The senior officer corps is not immune from the trend. At recent media events at the Pentagon, in Baghdad, and this week at the Army War College, uniformed officers led cheers for Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. That may not be unprecedented, but it illustrates the more prominent role of public diplomacy and public relations in war.
Some officers grumbled at the sight of senior officers participating in events with political overtones, at least in image value.
In many ways, the war is being run like a political campaign. For public relations and rhetorical purposes, senior commanders and uniformed spokesmen are taking their lead from civilians at the Pentagon and in the war zone.
"When military guys talk about 'terrorist death squads' rather than 'irregulars,' they are following political direction from the White House Office of Global Communications passed through and coordinated by the political types," says retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner. He notes that senior civilian communications officials in Iraq and at Central Command previously worked for the GOP on the Florida electoral recount.
A year before the 2000 election, a survey by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies showed strong support for the GOP among officers. Of those surveyed, 64 percent identified with Republicans, 17 percent with Independents, and only 8 percent with Democrats.
College, Army Col. Lance Betros concluded that "the officer corps' voting preference does not constitute partisan activity and is not, by itself, harmful to professionalism and civil-military relations."… "They believed that meddling in politics, including voting in ... elections,
eroded professionalism by weakening officers' military expertise and undermining their credibility in providing unbiased advice to civilian leaders," wrote Betros, who warned that the partisan trend could have
"long-term harmful effects."
Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin told an evangelical group in Oregon last year that although Bush had lost the popular election in 2000,
"He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." General Boykin is now deputy to Stephen Cambone, under secretary of Defense for intelligence and
one of the most influential advisers to Mr. Rumsfeld.
"Sea duty, for us Navy types, began to be a box to be checked between Pentagon assignments more than the point of one's career," says retired Navy Capt. Larry Seaquist. "It was a careerist's game. One's skills on the Washington battlefield were the personal, political skills of the staff officer and the courtier, not of the combat team leader.
The result is, we have grown several crops of senior officers who are very good at Washington politicking, excellent at program acquisition, or at least PowerPoint program sales, but rather shallow on the combat command and troop leadership end."
Though some - perhaps many - career officers oppose actions of the president and other senior civilians in charge of the military in Iraq,
they know that speaking out can quickly end a career - or worse. The Uniform Code of Military Justice states that
"any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President...shall be punished as a court-martial may direct."
Such inside opposition is often communicated through retired officers appearing regularly on television.
Others, such as retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who declared the administration's conduct in Iraq a "failure" last Sunday on "60 Minutes," are well known for their outspokenness.
"There is a lot of dissension right now about the Iraq war plan, or lack of plan, within the uniformed community, both at leadership and rank and file levels," says Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
"It may well be that more retired folks are speaking out because they feel that the uniformed folks cannot."
In any case, says a retired Army colonel, "Retired military's involvement pro and con is unprecedented in my experience and memory of history. Even with Ike [Eisenhower], it was much more muted than now."
"The military has no choice if the president chooses to use it as a backdrop. He is commander in chief," says Colonel Smith, now a military analyst at the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington.
"But no other president that I can remember has so tied his political fortunes to military success - not even Lincoln in the Civil War."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040528-political-corps.htm
Yes the inevitable demise of the coalition seems apparent. The Spanish, Hondurans, Poles, Australians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, etc. seem to wavering, or have just left. Fed up with the endless cycle of violence, and threat of terrorist attacks. America would have to actually increase her troop commitments to Iraq to fill the vacuum left over by these newly awoken states. Yes the mission in Iraq is “accomplished” alright, if that meant alienating your allies, then mission accomplished indeed. 
