the Bush/Cheney neocon gameplan

Whenever I see those BDS buzzwords, the commenter immediately loses all credibility.

The trivial common understanding of what really lies at the heart of "civilian control" causes some people to fundamentally misunderstand and others (like Barnett, who should know better) to fundamentally misrepresent what goes on in the Fallon case and in other similar cases running back many decades in American civil-military relations.

Jay_C: I consider changing my words to insert an old anti-Bush meme (that I acknowledged and dispensed with in the actual post anyway) to be changing the subject, hijacking the thread and willful baiting (because you know I hate that crap). Stop it.

such rhetoric may have the effect of actually increasing the risk of conflict by unnecessarily exacerbating suspicions.

Another problem is that the threat of war has to remain on the table to give leverage for diplomacy to work. When there’s internal questioning that forces the administration to continually deny that they are planning to go to war, it undermines the possibility for the soft power to work and ultimately can increase the likelihood of war.

Gates, when he was first nominated, cited a quote that he liked in during an interview. Unfortunately I can’t find a reference to it and I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something to the effect of military might being a necessary condition for diplomacy to bear fruit. He’s often spoken about the integration of hard and soft power in that way; it’s obviously a very important concept for him (and I agree with him) so he’s got to be highly irritated at anyone who undermines the balance.

Jay_C: civilian leadership of the military is an extremely important concept. It’s being tested, of course, since current civilian leadership has chosen ill advised policies, but it’s still important that we don’t throw out baby with bathwater.

As Oberman on MSNBC said: this is "Dissent is Disloyalty-gate" for Bush.
However, I agree with Fallon.  War with Iran is an il-advised action on many levels.

As I said before about the Bush administration, they think they can do no wrong.  or if they do, they just ignore it.
 
I liked this part of the article best..
"Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon’s statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House. Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon’s caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way. And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he’s doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn’t do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He’s standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war. "