Martians and The Man Called Petraeus
by digby
This is a subject that doesn’t get enough attention, so it’s good to see a well-written, entertaining article discussing the fact that our fetishizing of the military has taken us to a place that we should be very cautious about going:
A Martian who dropped in to visit us could be forgiven for imagining that our nation is ruled from Virginia, while a president supported by a small staff in Washington merely advises the Pentagon on the views of the citizenry. One of the more pragmatic Republican policy wonks I know let his enthusiasm for Petraeus run so far away with him as to write: “The appointment of David Petraeus as CIA Director amounts to a demotion with honor … his immense stature and strong views were too much for the President to handle.”
So now membership in the president’s cabinet is a “demotion,” and managing your generals’ career paths is a manhood test for the commander in chief?
Petraeus, to his credit, explain to the Republicans in his CIA confirmation hearings that it was his job as a general to execute the decision of the civilian leadership not make it. but I don’t think most people, not just Republicans, really understand that anymore. And The Man Called Petraeus is one of the people who has perpetrated that misunderstanding.
This move to CIA was a very savvy decision on the part of the president. It not only takes Petraeus our of the running as a possible dark horse (or maybe white horse) candidate in 2012. It probably takes him out of GOP politics altogether. And that means that if he wants to run for president, which I still think is possible, he will have to run as a Democrat. In the end that may have been the biggest favor that barack Obama has done for the future of his party.
Read the whole article. It’s interesting and important. There’s something very wrong with the way Americans look at the military these days. It wasn’t like this when I was a kid, even before Vietnam. I’m not sure you could even do a TV comedy like Sgt Bilko today, it’s so “disrespectful” of the Army. Hell, maybe not even South Pacific or Mr Rogers. It’s become more of a religious order rather than a civil organization. Somehow, I doubt that the soldiers agree, but then they are only props in this ritualized military worship anyway.
.