War will always dominate a presidency. It is never the inverse. Even Roosevelt at the height of his battlefield successes knew this truth and was wise to show great deference to Gen Marshall’s bottom-line

The Observer Journal - Merl Oberon - Managing Editor

Merl.Oberon@gmail.com

The Observer Journal - Observation Leading to Insight: War will always dominate a presidency. It is never the inverse. Even Roosevelt at the height of his battlefield successes knew this truth and was wise to show great deference to Gen Marshall’s bottom-line

War will always dominate a presidency. It is never the inverse. Even Roosevelt at the height of his battlefield successes knew this truth and was wise to show great deference to Gen Marshall’s bottom-line

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All presidents are at first tenderfoots. Some are wise tenderfoots. Some are willful tenderfoots. Only the foolish willfully disregard proven military advice. The effective car bomb negatively dominated George Bush’s presidency, twenty-four hours a day, for five critical years. Maybe Gen Shinseki had far wiser judgment? As parts of

Iraq

have become much safer, the war disappears as a presidency dominating TV story. For everyone working in DoD it is important to realize that

Iraq

has always been a competency issue.

Iraq

was a values issue only for a very small part of the far left-media. The vast majority of the American people wanted to win. Bottom-line: The American people wanted phase IV operations conducted competently. In truth it is the uniformed military that failed to stop the effective car bombs but it was the Bush presidency which suffered the most brutal and eternal blows. Maybe the civilian tenderfoots at the most senior levels should have been listening more closely to Gen Shinseki?