News to me. Being a member, maybe they were just shucking and jiving me, pretending they were doing a bunch of stuff, trying to stay on my good side, keep the big checks rolling in…
But lets examine another aspect to this issue:
Poll on a variety of subjects Iraq related…
53% responded that they believed that he would try to make things look better than they really are.
Hence, we are free to entertain the notion that MoveOn’s take on the matter is in general agreement with the public at large. The public at large does not share the conviction that Petreaus is a man of adamant integrity, a paragon of candor, but a PR flack in a uniform.
The moment is best typified for me by my most recent experience of Fox Gnus, with Whiplash Annie, the delightfully equine Ms Coulter, advising her interviewer that the Dems were rooting for AlQ and hoping more soldiers get killed so as to advance their agenda. Her interviewer nodded sombrely, and segwayed straight away in the ghastly slander visited upon Gen Petreaus, how every Democrat should commit seppuku at once.
I guess it just depends on which troops you want to throw over the side of your swiftboat, huh? By the way, it makes it easier to do so if they are missing two legs and an arm.
Character, my ass. Republicans have no longer the right to call anyone out on issues of character, integrity, honor, decency. Those words have no meaning coming out of their mouths.
So in that case, all Bush has to do is put the words he wants said in the mouth of a General. If you disagree with Bush, he can counter that he’s just reflecting what the General said. And if you disagree with the General, you hate America.
Neither does MoveOn if it decides to plsy 3rd grade taunting games. By the same measure, I’d say those that defend such tactics have very little standing to comment on matters of integrity.
Oh, I would count myself in the majority there. But contrary to MoveOn, I don’t think he tried to put a good spin on his report because he’s a Bush crony. (OMG! He wrote an article for the Washington Post on an important issue he has first hand knowledge about six weeks before an election! Give me a break.) The military “can-do” attitude is pervasive, and I don’t see why there’d be any reason why Petraeus would be any different. There is plenty of basis to challenge his views without calling him a traitor. That is just out of line.
By the way, I find it ironic that MoveOn uses the most recent NIE as proof that the surge has failed. The very first judgment states, “There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007. The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks.” I don’t think the surge has worked, but holding this up as evidence that Petraeus is a liar is bizarre – kind of like one of those SDMB characters that doesn’t read his own cites to find that the situation is more complex than he wishes to acknowledge.
Who called him a “traitor”? Can you limit your criticism to the actual words used, or do you have to gussy it up to have a case? Bush crony or not, he has a four year history of full-fledged support for the war and of starkly incorrect predictions of the course of the war. Glenn Greenwald provides some summary here.
Perhaps “crony” or “betray” are not terms to your liking. How about “ass kissing little chickenshit”? That was reportedly the evaluation his commander, Admiral Fallon, chief of CENTCOM had of him. Maybe that evaluation of his character is fairly accurate, leading one to wonder if he would be able to give the accurate assessment he owes the American people, or if he would betray us on that account.
You might also ask yourself whether the appearance of can-do attitude among the current military representatives is a reflection of a harsh weeding out of those military members less willing to sing the right tune.
How about those “characters” who selectively quote from NIE’s? Surely you took note of the decently highlighted “however” that followed your quote, although I note you did not maintain the full integrity of the quote. Let me do you the honor of quoting it for you.
It is this type of information that led Hagel to ask what the hell we are fighting for, and for Petraeus in a moment of candor to acknowledge that he did not know if the war would make us any safer. In a fit of can-do honor, decency, integrity and character, however, he backpedalled from that assessment.
Possibly. I look at it this way: I have never in my life heard someone use the term “investment” to talk about dead soldiers. OTOH, I have heard hundreds and hundreds of times the term “investment” used to describe money spent. So, I go with the most reasonable, common usage of the term. Maybe he is the first guy ever to use the term in that way, or maybe he is just using the term the way almost everyone uses the term. I go with the simpler explanation.
Let’s remember the Kerry “stuck in Iraq” comment. Most of us, me included, gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was talking about Bush, even if a literal interpretation of what he said would imply that he meant the troops were stuck in Iraq because the weren’t smart enough. Same thing here. Some of the partisan hacks on the right insisted otherwise, but they were clearly pushing an agenda rather than trying to understand what actually happened.
Bullshit. When you’re a general who fights more with WaPo op-eds and Fox News TV appearances than with a gun, you’re not “one of the troops.”
And like DoctorJ said, if even your top generals are “one of the troops” and if criticizing those generals means you’re not “supporting the troops,” then all Bush has to do is use the general as his ventriloquist’s dummy to put his policies beyond criticism. Reductio ad absurdum.
I have, back during the last quagmire. And besides, in Boehner’s remarks, there’s just no way the money and its payoff can be separated from the cost in troop deaths and injuries and its payoff:
Unless he’s got some miraculous pony plan that only involves spending money and not lives to achieve those aims, he has to be talking about both, or his words are nonsense.
Unless, of course, he regards one part of that cost as immaterial. One could just be talking about the cost in lives, if one believes the money is comparatively of no consequence, or vice versa.
