The Generals

Time Magazine recently did an article which basically said, what is going on with the generals. I wrote a letter to the Editor. I do this all the time and they are rarely published. It is why I love blogging. Always published and for me personally, I don't give a f..k if it is read or not. Here it is. Oh, another thing. I like most Americans who care (and not all do) am in a day of mourning. My heart is broken over this senseless shooting in Conneticut. There are idiots like Huckabie who are f..king stupid MFers who will say anything to get some attention. What in the f..k does prayer in the classroom have to do with this national hurt (I love to cuss but seem to be worse today because I am angry). Anyway,

TO TIME MAGAZINE. Thank you for the excellent article about the Generals. It was good but didnot go nearly far enough. The blame for our debacles in Iraq and Afghanisyan can be directly laid at the feet of these assholes, I think. They gave these rosy reports and invented terms like the "surge" which the American people who care (and not all do) swallowed hook, line, and sinker because they didn't know any better. The surge worked, not because of more soldiers but because we separated the warring factions and paid off those that had been fighting us and let them join our side. It worked for awhile but over the long haul, I doubt it, based on the violence that still racks Iraq.

The President and most of Congress have no real military experience and can be led around by the nose which the generals have done. The first time I noticed this was when they had a Pat Tillman hearing before Congress (Part of a documentary about Tillman. Very good and I recommend). The Generals showed up with all their salad. That is what we call the decorations adorning their uniform. We know the Army loves badges and patches, Petraeus is a good example (Time showed his uniform, should have tipped us off early on as to his character, modesty surely on a holiday). A general can decide what patches and badges to wear or none. For instance, Petraeus (not from this hearing but other times) uniform has it all--at the hearing, the generals looked like preening peacocks. The Congressional hearing spent most of the time bowing and scraping. I have never felt so badly for a family.

We need serious military reform and I don't see it on the horizon. What a lame excuse that someone like Gates gave: didn't want to take them on. There are many things that we need to do and the first place to start is by culling the numbers of generals we have. Here are a few more reform ideas: provide more Inspector Generals to investigate questionable actions of any form. And, they need to be free of military influence. Get real about honest care of the soldier. There is a saying, "nothing is too good for the soldier and that is what he gets, nothing. The military talks a hell of a lot more about doing than they actually do for the soldier. Civilians don't really know anything about soldiers lives. Soldiers and families live on posts, often have their own schools for kids and in many ways are a sub culture. And, assholes like Rumsfelt makes major changes in the lives of soldiers and nobody even questions, much less notices. He consolidated several posts and took out of the communities any identification with the military as the communities never see a military uniform. This is the unintended consequences. There are some things where consolidation would be a good idea. Do we really need all three military academies: Air Force, Army, Navy. We would save billions by consolidating. Think that will ever happen? LOL! This is the last one: stay the hell out of wars. We cannot continue to do this. I am not talking isolation. We will continue to engage with the world but we need major retrenchment. For once in our lives, let's let experience teach us. The Arab Spring has done fine without us. Iraq is over and most Iraqis would prefer to have Saddam back. We got nothing but loss of young Andrican lives. We didn't even get a break on oil. Afghanistan. If we stay there a hundred years, we could not materially bring about change, much less democracy. We have poured in billions and seen those dollars disappear into the black holes of the country. God bless us.