I am going to "actually" that picture. Eisenhower had a ton more honors than that, and if he actually wore them all he would have looked more like Milley. He just didnt like wearing them all because he felt it was unnecessary and distracted from his role (which in its own right gets the actual point of the image across).

Either way, the main point is still accurate. The US has almost always been characterized by its generals being little more than politicians who dont really get what they are doing. Which is why, even back to the time of Washington (as well as the ideals of the "citizen soldier" that the US was founded on), we practice "Strategic Chaos" and place almost all of our emphasis on field officers and NCO's, with Generals doing little more than going "I want you to do X by Y time with Z rules of engagement." And then every single NCO takes that, interprets this on their own, and then you end up with effectively hundreds of tiny armies advancing on you from unpredictable directions instead of one giant army.

And when you get a general who actually knows what they are doing, like Eisenhower? God help you.

I was gonna say they are literally appointed by politicians at some point. Maybe it's not supposed to be political, but I imagine it ever was, not knowing that much about it.