A LITTLE LATE OR NOT

The good general Sanchez has told it like it is: Irag is really Iraqnam; it is a mess, a flawed strategy from the beginning, no way out, only hope is to starve off defeat. Surge is a joke.

So, why has he waited so long? And, what about all those comments recorded when he was the commander in Iraq and said Iraq was good to go, making progress--what was this? Well, any of us who understand the military "get it." Generals are geared to tell the Commander what he wants to hear. And, the present Commander in Chief, bolstered in the beginning by Rumsfelt, made those who didn't preach the party line pay the price, i. e., the good general Shinseki who was unceremoniously sacked when he said we would need hundreds of thousands of soldiers to conquer and occupy Iraq.

So, what should a general say? Well, what we would like for him to say/do is be out front and brutally honest. We know they won't/don't; it is not that they lie but they are soldiers overall and soldiers do what they're told. And, generals have a "can do" mindset often when they know what they are asked to do is impossible.

There's a prominent view of general officers, who early on, mostly when he or she is a Colonel when they are in the running for that elusive "star" which few get. They stifle their convictions about many things with the rationalization that at some point when they have made general, they will revisit all those convictions they have pushed down into their psychic. Unfortunately, when they make the rank and get to the point when they are ready to do something, they reach down inside themselves and the convictions have mostly evaporated. Sad. This may sound fairly ethereal but true. Most generals simply "go along" and all of us are the poorer for it.

Sanchez is a civilian and I respect him for speaking out even thought it's a tad late. And, who can disagree with what he says. Not any of us who think. If anything, I wish he would call on more of his former general buds to also speak out. Iraq is a mess. Iraq has become Iraqnam, there is no way out--we are simply starving off defeat. What would be nice if he would spell out a cogent exit strategy that Americans who care could get behind.