BRUCE KESLER ON THE MILITARY AND CIVILIANS
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Sunday, June 27. 2010
Military-Civilian Relations Better Be A Two-Way Street
The Left, of course, and the usual fickle conservatives with more ink to expend than practical experience or judgment, have taken the McChrystal affaire and the difficult Afghanistan situation as a new opportunity to exhibit their emphasis on bloviation and lack of spine under difficult challenges regardless of impact on real persons’ lives.
What is notable, however, is that during the discussions of the relief from command of General Stanley McChrystal, most conservatives and professional military leaders came down – even with much misgivings – in favor. Military decorum and civilian control are primary, they affirmed.
Still, while not challenging civilian control of the military, what is missed is that our military’s current rulers have a long record of disrespect for the military and open antagonism to the missions to which we have sent them to struggle, all paying extraordinary sacrifices while politicians and most of the homefront focus on feathering nests.
Such as Andrew Bacevich, not missing yet another opportunity for another way to express his repeated defeatism and antagonism to firm foreign policy, laments instead:
Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government. Not least among those values is a code of military conduct that honors the principle of civilian control while keeping the officer corps free from the taint of politics….But indications that the military’s professional ethic is eroding, evident in the disrespect for senior civilians expressed by McChrystal and his inner circle, should set off alarms.
Usually sensible Eliot Cohen puts the issue in a broader light:
Today, in the midst of the conflict, we cannot achieve the detachment that military historians writing 50 years from now will have. But we can at least cling to some basic principles in explaining our wars to ourselves.
The first of these is that the civilian leadership is always — always — the responsible party. It is responsible for choosing the war, responsible for the strategy, responsible for the military leaders it hires or fires, responsible for ultimate success or failure. It should never be off the hook. The second is the recognition that military institutions and their leaders are radically imperfect. The leaders vary in quality; few have all the attributes required to win, particularly in an era made more complicated by continuous news cycles.
Jules Crittenden, who has actually been to combat and deeply studied war, gets to the point, reminding generalizers of nonsense:
Given the governing party’s preference for strategizing by poll, and the president’s own ambivalence toward winning, there is little reason to be encouraged that he will hang tough in Afghanistan, see to U.S. national security interests there, and give democracy, women’s rights, civilization, that kind of thing a chance, plus render American sacrifices meaningful. Except for one key factor, vanity, which may be a reason for hope in this situation, the one thing that might compel the president to persevere on a foreign field of battle, especially now that the unassailable Gen. David Petraeus has his back.
President Obama, his civilian yes-men from the Left, and politically-chosen military advisors may have triumphed  – even rightfully – over the disrespect, deserved, openly expressed by General McChrystal and his staff. But, their record of disrespect for the military, its professionalism, and its life-and-death existence does not earn them any pass on their continued muddled confusion or purposefully dangerous weakness.
In WWII the US fielded a mostly draft military. In Korea and Vietnam, draftees filled the ranks. Today, we field a superbly professional voluntary military. The Obamaites, and the fickle conservative pundits, should feel lucky they have a professional military that restrains itself. Draftees and their families would never tolerate their heartless, gutless toying with their lives. That would be a real popular and military uprising.
Posted by Bruce Kesler at 13:20 |
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