This, from a reader, deserves a serious response:
Gen. Casey didn’t want to run the war the way Rumsfeld instructed him to. He did it anyway, because it’s his job to obey higher-ups. Now he’s pulled from duty and Sen McCain, Bush’s surrogate for the escalation, rakes him over the coals in committee for following BushCo’s orders. The purpose of the committee meeting? To interview Casey on the PROMOTION to Chief of Staff the White House has given him for following those orders. Since none of this makes a shred of sense in the real world, isn’t it about time, Joe, that you might consider, um, the basic, you know, sanity of this group of chickenhawk aristocrats who are destroying the military? Why do you remain silent about the planned bombing of Iran? How will that help our military situation?
1. About Casey: I’m not sure how he wanted to run the war, but he certainly was running it Rumsfeld’s way…There was, as the reader may know, real fury in the upper ranks of the Army officer corps about the refusal of the top brass to stand up to Rumsfeld et al. That’s part of the reason why Gen. Pace brought in the “Colonels Group” to advise on what to do next. As it turned out, the colonels were major proponents of the surge.
2. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will go down, without doubt, as the worst set of civilian military leaders in American history. And you’re right: the soldiers I talk to are very concerned that (a) the strategic reserve has been depleted by these new deployments and (b) that if the force isn’t now broken, it soon will be.
3. Which makes the notion of bombing Iran all the more crazy. First of all, this administration simply doesn’t have the moral standing to initiate unilateral action in Iran or anyplace else. Second, our intel on what’s actually happening within Iran is “non-existent,” according to several high-ranking administration officials. Third, unlike Iraq, Iran is a real country that can do us real damage–especially given the fact that it controls the world’s most dangerous asymmetrical operators: Hezbollah. And fourth, did I mention that this administration doesn’t have the moral standing to take this country into another war?