Permission to Speak Freely, Sir

Stephen could be reading my mind!

There are far too many people out there who believe that the "Revolt of the Generals" is just politics as usual.

The do not seem to have a clue how bone-chillingly profound this happening is.

It is a first! It is a sorry first, that it had to come to this. Maybe if Congress had been doing their damn jobs of oversight, it would not have gove this far.

No president has ever earned this kind of contempt from the military. They may be saying "Rumsfeld" and meaan every word of it, but this contempt is also aimed directly at Bush and Cheney

Stephen Pizzos Permission to Speak Freely, Sir:

"I am sorry that high school and college kids no longer have to face a couple of years of mandatory military service. That may be a strange thing to say for a guy who protested the draft back in the '60s. Maybe it's the inevitable aging process. Or maybe it's the perspective you get from the higher altitude of experience.

What got me thinking about this were the extraordinary statements being made by recently retired U.S. generals. Those who have never served in the military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military officers to say the things these guys are saying about their former civilian superiors.

I hit Marine Corps bootcamp on July 7, 1965, a wimpy kid from suburbia. The first thing we were told was that we were the lowest forms of life on earth - and that meant lower than civilians. I was to learn as time went on that this was not just drill instructor blather. It was a genuine, deeply ingrained belief that permeated the highest ranks of the military for civilian control. We were repeatedly told that the lowest civilian we met on the street outranked the highest grade military officer. And that was not show. They believed it, not just as a principle, but a sacred trust.

Those who never served will likely see that as corny, empty rhetoric, window dressing, quaint - at best. But those who did serve know of what I speak. We get it. That's one reason I bemoan that two generations of kids have since been spared a stint in uniform. It changed my life in ways I now understand and appreciate in ways I could not back then.

This is not a column about reinstituting the draft. I just want to make the case that you pay close and respectful attention to the recent statements by retired top Pentagon brass. Because never in my life did I ever expect to hear these kinds of things coming out" (Read On ^)