The Concern About Petraeus Role

November 26, 2007

One of the biggest socialist organization in today’s world is the U.S. military: free healthcare, free education, equal opportunities, guaranteed pensions. It is what you wish for but what the civil society is prohibited to get. But for the top guys in that organization that isn’t enough. In the civil land, a few folks make millions and billions – the Generals want to do so too.

An interesting piece by the LA Times today says the Military wants more views on Iraq reports:

Concerned about the war’s effect on public trust in the military, the leading officials said they hoped the next major assessment early next year would not place as much emphasis on the views of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, who in September spent dozens of hours in testimony before Congress and in televised interviews.

One wonders what that is about. Why would the brass not like Congress to again pay obeisance to the ‘lord of counterinsurgency’, i.e. the master of paying off tribal mafias?

The first issue the military establishment has is about picking up the publicity tab for a war they consider lost:

"This is not Dave Petraeus’ war. This is George Bush’s war," said one
senior official, underscoring the military’s view that its role is to
carry out the decisions made by political leaders.

The plan is to shift that blame to the State Department:

Several officials also said they hoped that the U.S. ambassador to
Iraq, Ryan Crocker, could be the main focus of future hearings, rather
than Petraeus or another military officer.

The second problem is ‘political neutrality’. Having the second most influential US conservative as the main military guy in the news while people hate republicans isn’t helping at the polls:

Although support for the military remains high, there is a basis for such concerns. An annual Gallup poll in June found that 69% of the public had confidence in the military, down from 82% in 2003.

Then there is personal envy:

Although some Defense officials have expressed concerns that a "cult of
personality" has developed around Petraeus, a larger number of
officials make the argument that it is simply not fair to put the
entire burden of the Iraq war on the general’s shoulders.

Don’t expect neither "some Defense officials" nor the "larger number of officials" to have any comparable concern when they get asked to carry that "entire burden". Just imagine, as they do, all those memoirs one could sell.

Part of this is a struggle of "realists" against neoconservatives especially with regard to a war on Iran:

Although Bush frequently mentions Petraeus when discussing Iraq, both
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mullen have sought to inject
other military voices into the debate, notably that of Adm. William J.
Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, the military’s Mideast
headquarters.

But the very real and beyond all the above issue expressed by the main source of the LAT piece at its very end is simple – money:

Mullen believes that the threat of terrorism makes it crucial for the
military to retain public support, the official said. Besides, an
erosion of support could reduce money and resources coming from
Congress.

You see, Generals and Admirals like Mullen do get quite sufficient pensions when they finally hang up their uniform.

But much more is to be made later when they ‘consult‘ some supplier of military equipment, lobby for a mercenary company or join the board of big arms manufacturer.

One doesn’t want to piss off the source of the $700+ billion per year stream of cash when one expects some drops of said stream to land in ones own pocket.

Posted by b on November 26, 2007 at 21:17 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Excellent post b. Dead on target. A great diegesis of a mad situation.

Underlying functionalist theory is the fundamental metaphor of the living organism, its several parts and organs, grouped and organized into a system, the function of the various parts and organs being to sustain the organism, to keep its essential processes going and enable it to reproduce. Similarly, members of a society can be thought of as cells, its institutions its organs, whose function is to sustain the life of the collective entity, despite the frequent death of cells and the production of new ones. Functionalist analyses examine the social significance of phenomena, that is, the purpose they serve a particular society in maintaining the whole

(Jarvie 1973).
I hate to break this to you, but the giant money Leviathan at the core of our “system” is doing exceedingly well. Has never done this well since the Gilded Age. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at levels not seen in 40+ years. The Last Men are drowning in cash. And why not, it’s the American way.
“The military and the monetary / Get together whenever it’s necessary / Turning our brothers and sisters into mercenaries / They are turning the planet into a cemetery.”-Gill Scott-Heron

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 26 2007 22:27 utc | 1

It’s probably a little thing in the whole macrocosm, but the official US first-class postage crest is now just an American Flag, verdant on a field of dot.mil olive-drab.
It’s probably a little thing, like the overseas military in the millions, especially the overseas civilian defense contractors in the hundreds of thousands, eating on the American taxpayer, sleeping on the American taxpayer, and not paying any US income taxes, which probably explains why they’re so overtly racist, sexist and so dead set against any CONUS welfare queen getting a slice of dot.mil’s tax-free apple pie.
So when they speak of, “fighting the terror over here, so we won’t have to fight it back there”, they’re talking about the terror of getting up every morning to an empty refrigerator, to a landlord banging on the door for rent, to a double-transfer bus ride back and forth to a dead-end retail job in some decaying strip mall, selling toxic dark plastic gew-gaws to kids just like your own back home, warehoused at the umpteenth daycare homestay you can’t afford, without giving your blood at lunchtime.
So much easier to spill brown-skin blood from some UAV control room in (redacted).
Hoo-ahh!

Posted by: Telli Savalis | Nov 27 2007 5:24 utc | 2

As the shape and efforts of the amerikan empire and it’s army come to resemble that of the Roman Empire each day; one wonders where they will move to now that the continental US is becoming less salubrious, less inviting for them.
A very good argument can be put up to support the contention that this empire has moved once already – from england when the ‘messiness’ of WW2 caused the imperialists to lose control of england’s body politic. We may consider the likes of Harold Wilson‘s blood to be a very pale red indeed but there is no doubt it was sufficiently magenta to prevent england from being the administrative and oppression HQ for the world’s largest empire. Which is when responsibility for that empire was quietly handballed across to amerika. . .
As some may know Rome’s burgeoning population, which caused people of non Roman pedigree to be in positions of control, combined with the far flung subject peoples’ opprobium towards Rome, Italy – persuaded that empire’s leaders (emperor, generals, and finances – but not the tax collectors, never the tax collectors) to be moved from Rome to Constantinople or as it was christened at the time, Nova Roma (“New Rome”), today known as Istanbul.
Eventually those ‘back home’ in increasingly impoverished and frequently ‘sacked’ Rome Italy, separated from the Roman Empire, and moved HQ to Milan, although there were occasional re-unifications. The ‘Western Roman Empire” existed in name only for much of the time it existed and didn’t exist at all for most of the time. Constantinople was where the action was for any up and coming mainchancer.
It was the Eastern empire, renamed Byzantium by 19th century historians which maintained an unbroken succession of emperors dating back to Augustus Caesar (Julie didn’t quite qualify as an emperor – copped the knife in the back before he could). The people of Byzantium called themselves ‘roman’ and retained the customs of Rome. Needless to say Byzantium was also where the money was.
So as amerikans become poorer and less somnolent, as those who have had their families destroyed by the empire’s excesses seek to visit a little vengeance upon the population they believe responsible, the notion of shifting off to a home away from home will become attractive.
The new capital will be somewhat smaller and easier to ‘sanitise’, to keep the non-elites at arm’s length, like Constantinople it will probably be closer to the action, so as to make it appear ‘strategically better’ and an advance toward the action rather than a retreat away from the hoi polloi.
There is a terrible synergy about Jerusalem. If we (the humans) fail, and the amerikan empire is still extant, will it be headquartered in Israel by 2050?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 27 2007 6:18 utc | 3

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