Halkias: A salute for Gen. Peter Fuller

Editor’s note: Telly Halkias is an award-winning freelance journalist. This piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.

Last week, Gen. John Allen, the top U.S.commander in Afghanistan, relieved Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller of his duties as deputy commander for the Afghan training mission. Apparently, Fuller, an Andover, Mass., native and 1980 University of Vermont graduate, made “unfortunate comments” with respect to the U.S.government’s relationship with its Afghan counterpart.

Translation: There go those Minutemen and Green Mountain Boys popping off again.

As stated in an interview with Politico.com, Gen. Fuller called Afghan leaders erratic, ungrateful and “isolated from reality,” and claimed they don’t grasp the extent of America’s sacrifices for Afghanistan, or the economic distress it has caused us.

Responding to President Hamid Karzai’s recent claim that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a potential conflict with the U.S., he added: “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, I don’t really care?”

In rare form, Gen. Fuller continued: “You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish. We’re giving them fish while they’re learning, and they want more fish! [They say] ‘I like swordfish, how come you’re giving me cod?’ Guess what? Cod’s on the menu today!”

Generals in hot water for being candid are nothing new. In the last century, a celebrated example was Gen. George S. Patton, arguably our most effective battlefield commander in World War II.

Patton, who during the Battle of the Bulge orchestrated and personally led the relief of surrounded American forces at Bastogne, was removed from command as the war wound down after a string of politically incorrect incidents, including insulting our Soviet allies.

In part, he openly suggested that once Hitler and the Nazis were taken down, the U.S. should turn its might against the USSR, and possibly ally with Germany to do so. While the comments were untimely given the war’s end and discovery of the Holocaust, in retrospect Patton’s strategic vision of postwar Eastern Europe — specifically its cost to the West over the next two generations — was spot on.

More recently, we witnessed the ouster of another truth teller, former Army Chief of Staff and current Secretary of Veteran Affairs Gen. Eric Shinseki. In 2003, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Shinseki responded to a query regarding post-invasion troop levels needed to stabilize the region by claiming “something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would be needed.

This number was at odds with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who publicly chastised the general for offering a different take than the Pentagon’s leaner projections. While Shinseki was never officially relieved — he was widely respected and popular with both political parties — he lost much of his sway until retiring later that year.

The precedent for putting our generals in their place has been around since the nation’s birth. And, to be fair, it bears noting that one of America’s greatest strengths is our civilian control of the military — a constitutional hallmark that sets us apart from banana republics.

But unlike the typical Hollywood stereotypes, soldiers in leadership positions, from team chief to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are all trained and encouraged to think on their feet, be active instead of passive, and in the absence of direction, take initiative.

This has been the American way at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Inchon, and today. For all the expected cynicism found in any military, American generals don’t get to their stations without extensive experience and education — often multiple graduate degrees and years of overseas assignments and foreign cultural immersion.

In other words, when diplomacy may have gone too far and they comment on it publicly, they know exactly what they’re saying. Which means Gen. Fuller was really speaking to his bosses, and expected to be thrown under the bus. That’s how our system works. And unlike the typical Beltway politicians, generals who speak the truth show real courage.

So let’s salute Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, one of New England’s finest. He sacrificed his career to send a message from the trenches to the Oval Office. The question now should be: Is anyone listening?