Hitch on Hillary:

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.

It is hard to understand how Obama could really do this.  (Though if you read Dick Morris, certain aspects of the story do become more clear!)

This somewhat stinging look at soldiering was first published on April 27, 2007. I added a new first sentence. — RDC

“Generals and majors, uh huh,” goes the old lefty XTC song… And in between them are colonels — in this case, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, who has written a scathing critique of his superiors’ conduct of the Iraq war in the Armed Forces Journal, a non-governmental publication:

For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq’s grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America’s general officer corps. America’s generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America’s generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

“Yingling served as deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Iraq’s Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He attended the Army’s elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has written for one of the Army’s top professional journals, Military Review,” according to the AP; his byline says he “is deputy commander, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Operation Desert Storm. He holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago.” He’s the real deal, in other words. It’ s a long article, and Yingling goes to great pains to prove his point, but I am hardly fit to say whether his analysis is correct or dead wrong. You simply have to know the topic to make that decision and read his analysis critically, and I don’t; neither Yingling’s rank nor his use of of military and tactical terminology tell me anything about his qualification to judge the work of the officers who command him. Interestingly, the magazine offers a forum for reader discussion, and when I wrote this, there were no comments at all — even though this article is being reported on Drudge and the Associated Press.

Democracy: Good. Free speech: Good. Honesty: Good.

Active duty military officers criticizing their superiors in print? I don’t know. If he’s right, I want to know, don’t I? But aren’t there problems with this? A year ago, a debate erupted over public commentary about the White House’s management of the war by retired generals. This seemed mostly to be a matter of a breach of custom, a lapse in discretion, though Fred Kaplan, who frequently covers the military (and always criticizes the Bush White House regardless of what it does), thought it was the beginning of something much bigger. The focus then was on public criticism among active officers of civilian policy-making or policy-makers, which according to this is actually a crime.

Now it is something different: A military man is criticizing the general officers’ corps — his uniformed bosses. It is not as bad as criticizing the Secretary of Defense or the Commander in Chief, because it does not threaten the constitutional principle of civilian leadership of the military. On the other hand, the publication of this article is arguably a serious breach of military protocol, which of course Yingling knows. It is a perfectly sensible policy that one not use the press or other vehicles outside the chain of command to circumvent that chain, whether in terms of policy or otherwise. There are exceptions in the case of the reporting of crimes — but policy disagreements?

What should be done? Read the rest of this entry »