Glen Beck: The president must listen to his generals

Glen Beck talked about why the President should listen to his generals. Of course, when the Pentagon generals told George W. Bush that invading Iraq was a bad idea they were told to sit down and shut up or to retire.

Beck, who has no military experience, should realize that Obama is listening to a lot of generals besides Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He is also listening to political advisers on the National Security Council. The decsion to escalate the war in Iraq is primarily a political decision, not a militarily one.

Several prominent members of the military and national security communities, particularly those who favor a realist approach to international relations, were critical of both the decision to invade Iraq.

On July 28, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq, the Washington Post reported that “many senior U.S. military officers” including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed an invasion on the grounds that the policy of containment was working.



A few days later, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (Ret.) warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the invasion was risky and perhaps unnecessary.

Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to President George H.W. Bush was an early critic. He wrote an August 15, 2002 editorial in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Don't attack Saddam," arguing that the war would distract from the broader fight against terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


The next month, Gen. Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed that war in Iraq would distract from the War on Terrorism.



Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East and State Department's envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, echoed many of Scowcroft's concerns in an October 2002 speech at the Middle East Institute.

By January 19, 2003, TIME Magazine reported that “as many as 1 in 3 senior officers questions the wisdom of a preemptive war with Iraq.”

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War


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