Friday, April 21, 2006
The angry left is once again showing how dangerous they would be if anyone really took them seriously.
These days they are advocating for the military to run all aspects of our national security with no deference whatsoever to the leaders that "we the people" get to elect. Of course they don't really want all the military generals to run things, just a very tiny fraction that happen to be on the same page with them right now.
If you think I'm kidding look at two-time Pulitzer prize winner and darling of the angry left Mike Luckovich's latest political cartoon.
But that makes the generals' revolt all the more egregious. The civilian leadership of the Pentagon is decided on Election Day, not by the secret whispering of generals.
We've always had discontented officers in every war and in every period of our history. But they rarely coalesce into factions. That happens in places such as Saddam's Iraq, Pinochet's Chile or your run-of-the-mill banana republic. And when it does, outsiders (including United States) do their best to exploit it, seeking out the dissident factions to either stage a coup or force the government to change policy.
That kind of dissident party within the military is alien to America. Some other retired generals have found it necessary to rise to the defense of the current administration. Will the rest of the generals, retired or serving, now have to declare themselves as to which camp they belong?
It is precisely this kind of division that our tradition of military deference to democratically elected civilian superiors was meant to prevent. Today it suits the anti-war left to applaud the rupture of that tradition. But it is a disturbing and very dangerous precedent that even the left will one day regret.
If you think I'm kidding look at two-time Pulitzer prize winner and darling of the angry left Mike Luckovich's latest political cartoon.
