General Tony Zinni on the Daily Show

Wednesday's guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was General Tony Zinni (retired), former commander of the U.S. Army Central Command (CENTCOM) and author of the book The Battle for Peace. He says, "Our system of government, the way we've made decisions, the way we've approached this new [post-Cold-War] world, has been wrong." Jon Stewart distilled it thusly: "You're suggesting that invading them to help them vote may not have been the wisest strategy." General Zinni goes on to explain that Iraq should have been nowhere near the top of the United States' priority list, even just within the Middle East, and that we have made a series of strategic and operational mistakes in the execution of the battle for Iraq. Most importantly, General Zinni brings a strong reminder that our high-level military officers have sworn before Congress to appear before the Congress and give their honest views, even if it's opposed to administration policy. Clearly there were senior military commanders who knew or reasonably should have anticipated the possibility that the President and the Secretary of Defense were leading the United States military into an untenable situation, and they were derelict in their duty by not speaking out with those reservations.

Technorati tags: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, General Tony Zinni, Iraq War, Politics