When Generals Lie
It took 30 years, and 9/11, for Americans' confidence in the military to climb out of the pit it had fallen into during the Vietnam War. Will Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress be the tipping point that sends it back toward the cellar?
We are accustomed to used car salesmen lying. We expect politicians to be Pinocchios, and the media are routinely assumed to be untrustworthy. But since 2001, the great exception to Americans' mistrust of institutions has been our confidence in U.S. military leadership. Even the debacle in Iraq hasn't shaken our trust in the brass. At the start of this year, with support for Bush confined to canines, and with an overwhelming popular demand to get out of Iraq, 84% of Americans nevertheless had a favorable view of the military, and nearly half the country said they had a very favorable view.
As a Pew report points out, it was very different during Vietnam. The more that Americans thought Vietnam was a mistake, the more they took it out not only on Lyndon Johnson and the war's civilian architects, but also on the Pentagon, and on the commanders on the ground in Southeast Asia. Today, the chickenhawk right -- led by the Revisionist-in-Chief, Mr. Texas Air National Guard himself, plus Mr. Six Deferments -- claims that we lost Vietnam because a nation of dirty f-ing hippies spat on returning grunts. That, of course, is untrue. We didn't turn against our kids; we turned against the Gulf of Tonkin liars, and the Pentagon Papers censors, and the My Lai commanders, and the generals who played footsie with the facts about Vietcong troop strength.
It's already abundantly clear what conclusion President Bush is going to draw from the Congressional testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker: the surge is working. He will have amnesia about the benchmarks for surge success that he himself set at the start of the year. He will hold out the prospect of maybe withdrawing one brigade maybe by Christmas. He will proclaim the continuing vitality of his batshit-insane belief that 130,000 American troops can end 13 centuries of intra-Islamic strife. And he will hold fast to his plan to make his successor bear the blame for his own abysmal failure.
It's also abundantly clear what the Congress will do. Republicans will celebrate the Miracle of September, and will proclaim any deviation from Dear Leader's plan to be tantamount to treason. Democrats, with perhaps a handful of honorable exceptions, will be so fearful of being called bad names by Republicans that they will turn their backs on the 70-plus percent of Americans who want out of this nightmare and instead forge a pathetic consensus with the very lickspittles whose asses they were elected to kick. Instead of forcing Republicans to mount ruinous weeks-long round-the-clock filibusters on behalf of policies the country hates, instead of making Bush wield the veto pen over and over, they will play to a Beltway common-ground constituency that exists nowhere else in the country, and they will cling to their vain tooth-fairy belief that being Wise and Centrist will prevent them from being called terrorist-coddlers and Osama stooges.
And so, come March of 2008, instead of there being the zero combat brigades in Iraq that the Baker-Hamilton Study Group called for, there will be the 19 that Bush wants there. The open question is whether America's rage against that outcome will extend to our military leaders.
Gen. Petraeus, whose highly unusual Washington Post op-ed six weeks before the 2004 election insisted that we were making "tangible progress in Iraq," is no stranger to Bush-fellating. Gen. Richard Sherlock and Gen. Ray Odierno are accomplished fact-fudgers about U.S. military successes. Gen. Kevin Bergner, dispatched from his White House post to be the American military spokesman in Iraq, is as adept as Tony Snow at statistical snow jobs. Whatever the private dissents of the departing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Peter Pace, may have been, in public he was the perfect parrot for Pentagon policies.
When the Pentagon comes up with its own definitions of deaths in order to dispute the body counts coming from independent observers, you know you're in the Westmoreland Zone. When a 1982 CBS News documentary -- do you remember when there used to be broadcast news documentaries? -- said that Gen. William Westmoreland had fudged U.S. intelligence estimates of Vietcong strength in order to support his political bosses' contention that the Vietnam War was being won, Westy sued CBS for libel. Then, at the trial, two of his former intelligence officers, Major Gen. Joseph McChristian and Col. Gains Hawkins, testified that Westmoreland had indeed ordered changes in Communist troop strengths reports for political reasons. Westmoreland suddenly dropped his suit, in exchange for a CBS statement that it "never intended to assert, and does not believe, that General Westmoreland was unpatriotic or disloyal in performing his duties as he saw them." CBS retracted nothing.
