If you’re concerned that President Barack Obama’s strategy to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) might not be rock solid, rest assured: his top general reads Rachel Maddow for insight into military affairs.
Back in 2012, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey took to his official Facebook page to alert his followers that he had read the liberal MSNBC host’s latest tome and, what’s more, it really made him think.
“I saw from your comments on my post for ‘Swerve’ that many of you were reading Rachel Maddow’s ‘Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power,'” Dempsey wrote. “I read this too and it challenged my thinking on an issue that is central to our profession. The use of the military – in any capacity, conflict or otherwise – is always the decision of our civilian leaders.”
“Ms. Maddow pushes the reader to understand the history of the why and how civilian leaders choose the military option. I couldn’t agree more with her point that our military is ‘unrecognizably better’ since 9/11,” he continued.
The Daily Caller hasn’t exactly combed through Maddow’s book, so perhaps it is as insightful as the general suggests. But, really, America’s top general is using his free time to read Rachel Maddow? What next? Ed Schultz’s “Straight Talk From The Heartland?”
To his credit, Dempsey appears to be an avid reader, often updating his Facebook page to tell his followers of his latest reads, mostly by authors with more military or foreign policy expertise than Ms. Maddow. For instance, the general says he most recently read Robert Kaplan’s “Asia’s Cauldron.”
Though Dempsey found Maddow’s book insightful, it evidently wasn’t insightful enough to make the cut for the “Chairman’s Reading List,” a list of 18 books Dempsey recommends to those in the military because they “capture the values and ethos of the military profession; promote innovative thinking to prepare for the operational realities of an uncertain future; and provide insight into the foundations of our service cultures.”