The Senate Majority leader apparently thinks that senior military leaders such as the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and current commander of troops in the Iraqi theater, are – his words – “incompetent”:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “incompetent” during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.
Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.
This should provide a kind of encouragement to those elements among the 150,000 or so deployed troops that will venture forth today on the mean streets of Baghdad. I don’t happen to share his point of view on either deployed leadership or the home guard at the puzzle palace, but I’ll give this to the Senate Majority leader: When it comes to incompetence, he should know:
Democratic Congressional leaders have been stung by the decline in Congressional job approval ratings.
A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg nationwide telephone poll released this week found that 27 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job, while 65 percent disapprove. And 29 percent of the more than 1,100 poll respondents, all registered voters, said Democrats were working to change how government is run, compared to 63 percent who said Democrats are governing in a business-as-usual manner. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points.
I find it surprising – I almost wrote “alarming” – the degree to which the majority party’s leadership seems so apparently enthralled by “liberal bloggers.” Many of them are decent chaps in real life, I’m quite sure, but – and as ever, I’m speaking from a scrupulously non-partisan point of view here – so much of their online personas and commentariat tends to favor analysis by serial, reflexive, two-minute hates. Even if the perpetual whipping up of outrage is good for party coffers, it can’t really be good to cozy up too closely to that sort come general election time.
I don’t believe that conservative bloggerdom has quite the same effect on the minority party, although whether that is because Republicans “don’t get” the new media, or whether it’s because the right side is split into such minimally overlapping philosophical camps as social conservatives, libertarians, neocons and fiscal conservatives somehow attenuates the effect. I guess the upside is that, having fewer orthodoxies, the right doesn’t have quite so many heretics to burn.
Something I shall keep in mind, if ever I am forced to choose sides.
I like to think’ that it’s because we have a preponderence of thoughtful, engaged, individuals, who have a base of reason and experience to work from.
Uh, did you see the Denis Miller commentary?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmGO_bTgIf4
That’s a mouthful.
Very sad that our senior military leaders are becoming political pawns that, I predict, will lead to very ugly future confirmations for flag officers…these proceedings will take on the look of a SCOTUS nomination.
And the politicalization of our senior military leaders is the result of both parties.
I wish the SECDEF had recommended that Gen Pace continue as CJCS beyond this Fall. If reporters or Democrats were to question that continued faith in Gen Pace and warn of a very “contentious process” ahead, it would have been nice for the SECDEF to say “Gen Pace is a Marine…he’s been fired at in combat…he’ll do just fine”.
Instead, we get a politicalization of the CJCS position. Senior military leaders are supposed to serve unbiased and remain non-political in their support to our elected leaders.
The Senate Majority Leader’s comments on General Petraeus and the SECDEF’s politicalization of the CJCS position have now made our military pawns to our political parties.
I’ll just say I like Uncle J’s “unequivocal” critique on Harry Reid at B5..nothwithstanding all that irony Lex so eloquently points out above:
“Harry Reid needs to hush his drooling cakehole, period. He no longer has anything even vaguely useful to say and his disrespect to Gens. Pace & Petraeus has earned him the clown of the year award.”
You have got to be s**ting me! Harry Reid calling anyone incompetent is like Michael Moore calling them fat or Bill Clinton calling them unfaithful. Aside from the fact that they are both hugely accomplished men, for a thin-lipped, milquetoast, cream in the coffee, cadaver like Harry Reid to mouth off to them is just sorry. To do so simply to score political points with the hater wing of your party just points out how much trouble the Dems are in once the rest of the country gets a belly full of the nutroots.
Woudn’t you just love for Reid, Petraeus and Pace to meet up in a Men’s room and have the two Men give him a swirly prior to reminding him that he’s not allowed up on the porch with the big dogs? Not to rub it in, but hasn’t Harry Reid sucked Hoover as Majority Leader? Doesn’t Mitch McConnell keep punking him on every gutless maneuver Reid attempts, every slap at our troops, every weaseling about timetables, and Reid has the unmitigated gall to call these men incompetent? Somebody needs to help this pitiful old fool to the sidelines, he’s even making me feel bad for the Dems. Well, not really.”
Aye J.
B2
[...] millions of people who concur” with you in this case. Thanks for saying it for me.[h/t to commenter Paul over at [...]
I like how the MSM didn’t report it to the regular folks, only the nutroots knew about it.
Cowards, the both Reid and the MSM. No courage of conviction there, folks. Move along now.
What LtCol Patrick said. Though I suppose history reveals that it ain’t first time politics and military leadership have crossed paths.
Speaking of incompetence.
It?
It’s been an insidious progression
Thanks for the link Gray, I guess I’ll have to order the book.
Well, even if it were really, really late at night, and I were really, really drunk, if I were to write something as crazy-mean as some of those people like Amanda Marcotte and Markos Moulitsas whatever have done, I would blush to upload it to the IntarToobs.
And y’all have seen what I have been willing to share. (I have blushed, a bit.)
Let’s remember Gates fired Pace, not Reid. We now have a War Czar, SecDef and an incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs who are all skeptical of the surge.
What does that tell ya?
Let?
Let’s remember Gates fired Pace, not Reid. We now have a War Czar, SecDef and an incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs who are all skeptical of the surge.
What does that tell ya?
That Fred Thompson is going to have to fire them all as soon as he takes office and unleashes the dogs of war.
As I said when you made the same comment in another location, Markg8…
Gates did not fire Pace, he decided (after being told by Dems they were going to make a confirmation of Pace a political bloodbath) that it would be too divisive to re-confirm Pace. And I don’t know where you get this “skeptical of the surge” stuff. Anybody know what he’s talking about?
You tell him HFS.
Gates removed Pace because he was Rumsfeld’s man, the confirmation hoohah is all smoke. I’m sure the new fellow will be more to his liking.
To bad our elected leaders are not held to the standards of the UCMJ. Seems to me I remember something about giving aid and comfort to the enemy and sedation. It is time for the real folks in the “flyover” states to use the movie quote be “Mad as Hell and not going to take it anymore”!!