I have no doubt that Gen. Petraeus, like Gens. Pace, Bergner, Odierno and Sherlock, and like Gen. Westmoreland, are patriotically performing their duties as they see them. The problem is how they see them. It was the politicization of military leadership that led Americans' confidence in the military to tank so precipitously during the Vietnam War. When Gen. Petraeus testifies to Congress, his dangerous desire to please his POTUS may be all that's needed to turn Americans' revulsion at Bush's war into Americans' distrust of Bush's brass.
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"...130,00
Well, I don't see why not. That's 10,000 troops per century, 1,000 per decade, 100 per year, that works out to only 3 days, 15 hours, and 36 minutes per G.I.
If they'll knuckle down and make it an even four days each, that'll be that problem handled until well into the 22nd century.
(and then we can move on to getting 9 women to turn out one baby in one month)
The sooner we surrender in Iraq the sooner we can move on to surrendering in Afghanistan.
Edwards 2008
That General Petraeus will carry Bush's water is a foregone conclusion. After all, it's far easier for G. W. Bush to go general shopping than it is for him to go judge shopping as he has managed to do on many occasions. Not all federal judges are all that eager to rubber stamp a tyrannical, despotic regime such as Bush/Cheney, especially since their legacy will endure far longer than Bush's remaining time in office.
The modern 21st Century Generals in the all-volunteer Army, however, have proven themselves to be little more than toadies clamoring for another star on their shoulders or suits-in-waiting for a nice cushy job on a defense contractor's board of directors or even a more lucrative job on K Street as a lobbyist for the Republican Party's corrupt corporate CEOs and benefactors.
Maybe at some point, let's say, after January 20, 2009 and after David Petraeus eases his way out of the U.S. Army, will we know for sure his true feelings and observations on the worst president in the history of the United States who sold our country and the world a deeply flawed and disastrous bill of goods, the Iraq War.
Though the Democrats possess a slim majority in both houses of congress it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are still in charge and who call all the shots. Since when did either party show they give a tinker's damn about what the American people want?
By 2008 we will have convinced the American voters that we do indeed have a one-party government: the Democrats and the Republicans. It may even be called the "Liebermanization" of our political system of non-democracy. We can hardly wait for General David Petraeus's non-assessment on how things are going (or not going) in Iraq.
After shit canning any and every military leader that did not support the Bush Doctrine, we get Gen Betrayus, a CYA specialist headed for "Glory" . . . what can be expected from a group that told us quickly all about Abo Grab-n-Arab, Pat Tillman, Lynch, Haditha, Abu Sifa, Fallujah, Gitmo, oh my . . . ???
. . . and will he apologize for all those weapons he "lost", now being use by Kurdish Rebels in Turkey and local warlords and rebels to kill Americans, while he so heroically managed Anbar? (And speaking of Turkey, can the Turkish Right Wingers advocate bombing the USA because our weapons are being used to kill their military, border guards, and citizens??)
Marty, isn't it about time to start ramping up your Diebold hysteria campaign? You got amazingly quiet about the elections being stolen by Diebold hackers after the Democrats took the last election. I guess since the libs won the Diebold system works huh?
That General Petraeus will carry Bush's water is a foregone conclusion. After all, it's far easier for G. W. Bush to go general shopping than it is for him to go judge shopping as he has managed to do on many occasions.
Not all federal judges are all that eager to rubber stamp a tyrannical, despotic regime such as Bush/Cheney, especially since their legacy will endure far longer than Bush's remaining time in office.
The modern 21st Century Generals in the all-volunteer Army, however, have proven themselves to be little more than toadies clamoring for another star on their shoulders or suits-in-waiting for a nice cushy job on a defense contractor's board of directors or even a more lucrative job on K Street as a lobbyist for the Republican Party's corrupt corporate CEOs and benefactors.
Maybe at some point, let's say, after January 20, 2009 and after David Petraeus eases his way out of the U.S. Army, will we know for sure his true feelings and observations on the worst president in the history of the United States who sold our country and the world a deeply flawed and disastrous bill of goods, the Iraq War.
