Trading places

I am a great admirer of David Petraeus, but director of Central Intelligence? I'm not so sure about that! Meanwhile, spook chief Leon Panetta becomes Secretary of Defense, presiding over the army, navy, marines, and air force. Huh. In the New York Times, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt seem to think this is a very fine thing, recognizing as it does "a significant shift over the past decade in how the United States fights its battles — the blurring of lines between soldiers and spies in secret American missions abroad."

Well, perhaps. Or does it just reflect the way Barack Obama does business? My first reaction was: this is weird. My second reaction was, hey, a lot of the stuff Mr. Obama does is weird. (Ordinarily I wouldn't use a lazy word like stuff on a matter of national security, but it does seem to be one of the president's favorite nouns.)

I hope it's not as stupid as it seems. Nixon swapped cabinet secretaries one time, and Dubya also played musical chairs. And look on the bright side: the CIA director wears a suit. That's a good thing, because there's no room on Mr. Petraeus's uniform blouse to add the inevitable medals to the array he already displays. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

General Petraeus or General Save Us?

Remember the odious ad from MoveOn.Org, when another president was trying to get a handle on another difficult war? Well MoveOn.Org would rather you forgot. A day or two ago, the advertisement vanished from its website, along with the page that explained just why David Petraeus was a treasonable militarist who “cooked the books” for the White House. Now that the general isn’t pulling Dubya’s irons out of the fire in Iraq, but Obama’s in Afghanistan, he has become Saint David to the loony left.

The general seems to be very good at what he does, which includes getting along with presidents. If only he'd leave some of that spinach in the trunk.... Blue skies! – Dan Ford

A man who earned his medals

Any follower of this blog knows that I kvetch about the chests-full of medals that American generals wear, 90 percent of them absurd or undeserved. Well, here's a man who also wore a chest full of medals: Colonel Bob Howard. The difference is that he earned them the hard way--at least the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Purple Hearts, and the Combat Infantryman's Badge. He was buried at Arlington on Monday. Blue skies, Colonel! -- Dan Ford

On generals who wear spinach

Greg Jaffe has written what by all accounts is a very fine study of America’s generals (I haven’t read it and probably won’t—too many books, too little time!). The other day he was interviewed on the blog Abu Muqawama, and in the course of it had this to say about last year’s hero in Iraq, David Petraeus:

‘Petraeus is a very effective strategic leader. What bugs me is the narrative that he was somehow birthed atop Mount Olympus as the brilliant four star who saved the Army. In reality, his career is a bizarre departure from the norm. He does four tours at the elbow of top generals…. He spends relatively little time in the field actually leading soldiers (especially compared to Casey [Gen George Casey, fired by President Bush in the run-up to the 2007 Surge]). Petraeus’ career path doesn’t win him a lot of admirers among his peers, who whisper that he’s a palace general or a bit of a suck-up. But it makes Petraeus a much better general and probably a less adept battalion and brigade commander. This is a guy who starts preparing for a strategic leadership role as a captain. I don’t think Casey was as effective. But it is a huge mistake to write him off as not bright, intransigent, lazy or stuck in the Cold War as many in the COIN crowd tend to do…. He was a great soldier and quite possibly a better battalion and brigade commander than Petraeus. … I think we all have dismissed him far too quickly in our rush to celebrate Petraeus. Casey’s struggles in Iraq need to be dissected and understood. If you call him as a failure or “no Petraeus” you miss important lessons.’

I think this is a shrewd analysis and goes far to explain why Mr Petraeus decorates the whole front of his body with ribbons and bits of metal—he’s a general who’s never really experienced war. He wears a 101st Airborne patch on his right shoulder, suggesting that he served with it in combat, but that’s pure humbug. He was the division’s commanding general, for crying out loud! How close does a two-star general get to the shooting? (Well, okay, he was once shot in the chest, but that was friendly fire at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In one of life’s odd twists, the doctor who operated on him was the future Republican Senator, Bill Frist.) I would feel a lot more comfortable with Saint David if he would emulate Dwight Eisenhower and clean up his uniform. Blue skies! – Dan Ford