Tuesday - September 22, 2009

There are Fates Worse than Resigning

Men are getting shot at, blown up, separated from families, maimed, divorced, and made to live in cold and hot weather in the most austere living conditions.

This is a war, and that's what we can expect.

But many senior officers have only modest discomforts and rarely face any danger.  Not all, of course, but many.  This is not a dig on senior officers who aren't kicking down doors or manning machine guns.  Their jobs no longer require them to be on the front lines and that's fine.

Their job is to provide the tools, training, tactics, planning, intelligence and other support for those that are on the front lines.  I don't say this with any air of superiority.  I don't think that anyone in the rear is morally deficient or not doing all they can do.  Someone has to be in those roles and it's their turn, that's all.  Generally, I've seen Marines not on the front lines be very supportive and bend over backwards to help those that are.

General McChrystal has threatened to resign if B. Hussein, our marxist president, doesn't give him more troops in Afghanistan.  Whether this is effective or not remains to be seen.  If he resigns, what would happen to him?  He will retire and live comfortably on his monthly retirement check even if he never works another day in his life.  He won't go on to become a famous general who wins a war, he won't get an additional star on his collar, he won't have much direct impact on the future of the army.

It seems a small sacrifice on his part compared to those who go home in zippered bags.

My thanks to General McChrystal, if these stories are true.  He seems to be a man who has kept a good perspective on what it means to look after the welfare of his men.

Update:   Evan Thomas of Newsweek had the following to say about the possibility that McChrystal might resign:

McChrystal was clearly troubled—"a bit bothered," as he put it—by the rumors appearing in the media that he might resign over his differences with those unnamed other experts in Washington. "It is my responsibility, my duty—my sacred duty," he said, to tell the unvarnished truth to his leaders, but then to carry out their orders. He would not resign, he said, even if they rejected his advice.

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