Hey, if all of the journalists, pundits, and editorial writers are so smart, why don't they become Generals?

Question

If Gen. David H. Petraeus, Four-Star General, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, he who earned a Master of Public Administration (1985) and a Ph.D. (1987) in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, is not qualified to evaluate what is going on in Iraq, why don't the geniuses writing the Op-Eds take over?

"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers. In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I am readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I will, in turn, do my best for the cause by writing editorials — after the fact." - Robert E. Lee

Answer 1

The pen may indeed be mightier than the sword. Most writers don't have the grit necessary to actually fight, so, instead they try to undermine the efforts of those that do.

Answer 2

Most of them can't meet the Standards of Medical Fitness as laid out in Chapter 2 of Army Regulation 40-501. That's why they are not generals.
Those generals on the retired list who are opining against the current strategy are the institutional "dinosaurs" who cannot adapt to fighting a war where there are no massed troops supported by armor and air assets ready to go up against a similarly equipped force. Meanwhile, General Petraeus emerges as one of the co-authors of Field Manual 3-24, which is the "bible" for carrying out counter-insurgency operations.
But, that's O.K. I'm just wondering how big the "missing in action" list is from the "military experts" who appeared on camera during the run-up to Operation Desert Storm, moaning about thousands of U.S. casualties and equipment that wouldn't work under combat conditions. Haven't seen any of them on the tube since February of 1991.LOL!
Of course the "king" of all the op-ed gas bags who got it wrong was Larry C. Johnson. He was a counter-terrorism specialist in the Clinton administration's State Department. He wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times entitled "The Declining Terrorist Threat". It was published on July 10, 2001!

Answer 3

Because as Robert E Lee says, hindsight is always 20/20. Besides, prediction's always more difficult about the future.

Think of them as back seat drivers. You know, the people who say "you should have turned left there", just after you pass the turning. In the wrong lane, of course...

Answer 4

Spot on, good one. It was so absurd how months before the "report" is was already being criticised.