Posted on 03/15/2008 2:49:18 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The abrupt resignation of Adm. William Fallon as the head of Central Command almost got lost amid the breaking news of Barack Obama's victory in the Mississippi primary and Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York. But it's a much more consequential development -- in the foreign and military policy of the Bush administration in its final year in office and in the relations between civilian commanders and military officers in the long run of American history.
Though everyone involved denies it, Fallon was kicked out for insubordination, or something very close to it. His conduct became impossible to overlook after the publication of a jauntily written article in Esquire by Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of "The Pentagon's New Map."
Barnett paints Fallon as a seasoned officer who coolly and wisely has been frustrating George W. Bush's desire to invade Iran. He points out that Fallon opposed the surge in Iraq ordered by Bush in January 2007 and that he has tried to rein in Gen. David Petraeus, whose leadership of the surge has produced such impressive results. He seems to take it for granted that readers will applaud Fallon for opposing a move that converted likely defeat to a high chance of success.
Fallon also made it plain that he wants to withdraw troops from Iraq, as soon as possible -- even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved Petraeus' request for a pause after currently scheduled troop withdrawals end in July.
Fallon is not the first subordinate to work openly to undercut the commander in chief. The authors of the National Intelligence Estimate headlined a conclusion that Iran had abandoned part of its nuclear program, while underplaying the more important news that the mullahs were continuing the critical parts of the nuclear program and
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
We’ve seen this movie before.
He leaves on March 31st.
Probably too late to join a primary campaign, so....
Sometime around the Dem convention, he’ll join their nominee’s campaign...right after publishing a book or major article putting the worst slant of every Bush policy.
Congressional hearings will follow, widely televised.
He’ll stand by the candidate’s side, reassuring gullible media that the campaign has “gravitas”.
Did I miss anything?
OH...it’s just a question of WHICH network will hire him as a military analyst.
Oh, wait...maybe he's a Democrat and gets to rewrite the rules as it suits him(?)
Weasley Clark Part Deux.
Fallon should have been busted in rank, and sent packing a long time ago. He isn’t a leader, and is another Clinton holdover allowed to move up in rank, like so many in the Army and other gov’t. aqencies.
I will never understand why Bush put up with this crap for 7-1/2 years of his 8 year presidency.
If he was truly an honorable whostleblower, he would have opposed the myopic leadership that covered up Able Danger- not the troops in the field.
He has never shaken the notion that he could do in Washington what he did in Texas: get the RATS to come over to his side. However, that only explains his relationship with the legislative branch. Why he left most of the bureaucracy in place is a total mystery, though I have a feeling he listened way too much to his father and that feckless band of advisers who served x41 so poorly. I'm also wondering why Cheney didn't tell him he was crazy to do that. If anyone would know not to leave them in place, you'd expect Cheney would be the guy.
Globalists stick together. In the big picture, parties don’t matter that much.
—Globalists stick together. In the big picture, parties don’t matter that much.—
Truer words were never spoken on these boards. Sadly, it seems, not only do parties not matter much (especially the one party we have now with its right (gop) and left (dem) wings), but elections don’t seem to matter so much anymore either. Just look at the choices for POTUS we are faced with.
It’s a hard life when you can see the future so clearly, yet do nothing to prevent it.
Or....
You’d be a terrible movie critic.... you gave away the ending.
—Globalists stick together. In the big picture, parties don’t matter that much.
—
But just who are the Globalists. Is Admiral Fallon a globalist because he doesn’t want to see his nation and its military overextended. Or are Dubya, Cheney, Gates et al. the *real* globalists; they seem to be chanelling the ghost of Woodrow Wilson. Talk about needing an exorcism if that’s true!
I wondered why an adm. was put in charge of a mainly ground war.
Past time the Neo Isolationists look at a map. See where Iraq is? NO US President, not even the Isolationists god Ron Paul, could ever afford to ignore that part of the world. We may wish we could, but the facts of the global economy and US National Security do NOT make that a feasible US policy position.
Past time the Dincons wake up to the fact it is not 1918 anymore. The rest of the world is not safely kept at by our distance from it. Technology has radically changed the world since 1918. It no longer possible for the fearful Dincons to hide quivering under their beds wishing the bad men stay away. If nothing it, 09-11 should of brutally underscored just how stupid this "do nothing" policy advocated by the Dincons, that was enthusiastically practiced by the Clinton's, actually is.
Past time the Dincons evolved and get over the fantasies about a mythical time the US had a "traditional non interventionist" foreign policy. Never ever had any such thing. In the 1790s the Founder fought an undeclared Naval War with France and sent a number of expeditionary forces to wage war on the Barbary Pirates. Even at the height of they mythical "Isolationist" period the US dispatched expeditionary forces to fight the banana wars in Central Africa, Marines to China and routinely interfered in the Caribbean.
Defending the USA has always started far away from the US Border. And anyone who bothers to think about it should realize the logic of fighting them THERE so we do not have to fight them HERE. After all, as 09-11 showed, they are more then willing to come here after us.
These notions of past, or future, US Isolationism are a silly myth sung by people who know nothing about US History or the strategic imperatives of a post 09-11 world. To misquote Shakespeare, Isolationism "is a tale sung by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying naught".
mark
—Past time the Dincons evolved and get over the fantasies about a mythical time the US had a “traditional non interventionist” foreign policy. Never ever had any such thing.—
Nonsense.
—1790s the Founder fought an undeclared Naval War with France and sent a number of expeditionary forces to wage war on the Barbary Pirates—
The quasi-war with France involved an unstable revolutionary government in France attempting to raid American commerce IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE. Some naval victories by the United States, plus a desire on the French to focus on the Napoleonic Wars put a stop to that.
As for the Barbary Wars, this was an unfortunate lapse in America’s traditional concern with New World affairs which shows how an obession with free trade that borders on fetishism can draw a nation into war.
—Even at the height of they mythical “Isolationist” period the US dispatched expeditionary forces to fight the banana wars in Central Africa, Marines to China and routinely interfered in the Caribbean. —
I don’t recall any American troops fighting in Central AFRICA, ever. If you mean Central AMERICA, then yes, that was in the 1920s and 1930s, post-Wilson. Besides, that is fine under the Monroe Doctrine, as it was in the New World.
—Defending the USA has always started far away from the US Border.—
Absolutely not true until after 1898, when American interests (wrongly IMO) expanded into the Western Pacific.
—Marines to China —
Boxer rebellion. Again, after 1900.
—Defending the USA has always started far away from the US Border. And anyone who bothers to think about it should realize the logic of fighting them THERE so we do not have to fight them HERE. After all, as 09-11 showed, they are more then willing to come here after us.—
The 9/11 hijacking plot should have been spotted long before it happened. The fact that it was not detected reflects not on the cleverness of the plotters, but on the stupidity of American police and investigative agencies. When you have young Arab males learning how to take off and fly an airliner, but not bother learning how to land, and no alarm bells set off by that, well, some people should not only have been fired for this, but imprisoned as well for criminal negligence. An alert FBI, DHS etc. combined with good airport and border security puts the kibosh on this sort of thing (which hasn’t happened on US soil since, btw)
Oh, and to paraphrase Shakespeare:
Neocons are so “stepped in blood so far that [they] can wade no more.”
Cheney probably did tell him that, but Bush didn't listen.
Their roles should be exchanged in two respects, Cheney should be running the nation from the White House and Bush should be running Halliburton from Crawford.
—Cheney should be running the nation from the White House and Bush should be running Halliburton from Crawford.—
Cheney is like Punxatawney Phil; he emerges from his hole now and then.
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