On February 3, I wrote this diary "Obama and the Generals...Be Warned...." In that piece I once again raised the specter of undue meddling in the civilian government by the country's military leaders. Today, we have yet another example of that meddling.
From www.huffingtonpost.com
Vowing to fight Barack Obama's budget in Congress, Republicans have resorted to a three-pronged attack: the president is proposing unprecedented spending, irresponsible taxation, and using dishonest projections about how to pay for it all.
On the latter front, the GOP got a bit of an assist Sunday morning from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen.
During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, the head of U.S. military forces said he didn't know where the Obama administration was getting its long-term projections for the money it will save by drawing down the war in Iraq. Asked by host Chris Wallace whether it was a budgetary "gimmick" that the government would save $183 billion in 2019 simply by drawing down the war in the next few years, Mullen said he wasn't sure. But he did say, on two occasions, that he never had seen that number before, the implicit message -- at least the one pushed by Wallace -- being that Obama had chosen rosy figures to meet its deficit reduction strategy.
Again I ask the question. What is a currently serving member of the armed forces of whatever rank doing commenting on the policy of the duly elected government of the United States? This is dangerous territory. Just as the framers of the Constitution took care to keep separate Church and State, so too they pointedly put the military under civilian rule.
It seems that the Republicans are attempting to blur that rule of law just as they have with their unending attempts to end the Church/State divide in service of their debt to the far-right christianists. And for all the huffing and puffing from the left when that line has been crossed, the Republicans have succeeded far more int he last few years than they have failed.
But this gradual incursion by military leaders like Mullens, Odierno, and Petraeus is far more dangerous than the threat posed by religious interference in our government.
If the Admiral or any of the others who disagree with the policies of Presiden Obama and his administration and wish to engage in political discourse they must perforce resign their commissions and become ordinary citizen. Or have they forgotten the oath they took?