Are the debates not happening at all, or are they just not happening in public?
How many officers have lost their pensions for giving advice that politicians don't want to hear? Obviously generals, like (for example) ambassadors, are expected not to publicly challenge decisions, but are there really such severe repercussions for dissenting opinions expressed through accepted channels? If a senior officer had expressed the opinion that occupying Afghanistan and trying to democratize it was a perverse enterprise destined for failure no matter what strategies were adopted, would he have been stripped of his pension, or would he simply have been ignored?
The policy commitments in question were made by the President before this one... and in both cases they were elected by people with very little concern for foreign or military affairs, which are generally not the basis on which elections are decided in the US.
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