{"id":196067,"date":"2008-05-26T20:42:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T01:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/26\/chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-warns-troops-to-stay-out-of-politics\/"},"modified":"2008-05-26T20:42:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T01:42:00","slug":"chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-warns-troops-to-stay-out-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/26\/chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-warns-troops-to-stay-out-of-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Warns Troops to Stay out of Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not clear if what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/05\/26\/us\/politics\/26military.html?partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss&amp;pagewanted=all\">Admiral Mike Mullen&#8217;s, &#8220;open letter to all those in uniform&#8221;, means<\/a>, but it is a highly unusual step.<\/p>\n<p>It could be exactly what it says, a statement that, &#8220;The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways&#8230;.It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It could be a slap at those Generals **cough** Petraeus **cough**, who have pimped themselves out to Bush and His Evil Minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup> war, or it could be an attempt to de-legitimize the protests of retired military officers, or it could mean exactly what it says.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that it&#8217;s an attempt at damage control.  I see it as a recognition that the politicization of the military in the past 7 years will have dire consequences if not kept in check during the presidential election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not clear if what Admiral Mike Mullen&#8217;s, &#8220;open letter to all those in uniform&#8221;, means, but it is a highly unusual step. It could be exactly what it says, a statement that, &#8220;The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways&#8230;.It is and must always be a neutral instrument of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1006,977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-presidential-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}