Fred Reed suggests some additional questions for General Petraeus:
“ General, five years ago the Commander in Chief said that combat operations in Iraq had ended. Since this isn’t true, the Commander in Chief was either lying, delusional, or simply a fool. Which do you believe to be the case?”
“You have said on various occasions that Iran is meddling in Iraq, that it is supplying weapons, fighters, and training to the warring factions. Others have charged that the United States is meddling in Iraq, that it is supplying weapons, troops, and training in Iraq. Which of these assertions do you believe to be the more accurate? Have you seen any evidence of American involvement?”
“General, years from now, when you loll in some sunny clime writing your memoirs, perhaps having served as a handsome and chiseled Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, tens of thousands of enlisted men will be living with colostomy bags or white canes or missing legs or the ruins of faces. Does this in any way bother you?”
“Critics of the military say harsh and, I am sure, unjustified things, such as that generals are simply hired murderers and have no more honor or morality that hit men for the Mafia. I want you to understand that I do not for a moment believe this. I am sure that you would not kill thousands of people you don’t know on command of some nonentity, and then accept strange-looking medals for doing so. To rebuke those voices that say such ugly things, would you give us an example of a country you would not attack if ordered to? Name something you would not do for another star?"
“Will you explain the surgical use of a five-hundred-pound bomb in a densely populated suburb?”
“General, if an Iraqi army attacked your home state in an endeavor to impose democracy on the United States, killed thousands of your fellow citizens, and left your daughter of seven years screaming as she died of burns, what would you do? Would you accept Islam with gratitude and embrace democracy? Or would you fight the invaders? Would you spend the rest of your life trying to kill as many of them as you could, in any way that you could? Just curious.”
“Some of your critics, sir—misinformed, I am sure—say that you send kids from small Southern towns to die while you work on your Power Point presentations. To put this foul canard to rest, would you tell us how much time you have spent in combat as compared to a rifleman on his fifth tour?”
“Finally, General, can you estimate the number of veterans in wheelchairs, blind, gutshot, lacking genitals, on crutches, having nightmares of when Jim Dog took a round through the lungs north of Vung Tau—guys of that sort, in the Disabled American Veterans, in expat bars around the world, in upcountry Thailand and the middle of Mexico—who hate men like you with a dark intensity that makes them pull the arms off chairs when they think about it, so that even their friends back away, a hatred that would make it most unwise for you to be near?
“Just asking. And thank you so much."
