Petraeus and the leftists

Some people have defended the attack on General Petraeus by MoveOn.org as being no worse than attacks by right wingers that question the patriotism of politicians on the left. I think this retort misses an important distinction. In our republic we allow military officers to vote, but bar them from any other participation in politics. In the light of this, it has been traditional in public discourse mainly to exempt active duty officers from the sort of vulgar obloquy that politicians get from other politicians and their flacks. (They of course lose that de facto exemption and become fair game when they leave the service and become active in civilian politics.) I believe that this is a proper and useful tradition, and think that it was wrong (and, in fact, counterproductive for those of us who disagree with the current strategies in Iraq) for leftists to ignore it.