Recently I was politely answering questions at a talk, and suggested to the irate questioner (same old, same old: 50-60 something, graying, elbow-patched tweed, wire-rims, professorial-and ranting) that nothing much new has happened in Iraq that we haven’t seen before in American history. He got on Rumsfeld, and the “Revolt of the Generals,” et al.

But that was small potatoes compared to the “Revolt of the Admirals” during the Truman administration, when poor SecDef Louis Johnson tried to “reform” (i.e., downsize) the postwar military (before being fired by Truman), by cutting to the bone the Marine Corps and Navy. And in the backdrop of tensions in Korea, Admirals went ballistic and public when Johnson tried to end funding for their new supercarrier United States and in turn pointed fingers at the Air Force’s costly new B-36, and vice versa. The vehemence of that “revolt”, the backdrop of thousands soon to die in Korea, the idea of ending the Marine Corps, etc, all made the media sensationalism of the our own recent “revolt” pretty tame in comparison.