This needed to be said:
Retired Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson, the former deputy commander of U.S. nuclear forces, told the Washington Post that it’s “puzzling” that the advice military leaders are giving Republicans is being “ignored.” Jameson added, “I don’t know what that says about the trust that people have and the confidence they have in our military.”
Democrats, I suspect, aren’t willing to make the case in these terms, but that’s why it’s all the more important when someone like Jameson is making these arguments publicly. He’s effectively arguing that most Senate Republicans are blowing off the judgment of America’s military leadership — a charge that used to be unthinkable.
But what’s especially noteworthy here is the consistency in which we’ve seen this pattern. On New START, obviously, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are actively urging Senate ratification, but the GOP is convinced they’re mistaken. Mullen, Gates, and other military leaders also want to see Republicans end their filibuster of the National Defense Authorization Act, but the GOP is ignoring this request, too.
In fact, the U.S. military leadership and congressional Republicans are also on opposite sides of everything from civilian trials for terrorist suspects to closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay to Iran to torture to how the U.S. perceives the Middle East peace process in the context of our national security interests. GOP lawmakers haven’t even fared well on some veterans’ groups congressional scorecards.
The notion of Republicans siding with the military is supposed to be one of those assumed truths that we’re all supposed to just accept. But over the last two years, on most of the major policy disputes related to national security and defense, it’s been Democrats (on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue), not Republicans, who’ve been siding with U.S. military leaders.
It should also be noted that a lot of veterans of Bush’s wars came home and ran for office as Democrats.