THE SPINE OCTOBER 8, 2007
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I've been thinking about my last Spine taking on Tony Judt's silly comparison of David Petraeus with Douglas MacArthur. I've just started reading David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter whose dramatis personae includes -- even centers around- - MacArthur. MacArthur was a fantasist. He had ideas about the Asian mind, set opinions about what the Chinese would and would not do, illusions about American destiny and his role in it. He did not respect the commander-in-chief, Harry Truman, but HST took no guff from anyone. Truman fired him, plain and simple, and MacArthur went on a triumphant tour of America which landed him in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, nothing grander than that.
Truman let go of Henry Wallace as secretary of commerce for insubordination and he let go of MacArthur for insubordination in the Korean theatre as well. In the case of MacArthur, it was a matter of constitutional imperative, not of this policy or that. He was disobeying orders. Not a chance for the man who said he would "fade away" but really thought otherwise.
Petraeus is a stickler for the rules. His commander-in-chief is the Commander-in-Chief, and if you hate the Iraq war your grievance is not with Petraeus but with Bush.
4 comments
is not just with Bush, but with all the war-mongers, here, and elsewhere. I have a beef with you, Bush, Patreus, Kristol, Pearl, Wolfie, Clinton, and on and on.
- rishy
October 8, 2007 at 8:31pm
I thought you were too hard on Judt -- or, rather, that your criticism was misdirected. But you're essentially right. The left should leave Petreaus alone and focus their energies on his civilian masters. The man is a competent and inventive general, but still basically a functionary, carrying out the will of the policy makers.
- ratnerstar
October 9, 2007 at 10:12am
Petraeus's job was to give an hoenst assessment of how things were going. Fine. But instead he went and hawked the war on Fox News and Hugh Hewitt's website. He politicized it. Not hardly as big a deal as insubordination. But certainly worthy of a great deal of criticism. A betrayal? Kind of--when you consider that he first insisted on 300,000 troops and settled for 30,000. He betrayed the soldiers and the U.S. people's interests. The idiotic ad just made civilized criticism of Petraeus's motives that much more difficult.
- MOLLYSIMON
October 9, 2007 at 11:51am
"Kind of--when you consider that he first insisted on 300,000 troops and settled for 30,000." I'm no fan, but, well, what else could he do?
- frippo
October 9, 2007 at 2:53pm