Generals Get It

Pretty much everything the R candidates for president say is egregious in some way: an outright lie, a clueless embarrassment, a failure to understand something basic about how our democracy works. Somewhere near the top of the list, though, is their constant and unanimous refrain that in matters of military decisions, they'd go with what the generals told them. By implication, they like to condemn President Obama for making his own decisions, after input from the generals. And others. Horror of horrors: he hasn't always followed their advice!

I wonder what part of "Commander-in-Chief" those Rs (and the RWS™, the brainwashed teabaggers) don't understand. What part of "civilian control" eludes their comprehension? Refreshing, isn't it, that actual generals, including the current Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, understand how it works, and like it that way:

"I'll probably make news with this but I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me," Dempsey told reporters traveling with him in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

"And here's why. One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that's what it is. Its advice. It's military judgments, it's alternatives, it's options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don't find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned." (emphasis mine)

In politics, we'll always have idiots. Nature of the beast. Lately, though, it seems they're the rule, rather than the exception. But democracy depends on the ability of voters to recognize that idiocy, to know when they're being played for fools. Sadly, as teabaggers have shown us, that ability, becoming a vestigial organ, is withering away at an unsustainable rate.