Should we listen to the GENERALS when it comes to war?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070824/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq

Answer 1

Absolutely not!  Never listen to them because their existence as a general is in the hands of our Commander-in-Chief, George Bush the bumbler.  Obviously what they will say is what Bush wants them to say.

Answer 2

They are Generals for a reason. This is what they are trained for, and you had better.

Answer 3

Overall yes.

But they can't even agree amongst themselves; how do they expect us to pick which one to listen to?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070824/tc_...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,2944...

Answer 4

Who else would know more about it?

But there is the legacy of Vietnam, where American military leaders made incorrect statements.  But the generals' errors were no worse than those made by the State Department and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.  

President Harry S. Truman used to complain of the stupidity of generals, but he relied heavily on General George Marshall.  If fact, even after Marshall retired, Truman still referred to him a "General".

Politicians and generals usually distrust each other.  Politicians just have better PR.

BTW  don c, General Patreus does have experience in Iraq.  He commanded the 101st Air Assault Division during the invasion.

Answer 5

in tv they say one thing and in their offices they say another

Answer 6

That's how we won world war 2. And our politicians haven't listened to them since. So we have lost every war since. I think generals would probably know more about war than bribe taking congressmen or some slick talking president. We should not fight wars we do not want to win.

Answer 7

You really have to take anything anyone says with a grain of salt (you never know if they're biased or pushing an agenda) but when it comes to military action of any type the best people to talk to are the subject matter experts, like the generals running the war or the soldiers in the field.

Answer 8

Bush's atrocity in Iraq has highlighted just exactly how politized the military is and how questionable their judgement is.

In the beginning,those Brass who opposed the war were effectively ousted and any Brass that said there were vnot enough troops were quietly put out to pasture.

Now we know we didn't and don't have enough troops etc and we now have the anti-Rumsfeld Brass in charge.

Like most of us in all our positions and jobs,looking out after number one is number one and often that means shutting up when we know we shouldn't..

The same is true of the military brass who "suck up to the boss and say what the boss wants them to say " .

We really cannot demand ofv the military Brass that which we do not demand of ourselves.

All of this to say that we should LISTEN to the GENERALS and LISTEN to the CITIZENS and LISTEN to our allies and LISTEN to anyone and everyone who has a constructive contribution.

LISTENING does NOT mean AGREEING with or acting on.

In a democracy ,the MILITARY is SUBSERVIANT to the Civil Authority and while their expertise is extremely important as it pertains to MILITRAY matters,Iraq is only partly about MILITARY matters and much more about POLITICAL matters .

Answer 9

Yes, and let the ones on the ground be heard the loudest

Answer 10

Yes, the politicians should listen to the generals.  The generals in the direct chain of command of this war.  I.e. The Joint Chief, The individual Military Branch Chiefs, The Commander of Central Command, The Commander of Special Operations Command, The Commander of the Multi National Forces in Iraq (Gen Petreaus), and the Commander of CJTF-82 in Afghanistan.

They in turn should be listening to the commanders on the ground, those commanders actually meeting and engaging the enemy.  They give their orders and direction and allow those in battle to follow through as best fit by the situation on the ground.

Answer 11

Definitely, they can't be biased, can they?

They only tell the truth, like Colin Powell told us about WMD in 2003, don't they?

Like about Tilman and J. Lynch and Abu Graib and the 2 Trillion Dollar missing since 2001 and the Hospitals in such bad shape, that Veterans died from infections there, and all that other bad stuff, the poor innocent Generals had to deal with.

Answer 12

listen to the locals and lower soldiers.

Answer 13

It depends on what they're saying, doesn't it?  I think we both know that it does.

Answer 14

We should listen to the Generals on the ground in Iraq.

Answer 15

uhh yeah . who else you?    lol . no way .

Answer 16

BUSH will listen to this one because he mimics Bush

Bush fired and early retired all generals that told him what he didn't want to hear. (after all, why should Bush listen to them, they've only been there and done that, while Bush was still trying out new excuses for being A W O L

HE JUST DOESN'T LISTEN TO ANYONE

Does he listen to the troops?

A poll taken last year showed that an overwhelming majority of troops in Iraq WANTED US OUT OF THERE BY NOW.

http://www.zogby.com/news/readnews.dbm?i...

An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq “immediately,” while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay “as long as they are needed

Does he listen to the generals that have experience?

Retired generals are speaking out against this war and the civilian leadership that thought it up and messed it up. Retired, yes. But all senior generals are (or at least consider themselves) members of a rather exclusive club, and when they speak out, it's not impossible that they express the opinions of their active peers.

The list is impressive. In a New York Times op-ed column, retired Major Gen. Paul Eaton, who helped revive the Iraqi army, described Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically" and called for his resignation. Retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency and now a Yale professor, said in a speech covered by the Providence Journal that America's invasion of Iraq might be the worst strategic mistake in American history.

Publicizing his book, "The Battle for Peace," in a recent "Meet the Press" appearance, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, a four-star former commander of the Central Command, describes administration behavior that ranged from "true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility" to "lying, incompetence and corruption." Another Marine, retired Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, has written in Time magazine that the Iraq war was unnecessary. Finally, Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor and Michael Gordon have written a history of the invasion of Iraq, Cobra II, which describes a willfully self-deluding planning process.

Now, on CNN, Maj. Gen. John Batiste also called for Rumsfeld's resignation; the Washington Post reported that Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division in Iraq during 2004-2005, turned down a third star and a tour in Iraq as the second-ranking U.S. military officer there. He retired rather than continue to work for Rumsfeld.

In one sense, this "revolt" is the last act of the Vietnam War. The current generation of generals served as junior officers during Vietnam, where they swore that, when they held the senior positions, they would never collapse before civilian delusion and zealotry, as had so many of that era's leaders. They sensed, back then, a moral rot at the top. Zinni took to heart the day he was shot three times in Vietnam, and promised that if he lived, he would always say what he thought was right. He has. An early opponent of the Iraq war, he was called a "traitor" by the White House. Now Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff until October 2002, cites an old anti-Vietnam song, "Won't Get Fooled Again" and concludes: We were.

Did he listen to his father?

after Saddam Hussein after Iraqi forces were pushed out of Kuwait in the Gulf War.

"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome."

Seems like besides running the CIA and being a one term president, Bush Sr. was a a fortune teller, for his own kid