Kevin Drum offers a typically sharp take on the proper civilian-military balance in government:
Andrew Bacevich makes a point today about the military brass that's been nagging at me for a long time:In determining the conduct of the Bush administration's global war on terror, the civilians in the office of the secretary of Defense call the shots. Apart from being trotted out on ceremonial occasions, the Joint Chiefs have become all but invisible. Certainly, on questions related to basic national security policy, they have become irrelevant.
Some of this qualifies as payback. During the 1990s, in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the Joint Chiefs were riding high and used their clout to show their civilian "masters" who was really boss. During the largely contrived controversy over gays in the military, the Joint Chiefs publicly humiliated the newly elected president, Bill Clinton.
....When Rumsfeld took office in 2001, he was intent on shoring up the principle of civilian control. He has done that — although Rumsfeld's idea of control amounts to emasculation. He has bludgeoned generals into submission, marginalized or gotten rid of those inclined to be obstreperous and selected pliable replacements such as [Marine Gen. Peter] Pace.
When it comes to the debacle in Iraq, it's right that the focus be kept squarely on the civilian leadership: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice. But there's a downside to this, namely that it lets the military leadership off the hook too easily.
We should expect our top military leaders to treat the civilian chain of command with respect and obedience. We should also expect them to provide sound military advice regardless of the consequences and to accept responsibility for failure. In the Clinton administration they failed to do the former and in the Bush administration they've failed to do the latter. They've allowed Rumsfeld to cow them into silence, they've declined to implement the root-and-branch commitment to counterinsurgency that's needed to succeed in Iraq, and they've consistently misled the American public about how much progress we're making against the Iraqi insurgents.
This is exactly right. The military serves the president, not the other way around, but we have to hold its leaders accountable for their failures.
The problem is that both sides tend to venerate the military when it serves their political purposes at the expense of undermining the principle of civilian control. When the military undercut the Clinton administration on gays in the military, for instance, Republicans cheered. But they brook no dissent now that their party controls the presidency.
On the flip side, as an increasing number of retired officers have gone public with their critiques of the Bush administration, Democrats have uncritically touted their endorsements as some sort of military stamp of approval. John Kerry practically made a fetish of invoking the fact that he was supported by Gen. John Shalikashvili and other flag officers during the 2004 campaign, even mentioning it during the first and second presidential debates. The military should not be a political constituency in a democracy. And by touting his military support, Kerry only encouraged Republicans to point to their far greater number of military supporters (the armed forces are increasingly dominated by Republicans).
Going forward, the political climate will make any effort to bring the civil-military relationship back into balance and hold officers accountable difficult to impossible. In particular, imagine what will happen if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008. Even a serious, non-political attempt to overhaul the military leadership and come to terms what has happened in Iraq would probably draw savage attacks from Republicans, further politicizing the armed forces. I'm not optimistic.
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