Though the Democrats possess a slim majority in both houses of congress it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are still in charge and who call all the shots. Since when did either party show they give a tinker's damn about what the American people want?
By 2008 we will have convinced the American voters that we do indeed have a one-party government: the Democrats and the Republicans. It may even be called the "Liebermanization" of our political system of non-democracy. We can hardly wait for General David Petraeus's non-assessment on how things are going (or not going) in Iraq.
Every General who has served in Iraq including Petraeus speaks the words that George Bush wants them to speak. It is time the American people see this war for what it really is politics and power. Of course the oil in Iraq was at the top of the list
Jean Schmidt called Murtha a COWARD because he dared to tell america we are depleting our ground forces and need to get out of Iraq...bef
Americans should look Petraeus in the eye and tell him the Report we were promised since January, that he refuses to provde in September.
There is no victory for the U.S in Iraq. The sooner the rednecks realize this the sooner we will force Bush and his Nazi war criminals out of Iraq and out of office.
And Bush must know that he will never have peace in his mind or heart in this life-time. He has the blood of thousands and thousands of innocents on his hands. I would not want to be next to him when his god greets him at the end of his miserable life. I have a feeling He won't be too pleassed with little Georgie the Monster. I just hope Bush keeps his fucked up religious beliefs to his last breath because then we will know that he will suffer a fate far worse than anything anyone could imagine--fulfilling the eternal sentence that he must believe as a purported Christian. Good luck with that Georgie Boy!
The US Defense budget of $500 Billion dollars a year (our tax dollars) and a war in Iraq with a total cost over 1 Trillion dollars, supports a huge industrial machinery running. That is the root cause of all this "fighting for democracy" and other spin slogans they want us believe.
To support this machinery we have over 700 military bases in 100+ countries.
We support dictatorships, or create them, if that fits our purpose.
And while we blame everything on "Islamic facism" and terrorism, we kill innocent people (over 500 thousand in Iraq) with the support of our Church in the name of God.
We will spend over 1 Billion dollars to construct over 16 Embassy buildings in Iraq to "guard" against the terrorists in a land of less than 20 million people.
Does all this sound that there is any kind of trough about the support of "democracy" anywhere on this planet earth we so desperately trying to destroy??
The generals are nothing else but spoke persons, pions in my eyes, of this machinery.
Let's call spade a spade.
For all of you who have proclaimed Petraeus a liar or a "Bush man" what is your proof?
First of all the report hasn't even published yet, so unless you have some kind of inside source you are only guessing (at best.)
Second, what if the news is good from Iraq? There are many who have gone over there since the surge that are saying many good things about it. Can it be better, of course it could.
Just because the news may not be what you on the left want to hear doesn't mean it is a lie.
"First of all the report hasn't even published yet, so unless you have some kind of inside source you are only guessing (at best.)"
Sparky want to get on the same page with everyone else....TH
The very definition of "conflict of interest" is the generals' interest in their own careers and the interest of the public in knowing what's really going on in Eye-Rack. Do you think David will tell the truth, as he pledged to do when he was up for confirmation? And even if there is "progress" as we're definitely going to hear there is, how long do we give "progress" until it leads to at least an excuse to declare "victory." Does anyone really believe we can leave Eye-Rak within the next 25 years what with all the oil we must have while the US dithers with talk about "alternate fuels"? Does anyone really believe that Sunni and Shia and Kurd will suddenly make nice and become partners in a new Eden of Middle East democracy? Wanna buy a sphinx? Let's face it, we're stuck there and the next president will only begin to clean up Bush's doo-doo -- if she's a Democrat.
What a lot of folk don't understand is that the military will tell you exactly what it wants everyone to believe. Sometimes, it is the truth. Often not.
We lied to everyone in the Vietnam War, including ourselves. We still do.
Those with knee-jerk emotional reactions will always be used to provide money, support and sons/daughters for the slaughter.
Our society can survive the dying, but not the killing.
Ah, yes. Yet Another Bright and Shining Lie.
Marty, write the book, a follow-up to Neil Sheehan's.
Is it Christmas yet? What I'm hoping for is a miracle and that General He-stray-us is the leader who takes us from this dire national emergency under Bush/Cheney to an overthrow through military coup.
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