Peter Feaver, a professor here at Duke who is pretty much the nation's leading expert on civil-military relations, published an op-ed in the Washington Post on a new Military Times poll showing 70+% support for President Bush among active duty troops as well as the National Guard and Reserves.
Feaver, who is a crafty point guard in department basketball games, places a good deal of blame on Kerry's campaign, saying "Kerry's scorched-earth critique of the Iraq war may excite the base, but it alarms the military. The point is not that members of the military are blinded to mistakes or difficulties in Iraq. Rather, the point is that Kerry has unwittingly revived two specters that haunt the military" -- "the ghost of Vietnam" and Clinton's tenure as president.
But the larger issue is what these poll results represent. Feaver is concerned that Kerry will be mad at the military and this will harm his ability to serve as commander-in-chief:
I worry about poll findings that show such a large tilt in favor of one candidate because they risk politicizing the military further, especially when it rebuts so decisively a central theme in one candidate's marketing campaign. I worry also because of the reaction I have gotten from Democrats when informed of the poll results -- there's an abrupt shift midstream from crowing about how the military would turn on Bush this year to decrying the partisan Republican tilt of the military. The Democrats have wooed the military more ardently (though perhaps not more wisely) than ever before. Does the fury of a spurned suitor prepare someone to be a good commander in chief in wartime?
More important, though, is the political vulnerability these imbalances can create, which can undercut civilian control of the military when a Democrat is in office, and thereby threaten our national security. I challenge anyone to read Richard Clarke's book and not wish that Bill Clinton had had more leverage to force the Joint Chiefs to undertake aggressive operations against Al Qaeda. Kennedy averted a similar power play by the Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The President - no matter who he is - should be served by the military, not the other way around.
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