I can't say I know all that much about General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff. Like most Americans, about all I know about him is that, before the Iraq war, he argued that occupying Iraq would require an enormous American military presence far is excess of what the country was being told. The upward range of Shinseki's estimate was 500,000, a number that, if regularly offered by those who supported the invasion, would almost certainly have driven public and congressional support for the war down significantly. Instead, Shinseki's estimates were called "outlandish" by Paul Wolfowitz in testimony before Congress:
DEP. SEC. WOLFOWITZ: There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.
These are the sorts of lies that led to the war in Iraq, which has cost America thousands of lives, killed or displaced one in four Iraqis, not to mention severely damaged both our economy and international reputation.
Given that he was right about this disaster, it is a positive development that Eric Shinseki has now been selected to run the Department of Veteran's Affairs. People who were right about such major decisions facing our country should be rewarded, just as President-elect Obama was rewarded by the country at least in part due to his early opposition to the war in Iraq. In truth, Shinseki should probably have received an even higher post for his foresight, such as Secretary of Defense.
Beyond perceived ideological leanings, it bothers me even more to see people who screwed up the country and the world so badly via support for the Iraq war and / or de-regulation of the financial sector be rewarded with major administration positions despite f**king us all over so badly. Shinseki didn't do that, and in fact suffered a career setback for trying to prevent it from happening. I'd love to see more picks like this in the future, because right now is a time when the people who can say "I told you so" should be in power.
