General Disarray

In a reprint from the Wall Street Journal, my local newspaper published an op-ed today entitled “General Consensus.” It is in response the six generals that have recently come out in favor of showing the Rumsfeld the door written by four other generals.

Basically it’s the usual arguments that one would expect including that frustrating recurring argument that one should not question the president or his administration in time of war. I personally think that this is the silliest argument ever. I think that there is no better time to question a president. If the country has been led into a war the commander in chief had better have some good reasons for taking us there and if not should be brought to task over it. But both sides of this argument are as old as war itself so I won’t belabor it any more here.

What really makes me crawl the wall in this op-ed piece is this statement: “It unfortunately appears that two of [of the six] the retired generals (Messrs. Zinni and Newbold) do not understand the true nature of this radical ideology, Islamic extremism, and why we fight in Iraq. We suggest they listen to the tapes of United 93.”

First, I hate when pundits go opining and make vague and indefensible references like this. Why exactly do you feel that these generals don’t understand the true nature of the conflict or not? Whether you have a good reason for saying that, you come across as mean little men taking a cheap shot if you don’t back up these kinds of statements.

Then “Messrs.?” Oh, c’mon. Really?

But what really gets me is the 9/11 callback. Heretofore, this piece tried to present itself as thoughtful and reasoned in its approach to rebuffing the presidents *gasp* critics. OK, for anyone that’s been in a coma for the last five years or is just too stupid to have gotten the message by now, let me say again. IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH, 2001. Print that out and clip that previous sentence. Paste it to your bathroom mirror until you finally get it.

I have no idea why Bush dragged us to war. Some say oil. Some say to perpetuate the war machine. I just don’t know. I know that he’s a liar and obviously has some sort of agenda. But at no time do I think that he believed nor did anyone, that has any realistic understanding of the situation, believe that Iraq or Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. That’s not to say that he didn’t exploit that fiction as much as he possibly could. He won an election by deceiving his coalition of the willing voters – willing or lazy enough to believe this spoon fed fiction.

But he’s won the election. We’re in Iraq and nobody can defensibly say that we should immediately pull out so can we just cut the crap already? Please stop trying to convince everyone that Saddam was involved in 9/11. He wasn’t. Accept it.