Thursday, November 26, 2009

Opinion

Michael Barone

Fallon Insubordination?

March 12, 2008 01:53 PM ET | Michael Barone | Permanent Link | Print

A big news day.

  • Barack Obama won yesterday's Mississippi primary.  The exit poll shows an electorate more racially polarized than any we have seen this year, with more than 90 percent of black voters backing Obama and more than 72 percent of whites backing Hillary Clinton. This should be no surprise. In presidential general elections, Mississippi has been the most racially polarized state in the nation.
  • New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has announced his resignation.
  • Adm. William Fallon has announced he is resigning as head of Central Command. An article by Thomas P. M. Barnett in Esquire, released last week, depicts Fallon as singlehandedly preventing George W. Bush from taking military action against Iran. This sounds very much like insubordination. Max Boot has an interesting take. I may write about this in my Creators Syndicate column for next week. We have seen individuals in the State Department and the intelligence community work to undermine administration policy, but it's quite another thing for a career military officer to do so. Most members of the military believe strongly in the principle of civilian control; Admiral Fallon seems to have taken a different view.

Tags: Barack Obama | William Fallon | Eliot Spitzer

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Reader Comments

On Admiral Fallon

A recgnized, regarded and talented man of distinction whom happened to own a vision hence was an impediment to a regime that is entirely run by the Zionist-controlled W/H.

A dedicated soldier who cared about the protection of his men under his command, refused to sacrifice them for the sake of Cheney/Bush war profiteering agencies and their handlers in AIPAC and the rest of the consolidated Zionist consortium.

The death of 4000 Americans, 1.200.000 Iraqis, many thousands of Afghans and a ruined economy is not enough to satisfy the blood thirsty Zionists in conjunction with the on-going 60-years of genocide in Palestine.

And now Iran......?

Ivory tower undercuts civilian control?

Michael Barone's piece argues that the circumstances behind Admiral Fallon's forced resignation illustrates a pattern of insubordination by arrogant graduates of fancy liberal arts colleges serving in our security and diplomatic community. This would be interesting if the characters mentioned in the article fit the alleged pattern.

Everyone knows our civilian Commander in Chief graduated from Yale and Harvard, and that Secretary Gates is a Georgetown PhD. Mr. Barone's hero, General Petraeus holds a doctorate from Princeton. The example of insubordination offered by Mr. Barone's piece, Admiral Fallon, is a product of solid programs with admittedly less cachet: Villanova's ROTC program and an Old Dominion master's program. It may be that some members of the diplomatic and military communities resist administration advances toward conflict with Iran. Nevertheless, we can do better than class-driven populism to oppose those opposed to a confrontational approach with Iran.

No offense of course intended to the students and graduates of any of the schools mentioned.

Admiral Fallon

Just as General Douglas MacArthur forgot that Harry Truman was still President, Admiral Fallon forgot that George Bush was still President, as well. I was in the service when Jimmy Carter was President in the '70s and was asked, while deployed to New Zealand for cold- weather training, if the US was going to leave the Kiwis and Aussies alone in their part of the world. I had to say that I supported my Commander in Chief and that I didn't know where we were going in the future. Regardless, my loyalty was to the concept of civil control of the military. Admiral Fallon let his Academy ego forget just who's in charge.

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Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications—including the Economist and the New York Times.

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