Cruel Mockery
SWJ re Sanchez on Bush: “Custer blames Grant?“
Sadly SWJ doesn’t explore this theme, but excerpts several news reports including VOA, which appears to include the most meaningful context with the following kicker:
General Sanchez called for the development of a U.S. national consensus on what he sees as the importance of winning in Iraq, and in the broader fight against extremism. Otherwise, he said, Iraq in particular will continue to be what he called “a nightmare with no end in sight.”
When you click into the Army Times link, you find this:
Jaws dropped as Sanchez glared out at the room, and then eyes rolled as he spent an hour blaming everyone but himself. Most of what he said about the military has been said before: There’s no grand strategy, the Iraqi Army should not have been disbanded, there was no planning for stabilization or recovery past the initial invasion and, “the administration has failed.”
He said deployment cycles aren’t working with current troop levels, that it will take decades to fix the “military’s full-spectrum readiness,” and that if the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq, it would lead to “chaos that would lead to instability in the Middle East.”
That’s interesting. I didn’t notice the importance of winning and withdrawal would lead to chaos and instability in AP, NYT, WP, which got stuck on ”nightmare” and Abu Ghraib parts.
SWJ also offers the following roundup:
Sanchez on Iraq – The Belmont Club
The Logic of General Sanchez – Captain’s Journal
OK, This… Has… Got…To… Stop… – Blackfive
Sanchez Speaks Out – Abu Muqawama
Revising History – MountainRunner
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:27 am Comments (9) on Saturday, October 13, 2007
9 Responses to “Cruel Mockery”
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October 13th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I don’t really understand the basis for retired generals (some, of course, much longer retired than General Sanchez) to issue their own version of policy and position statements.
I don’t see where it does any good to the country’s overall effort.
It does, however, attract personal attention to themselves.
And maybe if a particular General feels he was eased out and/or otherwise slighted, it is a form of payback.
October 13th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I’ve posted a link to the full text of Sanchez’s speech at my site. Most of it is an indictment of the Press, stopping just short of calling them traitors. Somehow, that aspect seems missing from mainstream accounts…
October 13th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
When you first reported Sanchez’s remarks, I thought I’d wait and see what the general actually said, since I believe wholeheartedly that AP is a spinner of fantasy. Sure enough, what Sanchez said was miles different from what was reported. That’s not to say he didn’t have gripes, but doesn’t everyone? The main thing is that our MSM are twisting and distorting yet again.
October 13th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
OUR POLITICAL LEADERS MUST PLACE NATIONAL SECURITY OBJECTIVES ABOVE PARTISAN POLITICS…PARTISAN POLITICS HAVE HINDERED THIS WAR EFFORT… OUR POLITICIANS MUST REMEMBER THEIR OATH OF OFFICE AND RECOMMIT THEMSELVES TO SERVING OUR NATION AND NOT THEIR OWN SELF-INTERESTS OR POLITICAL PARTY.
THE PRESS …UNSCRUPULOUS REPORTING THAT WAS SOLELY FOCUSED ON SUPPORTING YOUR AGENDA AND PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS OF WHAT OUR MILITARY HAD DONE…THE EDGE THAT YOU SEEK FOR SELF AGRANDIZEMENT OR TO ADVANCE YOUR INDIVIDUAL QUEST FOR GETTING ON THE FRONT PAGE WITH YOUR STORIES
His indictments of partisanship and journalism resonate.
October 13th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
We used to have team players… no longer. I’m reminded of something that I wrote which I should reference obviously since Taranto has opened the floodgates of quoting yourself as a source for your stories, ahem:
“There are fifty million ways to do something right. There is only one demonstrable way of doing something wrong and that’s to sit around and argue about which way to do it right.”
Gen Sanchez nice team that you’re on. I think.
October 13th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
“We used to have team players”
Unfortunately, that is a romanticized illusion of the past. MacCarther was relieved of command by Truman…Patton was sidelined for extended periods due to his big mouth. The Marshal plan was heavily criticized as a useless waste of money.
In the end..some plan works…or we decide that no plan can work…then history is written based on the last plan. Almost no-one talks about Johnson’s war or Kennedy’s war…there are libraries full of books about Nixon’s war.
Once victory was achieved in WWII…all those that claimed it was unachievable went silent….it wasn’t that they didn’t exist…they just made a point of not reminding anyone that they were wrong.
Where is the General that was saying we would need 500,000 troops for Afghanistan…surely at least one must have said it??
October 13th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
If Sanchez really believed it was genuinely hopeless even before he arrived, he would have refused the job and resigned his commission. That is what someone with real integrity would have done.
October 13th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I repeat: What ever happened to just fading away?
He cuts the ground out from under his valid observations by making them a part of his effort to gainsay his own culpability.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
HEY DON’T BLAME SANCHEZ until you have read his speech! The MSM ’summaries’ of it were disgusting hatchet jobs. Sanchez focuses almost entirely on two things: (1) the media lies its head off and this is bad for the war effort, and (2) the Democrat Party is causing so much infighting that it is degrading the capacity of the USA to win.
Here is the text:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/189755.php