McChrystal). It must be questioned how much of the Obama escalation plan is President Obama’s at all.
On the other hand it may be overstating the situation to blame the generals for undermining the July 2011 date as it was the president’s Secretaries of State and Defense who were the first and loudest voices insisting that the date didn’t really mean anything.
This article strikes at the crux of the dilemma – Is Obama Commander-in-Chief – or not? Seymour Hersh says that the Pentagon is in revolt against a leftist president who is the wrong color for most of them – a stalwart lot of neocons, Reaganites and racists according to Hersh. What actually needs to be done is a neocon purge and a general deprogramming of the Pentagon, West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy. Neoconservativism must be rooted out of our military establishment where it is deeply entrenched by holdovers from the Bush-Cheney era.
Amen!
What's needed is to dissolve the military-industrial complex.
What was it that got JFK killed…??? and then there was Reagan, always confusing what had occurred in his war films with current politics. There are more ways to kill a president than murder, just ask Jimmy Carter… What percentage of our federal tax dollars go to the national war addiction..?? I have heard estimates as high as 60%…….. This addiction to war is worse than an addiction to drugs…. It is all built on LIES, deception and duplicity…. Honest analysis is the enemy of the war juggernaut…………. "Are you with us or against us?" It's sports raw raw promoting murder..
The problem is that the president is not listening to the generals what choice do they have? A martial law? This is why the generals in Latin America had to impose martial laws.
I think the problem is really with Obama, if he asks them to pull out they will probably not object. But if he asks them to keep on fighting and expand the war to Pakistan then naturally they will ask for more troops.
Pullout, withdrawal- fascist amerikan buzzwords to placate some of the deluded masses !
tioche, Mexico
I would like to get you in my sights.
Obama should have decapitated the JCS as well as asked the resignations of the generals two stars and above. In not having had the guts to do it, it was only logical to expect this. That the generals are in revolt? It doesn't surprise me. They must have a lot of tricks to make life unbearable to a civilian president. After all, weren't they the ones who invented all of these LICs and stuff? They are the ones who taught Latin American generals how to carry out coups efficiently (Chile, Dominican Republic, etc.). Now they are bringing back their know how into the mainland. Speaking of karma :-D.