AND NEXT WEEK - A MILITARY COUP! - AT 6:12 P.M. ET:  Just kidding, just kidding.  But there is a bizarre story out there about the deep concerns of some Democrats, not exactly heirs to FDR, Truman, and Kennedy, who are concerned about too much military influence in the Obama administration.  No, that's serious.  I mean it.  Too much military influence in the Obama administration.  That's like worrying about too much conservative influence at Harvard.  But the Politico has the story:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, goes before Congress this week, and with him comes this question: Who’s really in charge here, the generals or President Barack Obama?

Did you ever think you'd see that question asked?

The long-awaited hearings, beginning Tuesday before the House and Senate Armed Services committees, are a bookend of sorts to Obama’s address last Tuesday at West Point committing 30,000 more troops to the war effort in Afghanistan. Implicit in the president’s decision is an effective cap of about 100,000 for the American force, but top Democrats fear that unless Obama is more assertive, the military chain of command will undermine his July 2011 target to begin some U.S. withdrawal.

Now, wait.  Are these "top Democrats" saying that the president is weak?  Indecisive?  Ineffective?  Hmm, we hope the GOP is taping this.

“The president’s decision is already being softened and made mush of,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. And within the House and Senate Appropriations committees, senior Democrats — themselves veterans of past wars — have grown increasingly concerned by the political clout of a generation of younger, often press-savvy military commanders.

These guys don't remember Douglas MacArthur, do they?  Are they really afraid that today's media is too pro-military?  The New York Times?  Are we laughing?

McChrystal and his strong ally, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, are quotable stars in today’s modern media; their wartime budgets not only are large but also give them exceptional discretion that is the envy of their foreign policy partners in the State Department.

Well, yeah.  They're quotable.  They're stars.  They're doing a job.  Where's the problem?

There really isn't any.  In fact, it wasn't the uniformed military, but two Cabinet members - Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates - who kind of fudged the withdrawal date from Afghanistan over the weekend.  And anyone with common sense knows that withdrawal deadlines - a bad idea in the first place - can never be rigid. 

Maybe the Democrats should be more concerned about terrorism than they are about American officers.

December 7, 2009