Follow-up to Allen's Firing

Carl Prine has a long and thoughtful piece on the firing of LTG Fuller, with some good comments from readers at the end.

The journalist likely didn’t realize that, but Mak put before Fuller a stark choice: Tell America the truth or lie. Pay homage to core Army values or honor your leader and a murky mission he represents in a war that’s increasingly unpopular with our people.

Fuller chose to do that which is right and got fired for it.

The man charged with arming and training hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces told a representative of the free press, asking a question crucial to our democracy’s public debate about the war, that Afghan leaders are corrupt and incompetent; they fail to understand their own ability to sustain their armed forces; they don’t see the economic problems roiling the U.S. and our European allies; and the kleptocracy of jug-eared thief Hamid Karzai shows no thanks for the ongoing sacrifice of our troops and taxpayers on their behalf.

I might quibble with the part about gratefulness – in relationships between states, it doesn’t matter whether there’s an emotional component to the exchange but rather that our interests mesh with theirs – but the rest of Fuller’s spiel was what everyone already thinks.

Go read the rest - it's an excellent piece of writing.

By: Brant