A Fifth Star for David Petraeus

• JANUARY 13, 2011

By PETE HEGSETH
AND WADE ZIRKLE

On a cold December evening in 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his staff and resigned his command of the Continental Army. One hundred ninety three years later, on America's Bicentennial, Congress posthumously promoted Washington to five-star "General of the Armies of the United States."

Washington led the Continental Army against the British for eight years, the longest tenure for a combatant (wartime) commander in our history to be awarded a fifth star. But David Petraeus, who begins his eighth year as a combatant commander (currently as theater commander in Afghanistan), will soon eclipse Washington's tenure. In appropriate recognition of his long and extraordinary wartime service, the new Congress should authorize a fifth star for Gen. Petraeus, thereby promoting him to "General of the Army"—just below Washington's rank of "General of the Armies" (plural).

After George Washington, the only other five-star>>>