Thursday, March 13, 2008
Admiral Fallon
Good riddance.
Sorry, if you can't commit as totally and to victory as the soldiers in the field, you don't need to be CENTCOM commander.
To see why Tuesday's "retirement" of Navy Adm. William "Fox" Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command is good news, all you have to do is look at the Esquire profile that brought about his downfall.
Its author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, presents a fawning portrait of the admiral -- a service he previously performed for Donald Rumsfeld. But evidence of Fallon's supposed "strategic brilliance" is notably lacking. For example, Barnett notes Fallon's attempt to banish the phrase "the Long War" (created by his predecessor) because it "signaled a long haul that Fallon simply finds unacceptable," without offering any hint of how Fallon intends to defeat our enemies overnight. The ideas Fallon proposes -- "He wants troop levels in Iraq down now, and he wants the Afghan National Army running the show throughout most of Afghanistan by the end of this year" -- would most likely result in security setbacks that would lengthen, not shorten, the struggle.
Sorry, if you can't commit as totally and to victory as the soldiers in the field, you don't need to be CENTCOM commander.
Comments:
^^^^^
spammer. Seen the exact same comment elsewhere. Also, black-helicopter conspiracy nut kind of commentary.
I used to work in an office where the guy was. Check the navy milblog comments and you'll see some assessments; I'm keeping mum for now. Suffice it to say Barnett called him a "strategic genius"...and doesn't mention anything Fallon wrote.
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spammer. Seen the exact same comment elsewhere. Also, black-helicopter conspiracy nut kind of commentary.
I used to work in an office where the guy was. Check the navy milblog comments and you'll see some assessments; I'm keeping mum for now. Suffice it to say Barnett called him a "strategic genius"...and doesn't mention anything Fallon wrote.
