Reply #5: It IS a very very important issue though. You could almost make an argument that

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

it's a defining one.

One of the most important if not THE most important duty of the President is as CINC. If he lets officers in general, much less one of the top ranking officers in the entire military, get away with saying, essentially, "Obama and his Administration are a bunch of fuckwit clowns" in public to the media, he is failing in his duty as CINC in my opinion, and then OBAMA will be the one showing poor judgment in what is necessary to maintain discipline in his military.

Already I'm not hearing anything about courts martial and dishonorable discharges for the fuckwit Army doctors who tried to dodge orders based on birther nonsense, and I already thought that was a big big mistake. They should get punished, severely, promptly, and VERY publicly to nip this shit in the bud. It's not clear to me that they have, and that to me is already a knock against the President who I supported very vigorously and with lots of cash in his election campaign, and who I still support.

This is on a much larger scale.

This is not to say that generals and admirals haven't thought these things about their leaders from the beginnings of recorded history. No doubt they have. But thinking it, speaking it to confidantes, and publishing the shit in Rolling Stone are completely separate issues.