What America needs, Fallon says, is a “combination of strength and willingness to engage.”

Those are fighting words to your average neocon — not to mention your average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to “nuclear holocaust.”

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

Excerpted from Thomas P.M. Barnett’s ‘The Man between War and Peace’ in Esquire, March 5