Military Commanders Quotes
For a number of years Eisenhower worked for MacArthur as a key aide.
He had wanted more troops for the Afghan War than President Obama would approve. The Republican members of the Congress tried to make the difference a major issue of a President not supporting his commanders. The General made this brilliant response.
Most Americans believed that only the President could authorize a nuclear strike. However, that was not so. This secret memorandum gave many military officers the right to strike if they thought it was an “emergency”. So for example, the Commanding general of the Strategic Air Command could order a nuclear attack if he thought that it was an emergency. The scenario of the film Dr. Strangelove was therefore much more plausible than most people assumed. Individual general officers had a such authority and they could have a mental breakdown or a hyperaggressive personality and philosophy. It is not know how long this non-Presidential nuclear use authority lasted or was expanded or what the secret current status might be.
The “surge” was the short term injection of a large number of American combat troops into Iraq when the Iraq War was going badly. President George W. Bush, who at the urging of Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives had invaded Iraq and while the invasion went well the administration botched the so-called peace and America was in the midst of a Iraqi civil war. Bush went ahead with the surge despite the advice of the Joint Chiefs. What makes the quotation particularly interesting, beyond the fact that the senior military advice was ignored, was that the President had always campaigned on the principle that the President should listen to the senior American Military officials on military tactics and strategy. He like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and other presidents found that the military leadership perspective was often very narrow and not even militarily infallible. The Iraq War turned in our favor after the surge albeit that there have been arguments since then as to whether or not the surge was the reason or was it due to other factors which occurred at the same time. Probably, all were factors.
