We’ve got a new “Think Again” column here called “The End of Network News?”
Today’s Altercation is authored by Lt. Col. Bob Bateman:
Before the politics, the analysis, the emotion, and counter-emotion about what he said, or what Gen. Petraeus did not say, or what anyone thinks he should have said, come bubbling up, I think perhaps it’s time to break my silence.
You all, perhaps, have noticed that I have been absent of late. That has been intentional. It’s politics time, and around politics time I feel less comfortable about everyone who is political. Uh, except my wife. But since she is serving in Sri Lanka right now, I don’t even deal with that much.
I do not think it is a soldier’s position to get into the middle of things, and I generally avoid it myself. Believe it or not, to my eyes it is clear that while he is good at it, General P doesn’t much like being there either. But that is now his job. But with all of the sentiment, real and postured, seen on Capitol Hill these past 24 hours, I thought it might be useful to introduce some real emotion.
This essay is dated, though perhaps you might not find it so. I wrote it, and it was published in a small venue, Vietnam Magazine, six years ago. I hope that perhaps, on a host of issues, it reminds you about some of the things we all believe in. Beyond the debates of this day, or this war. Beyond the ideas of policy and strategy versus tactics and structure. I enjoin you for a moment, as one senator pleaded not long ago, to look past, to look beyond. In this small way, by a mild act of distraction, and sentiment, and perhaps hope, I enjoin you all to take a few moments to reflect. That is all. I do not care upon what you reflect. But it is something that others beyond our shores have suggested that we might do better as a nation, and I agree. In listening to them, it occurred to me I might help in this way. By giving you something from the heart upon which to reflect, and contemplate, so that you might have a moment to yourself to delve into complexity.

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