Shame on LtGen. Sanchez
That’s the distinct message of Jack Kelly’s latest column. Mr. Kelly won’t let Gen. Sanchez’s complaints against President Bush go unchallenged. Here’s Kelly’s most devastating shot at Gen. Sanchez:
Sanchez implies “that somehow he was a blameless bystander and not the one entrusted with day-to-day operations during the critical year following regime change in Iraq,” noted the Small Wars Journal. “It appears that Sanchez did not have a problem with U.S. strategy at that time. Moreover, as the senior commander he had the authority to take measures that could have lessened the impact of a failed or nonexistent strategy had he so desired.”
Here’s another Kelly observation that’s worth highlighting:
It does seem odd that Democrats would excoriate Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the strategy that has turned things around in Iraq, and embrace Gen. Sanchez, especially since it was Democrats in Congress who led the criticism of him during the Abu Ghraib affair.
That’s what Democrats do. They ridicule success and embrace failures. Here’s historian Victor Davis Hanson’s take on that phenomenon:
“In all these cases there is a dismal pattern: a mediocre functionary keeps quiet about the mess around him, muddles through, senses that things aren’t going right, finds himself on the losing end of political infighting, is forced out or quits, seethes that his genius wasn’t recognized, takes no responsibility for his own failures, worries that he might be scape-goated, and at last senses that either a New York publisher or the anti-war Left, or both, will be willing to offer him cash or notoriety, but only if he serves their needs by trashing his former colleagues in a manner he never would while on the job,” Mr. Hanson said.
Exactly right.
Technorati Tags: Ricardo Sanchez, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, War Critic, Democrats, David Petraeus, Surge, Republicans
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog