Blame the generals?

It’s extremely rare for active-duty officers to criticize the U.S. military establishment. So it’s a big deal that Lt. Col. Paul Yingling let one rip in today’s Armed Forces Journal, a publication aimed at military readers but owned privately by a subsidiary of Gannett Company, Inc. (Gannett also owns USA Today.)

Yingling is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment, though perhaps not for long. As Thomas Ricks notes in today’s Washington Post, Yingling was the commander responsible for the “miracle of Tal Afar” so often cited by U.S. President George W. Bush.

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Yingling doesn’t single out any general by name, but says that “America’s generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand,” a statement that a majority of the U.S. public would probably agree with at this point.

His preferred solution to the military’s failure to get it right in Iraq, though, is for the U.S. Congress to use its power to confirm three and four-star generals as a way of holding generals accountable for their actions. To which I say: yikes. Think generals are political now? Wait until they start having to take some grandstanding Congressman out to lunch. And it’s not as if the legislative branch has the staff or the tools to evaluate who’s a good general and who isn’t.

Better ideas, please.