The Dept. of Justice Isn’t the Only One Bush Has Tainted
In addition to Bush’s shameless willingness to prop up an active US Army General (GEN Petraeus) as a political bulwark in front of Congress to lend credibility to his mishandling of the Iraq war, this article is proof positive that this administration sees no area of our government as off-limits to the practices of politicization and manipulation.
If we can’t trust our own generals to execute their duties with integrity and do so free of the bias of political machination, we are headed down a dark road, indeed. I came up as both an enlisted soldier and officer in the combat arms sector of our military, and I was trained to execute my duties using only my own judgement and good common sense in order to look out for the welfare of those soldiers under my charge. I was raised in an Army that prohibits its members from expressing their personal political opinion while in their official capacity, and especially from allowing those opinions to affect or guide their job performance. It pains me to see such a high ranking officer ignore that training, and such conduct causes direct and possibly irreparable harm to the military’s mission to be an unconditional and impartial defender of our Constitution. If this kind of officer conduct is not immediately and effectively addressed and corrected, it will cause a great deal of harm to the institution meant to defend our nation, and that will leave us all at risk.
We all took an oath upon entering into the service to defend our Constitution from all enemies - foreign and domestic. Any politician that encourages such deplorable conduct in the nation’s military officer corps definitely qualifies as such a domestic enemy, and any officer not willing to stand up and confront such politicization is not fit to wear the uniform. This makes me sick.