Boehner is pretty much right. Historically, our losses in Iraq are pretty small. The Coalition has barely breached 4,000 dead – that’s getting our hair mussed, at worst.
The Republicans are responsible for ratcheting up the super jingoist “support the troops” atmosphere. When they underfunded VA hospitals, cut troop pay, extended tours, didn’t send them body armor and other equipment which they needed, cut benefits, had no plans for the Iraq occupation post invasion, and pretty much treated them like shit, that was a large weakness in the GOP armor which the Dems have somewhat exploited. As usual, they could’ve been a million times more effective, but they more or less did it. And rightly so.
But now some Dems and the anti-war left in general (i.e. blogs) are trying to take the “support the troops” cudgel they’ve stolen from the GOP and use it in a manner which make no sense. In many ways, this fascination and exploitation of the amount of U.S. dead has been the central pillar of the anti-Iraq war propaganda for about two years now. Presumably, if we had lost 100 soldiers so far everything would be dandy. The funny thing is, it seems to work. Most likely because the American people had no idea what they were getting into and didn’t even really believe in or understand the mission, the region, or really anything about war, it was just “U.S.! U.S.!” and watching green cities be bombed on CNN while eating potato chips.
Either the mission is worth it or it’s not. Either the logic of the war makes sense or it doesn’t. It’s either moral or immoral as you understand the world. You support the war, 4,000 dead or no. You’re against the war, whether it’s four, 4,000, or 40,000 dead. You certainly don’t take a “Well, let’s see how this works out, I’m not really sure” approach. Maybe when you’re buying breakfast cereal – certainly not when you back a fucking war.
Mr. Moto, let me raise another issue from your comment.
If generals (and the troops) should be above criticism (since we all want to support the troops), who else should be similarly above criticism?
Presidents? Supreme Court Justices? Congresscritters? Federal judges? Cabinet secretaries? Other Executive Branch political appointees? Career bureaucrats? Congressional staffers? Police chiefs? Police? Firefighters?
It would seem strange to me that the military should have some uniquely exalted role that place them alone beyond criticism.
Yes, they risk their lives on our behalf, and we owe them a deep debt of gratitude, which needs to be repaid by making sure they have the best equipment we can get them, to reduce their risk as much as reasonably possible in the context of their mission, and by ensuring that if and when they’re killed and wounded, that they get the best care and rehabilitation we can give them, and that adequate provision is made for their survivors, per Lincoln’s words in his Second Inaugural Address.
But the mission itself is a civilian choice, and needs be open to lively civilian debate. If active-duty military join in that debate, then their positions and opinions become subject to debate. And if they provide factual information to inform the debate, then their duty (aside from concealing classified info) is to provide such information in as honest and unbiased a manner as possible, so as to give the civilian decision-makers - from the President to Congress to We, the People - honest information on which to base our decisions.
And if they cook the books to try to influence our decision one way or another, yes, that is a betrayal of sorts, and at that point, the character of those providing such biased testimony should be called into question.
We should “support the troops” in doing their duty. But when they do something wrong in the place of doing their duty, damned straight we should speak up.
I think some people “support the troops” as long as they are toeing the Republican line. Look how these “patriots” roundly condemned John Kerry, who took the enemy fire that George Bush never saw.
This was all a fix from day one, we should have been calling them on it for months. The report was going to be positive, that was a given. There are two kinds of generals, those that tell Bush what he wants to hear and those that retire. Because of this, Petreaus doesn’t automatically get a free pass. If the numbers and charts are phony, he should be called on it. If his report bears no resemblence to any other assessment of the situation, that needs to be debated. We don’t support the troops by blindly following the leadership, we support them by keeping the leadership honest.
If you read my post above, you will note I did not say that General Petraeus should be above criticism. I merely opined that, given his genuine contributions to our country (more than you or I have made, I’ll bet) such criticism should be restricted to points of disagreement and not the man’s character.
And if you go back to that Beauchamp thread, you will see that my criticisms of him were extremely restrained.
You make a strong point here. But two things come to mind:
One is that the war may be adjudged worth the cost in blood and treasure. But saying that the deaths and injuries are a “small price” to pay…well, they never are. The cost is always enormous in the lives of the survivors. Ask my mother-in-law, who never knew her father, killed in the final weeks of WWII. Or ask her mother, who knew the husband she lost so briefly that it would now seem like a long-ago dream, but for the daughter she had to raise alone.
That was a more distant war, but this war will have many stories like it. To tell those whose stories they are that the price they pay is “small” is to crap all over them. That’s the reason why Boehner’s comment hit a nerve with me, and I suspect it’s why it has struck a nerve with many others too.
The second is that it illuminates a fundamental problem with the war. Let’s suppose that Boehner had just said that the cost, as high as it might seem, would ultimately prove worth it if we were to see it through.
Obviously if you’re like me, and you think we’re just throwing more lives down the drain to no good purpose, the cost is too high - any cost is too high.
