Petraeus to Pick the New Generals
Posted By Blackfive

General Petraeus is being brought back to the Pentagon to preside over the next Brigadier General selection board.

In the last few days, I've been engaged with quite a few Blackfive readers emailing about the fact that a combat commander in the middle of succeeding in Iraq is being brought back to the states to help pick the next round of Brigadier Generals.

My take on it two-fold. One, the next batch of generals will continue to fight around the world (this is "The Long War" after all) and General Petraeus's (valididated) experience in fighting it will be used to evaluate the next round of leaders. And, two, I believe that a few of the soldiers who helped shape COIN and worked with General Petraeus have been 'punished'. Those of you who've spent any time at all in Special Operations in the last four decades KNOW exactly what I'm talking about...unconventional thinking about warfare is sometimes covertly punished in the military.

So, via Instapundit, comes this piece at Abu Muqawama about the story. While I don't know Abu and have never read the site before, I agree with all of his post - it is an excellent summation of the issues around our leadership and you should check it out. And I also think that denying COL H.R. McMaster a promotion to BG because he doesn't have Joint Assignment experience checked is telling...You all know that everything in the military is 'waivable' at some point. Especially, when McMaster should be one of the CG's fighting "The Long War" in a few short years, not promoting McMaster for lack of a Joint Assignment (when he's done several combat tours over the last two decades and most operations in Iraq are Joint these days, anyway) is complete and utter bulls#!t...

...and General Petraeus knows it.

Ellie