Civil-Military Relations Quotes
There is frequently a disagreement between the military and civilian leaders just as there are disagreements among most political personnel. Hawks, and people who have had experience in the military tend to think that military advice on military matters should be determinative with the President and Congress. Others tend to believe that military advice should be considered, but if it were always adhered to, there would be no point in having civilian control over the military. See {639667} for an example of when military leadership advice prevailed and it was a mistake.
In principle few disagree. However, in practice the norm of American polity is that the civilian leaders must consult the military and or intelligence leaders and take their advice seriously. If they President and his civilian leadership to not take the advice, they pay a heavy political price as there is a sometimes contradictory norm that says that you must allow the military experts to run the battles. In the given case, the Iraq War, the President and Vice President made the decision to invade Iraq. However, if we believe them literally, they were heavily influenced by the intelligence agencies who assured them that Iraq had a nuclear weapon about to be completed. It was a “slam dunk” in the words of the CIA director— {633093}. JFK as a young president did not feel that he could override the CIA and DOD people who had assured him that the Bay of Pigs lading would trigger a massive uprising in Cuba. He was misled but had to take the responsibility for the fiasco where not a single person in Cuba rebelled. The President can and should override the best military advice when it is wrong, but how does he know? If he does, he always pays a short term price—even if he is right, for that is not clear for some time. Politics in a democracy is not easy in a democracy.
In Japan at that time there was no civilian control of the military and the military resented any attempt at the civilian government to influence military affairs in any way whatsoever. At the same time the military often tried to influence the politics of civilian government. The Emperor made this feeble effort to inhibit that, but as World War II proved, he had not tried very hard to prevent the military from dominating the country.
The irony is that it is just for the lack of this fundamental principle that Napoleon eventually became the Government and the Military in France.
Governor Noble himself was a Colonel in the Indiana Militia. Even in a relatively frontier state like Indiana at the time, there was little enthusiasm for a militia. See {613320}.
The only soldier ever so honored
Some of America’s very difficult counter-insurgency efforts like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been problematical since Burt’s necessary popular national government was not in place in these efforts. The governments were corrupt, incompetent, and uncaring about the majority of people. Arguably, if there were a “responsive and politically popular national government” in place, there may well have not been a serious insurgency to begin with.