And if, OTOH, you believe that we’re on a clear, if difficult, path towards an unambiguous attainable objective, then you can make a decision about whether the cost is likely to be worth the result: if yes, stay the course; if no, then throw in the towel.
But we’ve had four and a half years of shifting goalposts, rationales, and approaches. Many of the war’s proponents either admit that even the prospect of stabilizing Iraq is a longshot gamble, or will take another decade, or both. Many other war proponents are what Kevin Drum terms “chaos hawks” - that is, they aren’t sure we can accomplish anything positive, but we’ve got to stay because of the chaos and violence that is likely to erupt when we leave. And of course the Administration spins a more positive view, but nobody really believes them anymore.
In short, there’s no basis for making that sort of cost-benefit call to justify the war. All a proponent can say is, “Well, let’s see how this works out, I’m not really sure.” There’s no way to be confident of a payoff that will in the end justify the blood spilled, by anyone’s calculus. Those prosecuting the war are clearly blundering around in the dark, hoping the thing comes to a decent conclusion. But it isn’t clear what tenable conclusion we can reach, or how long it will take (and hence how many lives it is likely to cost).
It’s ‘worth it’ if you believe there’s a sufficiently nice pony behind door number three, but not only can nobody be sure there’s even a pony behind the door, but nobody’s got a clue as to whether spending any number of lives will open the door to begin with, and if so, how to translate the lives into getting the door open.
And I’ve made an argument that his character is open to question. Got a rebuttal, or merely an assertion to the contrary?
But it was fundamentally a questioning of his character and judgment, wasn’t it? He betrayed his buddies, you said. To use your actual words, he “fucked his buddies over,” “sold them out.” (I also think “extremely restrained” clearly means something vastly different to you than it does to me, but be that as it may.)
So Beauchamp’s character can be called into question for giving a “what it’s like” account of the war at ground level, but Betrayus…er, Petraeus’ character shouldn’t be, even though there’s a big pile of evidence that says he cooked the books to make it seem like his ‘surge’ was doing considerably better than it was, to mislead the American people and their elected representatives into supporting the continuation of his approach, and the war in general, rather than giving us the honest assessment we need to make an informed and rational decision.
Sorry, but that’s complete and total nonsense. Gimme a break.
BTW, Mr. Moto, I still am curious about whether your “don’t question their character” standard, regardless of how inconsistently you apply it within the military, applies to any of the other categories I’ve mentioned above, and why or why not.
No, he was asked two separate questions, and he probably chose the first (and simpler) question to answer.
I note that you didn’t respond to the part of my post about Kerry’s “stuck in Iraq” comment from a year or so ago. Why were you willing to accept Kerry’s explanation, after the fact, and not Boehner’s? If all you want to do is score political points for your side, then that’s fine. Kerry insulted the troops and Boehner made light of their deaths. We’ll take them both at their literal words. But in that case, let’s not pretend that we’re having some kind of debate.
(I would also remind those on the right that if you’re willing to accept Boehner’s explanation here, but you weren’t willing to accept Kerry’s, that you should go back and reconsider your position.)
“Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.”
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, to betray is to: “1. (a) To give aid or information to an enemy of; commit treason against: betray one’s country.” Is there some hair you want to split here?
Wow. Generals support the war. Why don’t you tell me which maverick anti-war generals you’d promote if you were president.
This has nothing to do with the “current” crop of military officers. I can’t think of the last general to go public with an assessment of failure and that there’s nothing the military can do but withdrawal. I’m sure that such advice has at times been offered in private. If you can think of generals or admirals who have thrown up their hands and said, “Fuck it, we’re screwed!” let me know.
What about those who criticize someone for a post they didn’t seem to read? I said the NIE presented a situation more complex than MoveOn makes it out, and that is demonstrated in the very first sentence. There’s something in there for everyone, pro- or anti-war, which is exactly what Petraeus is being criticized for, but for whatever reason, MoveOn is crapping its pants with joy over smearing a general, and uses as a citation a CIA report that more or less says similar things. Petraeus says violence has dropped in eight of twelve weeks, CIA says it has dropped in seven of nine weeks. So, what is your point exactly?
ISTM that it’s all one question, no matter how it’s asked. There’s no unraveling those costs. I mean, sure, you can say “the money’s a small price to pay, but the lives aren’t” but unless he puts a lower value on the lives than the money, that leads to the conclusion that we’re not paying a small price here.
Please provide a link to where I “accept[ed] Kerry’s explanation” because I don’t remember having expressed an opinion. But surely you’re basing the claim that I did on something I said at the time, so a link would be appreciated. I’ve done a couple of searches, and come up empty, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there to find. (Hell, I can’t even find the thread - I searched all forums for threads with “Kerry” in the title, more than 6 months old, and the thread titles that looked to me like they might be on topic, weren’t.)
At any rate, at this remove, I don’t “accept Kerry’s explanation” because I don’t remember shit about what he said, or his explanation, or anything else around that mini-controversy.