All Alone in the Night

On the one hand, campaigns like the VoteVets, which attempt to undermine support for the Iraq War by having former generals speak out against it, seem like logical moves. Generals, after all, have a great deal of training in war and the military art, so if they say that the war is lost, their words should carry some weight.

On the other, some of them seem an awful lot more interested in getting in the news than in really helping. Via Mudville Gazette comes this exercise in compare and contrast from retired Army Major General Paul Eaton.

Last year, pre-surge (pre-US elections) retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton appears before congress, excoriates the Bush administration and demands a surge of troops for Iraq.

Batiste and his colleagues offered their solution: more troops, more money and more time in Iraq. "We must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge," Batiste warned. "We better be planning for at least a minimum of a decade or longer," contributed retired Marine Col. Thomas Hammes.

"We are, conservatively, 60,000 soldiers short," added retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of building the Iraqi Security Forces.

This year, in television advertisements for his political group "VoteVets", he says:

President Bush says he listens to his military commanders.
Well, Mr. President, I was one of those commanders, and you weren't listening when we warned you of the dangers we would face invading Iraq. Now our military is overcommitted, and America is less secure.

Mr. President, you're being told we need serious diplomacy, not escalation, and you're still not listening.

If the president won't listen, Congress must.