Matthew Yglesias gets what I was trying to say when I wrote of Richard Holbrooke, "After years of watching the Beltway develop a belief in the infallibility of America's warrior scholars, it's refreshing to see political elites celebrate someone whose job it was to prevent and end wars rather than simply win them."
More disturbing — because it's presumably better considered — is Gen. David Petraeus’ decision to pen a postmortem homage to Holbrooke that includes the line “I used to note to him and to various audiences, with affection and respect, that he was my ‘diplomatic wingman.’”
The affection and respect Petraeus expressed were doubtlessly both genuine, but the sentiment is mistaken. It reverses the proper relationship between civilian and military authorities — generals and their troops are supposed to serve political objectives outlined by civilians, not view civilians as adjuncts to military campaigns. Holbrooke, though, likely would not have been offended. When told he was to be Petraeus' civilian counterpart in the region, he told Der Spiegel that he laughed in response: “He has more airplanes than I have telephones.”
This is, in the long term, a much bigger problem for the United States then Afghanistan is, all the more so because there's no clear recognition that it's a problem. In his book, Mitt Romney proposed replacing the State Department with CENTCOM. As Yglesias notes, America's most famous diplomat passing doesn't bode well for a foreign-policy apparatus that desperately needs to become less, not more, militarized.
