Finally, the Army Gets It Right

Fred Kaplan is a New York City based writer and author who has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration and its foreign policy. Unfortunately, his rote and partisan attacks have often obscured his valid critiques of U.S. military shortcomings. Kaplan writes in Slate.com the U.S. Army has finally rectified an unjust and unwise personnel decision that has continued for too long. Last November, when Gen. David Petraeus was named to chair the promotion board that picks the Army’s new one-star generals, the move was seen as, potentially, the first rumble of a seismic shift in the core of the military establishment. Kaplan announces the signal event of the promotion to Brigadier General of Colonel H. R. McMaster, author of the 1998 bestseller, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. In 2006 and again in 2007, the Army’s promotion board passed over Col. H.R. McMaster, widely regarded as one of the most...