Challenging Petraeus

The effort to discredit General Petraeus has continued this past weekend by the New York Times releasing an article by Fred Kaplan titled "Challenging the Generals".  Conveniently right before General Petraeus’ report to Congress Kaplan some how gets access to Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff’s briefing to officers attending the Captain’s Career Course at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.  Even more conveniently one of the officers asks General Cody about LTC Yingling’s article earlier this year and the supposed poor performance of generals during the war. 

The rest of the article goes on to bash the current of general officer level leadership and actually criticizes generals for not doing more about not crossing the line of civilian control of the military.  At least Kaplan didn’t advocate a military coup like some on the left have been advocating.  Throughout the article Kaplan tries to make it seem that troops are increasingly speaking out against the generals running the war.  Where have we heard this before?  Does Beauchamp, Hutto, Burnett, Jayamaha, and a host of other leftist plants ring a bell?  This is another manufactured attempt to create the perception of a "grassroots" effort among troops to speak out against the war.  Of course nothing is mentioned of the astroturfing campaign led by the largest liberal public relations firm to promote it. 

Kaplan does make a few good points just like LTC Yingling did in his article but the article is being twisted by the usual suspects as you can’t trust Petraeus’ report to Congress even though the article way at the end actually compliments Petraeus just like if you actually read LTC Yingling’s article instead of excerpts on blogs, General Petraeus and the current crop of officers running the war effort are exactly what he recommends.  Now that is something you will not hear anyone on the left say. 

This is just another example of the slow trickle of articles to discredit General Petraeus who has the world’s hardest job already and the left are determined to make even harder.