General David Petraeus: I Disagree With Barack Obama But 'I'm No Quitter' -- Toby Harnden, The Telegraph
There was a fascinating exchange in General David Petraeus’s Senate confirmation hearing yesterday when Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sought to outwit him after he had diplomatically expressed his disagreement (see the video above) with President Barack Obama’s pullout plan.
At the start of his slot, Levin twice tried to put words into Petraeus’s mouth. When he summarised the Afghanistan commander’s view about President Barack Obama’s drawdown plan as feeling “comfortable implementing it and supporting it”, Petraeus politely demurred: “I would be a bit more qualified, Mr. Chairman.”
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My Comment: I completely agree with Toby Harnden's assessment ...
.... Petraeus’s point was a simple but powerful one. Soldiers can’t simply resign every time they disagree with an order. In Petraeus’s case, to pursue such a course in anything other than the most extreme circumstances would damage the country’s foreign policy. It would be an act of vanity.
Not surprisingly, this exchange was absent in the American main stream media .... but widely reported in Europe.
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