Nasty Commenteristas Slam Petraeus!

I was thumbing through the blogosphere today and I came across this post on the progressive site Think Progress. As a bit of a disclaimer, I got no beef with the left, hell, sometimes I even subscribe to some of their ideas, and I even enjoy perusing the site for insight. In a democracy, it's important to keep tabs on the top brass, since they are the ones enacting American defense policy out in foreign lands at taxpayer expense. The post highlights the anger felt by many Americans that the Iraq war has dragged on for too long and is costing too much money, since the General said "We’re certainly not dancing in the end zone or anything like that." No arguments here. The Iraq war has been a long, lousy slog and the General is just shooting it to the American public straight, without any propaganda you might see from our civilian leadership. But upon closer inspection of the comments left by many users, it becomes apparent that they take the tone of an no-holds barred smear job on a 4-star general like he's Malkin-incarnate!

The GOP’s Westmoreland. Shameless kiss ass. -QUALAR

Petreus wants another 6 months for the war profiteers to fill their coffers! Hah! He reminds me of the toddler at the amusement park whose parents spent all of their money and the little snit keeps hollaring for “one more ride”! -Veritas

Love the Betrayus Zone concept because this guy’s clearly from another planet. He lives in the “bubble zone” with Herr Bush. -Veritas (again)

And the worst of em:

I’d like the General Petreaus Action Figure please. Oh, you said bottom shelf. In that case I’ll take the “William the Bloody” Kristol coffee mug. -Ralph

After that, I felt a little miffed that the General would get compared to a neo-con wag like Kristol who has never served a day in the military and decided to vent my frustrations via the blogosphere. That and I felt I personally owed it to the guy, since his strategy employed by all the hard-working coalition forces and Iraqis on the ground has helped quell violence in Iraq, preventing marauding extremists from climbing the walls of the Green Zone and me ending up on Al-Jazeera. The drop in violence in Iraq from last year before Petraues showed up is unmistakable. I'm not even going to link anywhere since it's conventional wisdom. Sure there are those on the left who would like to see Iraq turn into the set from the Road Warrior, hoping our guys out in the field and the Iraqis get butchered. They (I ain't namin' names) can use that for political gain to say Bush was an idiot, all at the expense of our lives. It's against policy for the military to get involved in such political matters, but I'm speaking as some pissed-off dude who's only got a year left in the service, so I don't give a shit (what are you gonna do, send me to Iraq). You think those comments were appropriate or want to say how Petraeus is some neo-con stooge, not just a guy following orders, feel free to drop me a line.

General Petraeus, doing more for the world than this chucklehead