President Bush and the Generals
With General Petraeus’s imminent testimony, it is a good time to ponder the issue of military advice to civilians leaders. President Bush has often trumpeted that he makes decisions on Iraq following close consultation with his military commanders. Indeed, the president has sometimes seemed to go to extremes, suggesting General Petraeus is the ultimate decision maker on Iraq:
“My attitude is, if he didn’t want to continue the drawdown, that’s fine with me,” Bush said before television cameras later, with Petraeus standing by his side. “I said to the general: ‘If you want to slow her down, fine; it’s up to you.’ “(Bush Listens Closely To His Man in Iraq)
As a matter of civil-military relations, this sort of deference is at least as problematic as ignoring military advice altogether. In truth, of course, President Bush does not so much follow Petraeus’s lead as he has finally found a credible military voice whose views on Iraq are congruent to his own. The Bush Administration has never been shy about sacking military leaders who were perceived to be off message. Generals Shinseki, Pace, Franks, Abizaid, Casey, Sanchez, and Admiral Fallon all found themselves either publicly humiliated, marginalized, or quietly ushered out when daylight emerged between their military advice and the President’s preferences.
While the Bush Administration has been extreme in its efforts to control military advice and willingness to mete our punishment to any leader seen to be at odd with administration policy, the Clinton Administration was also often frustrated with military advice as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s pointed question to then-General Colin Powell suggests, “What’s the point in having this superb military you are always talking about if we can’t use it?”
The Clinton Administration’s clumsy initial approach to civil-military relations — the appointment of Les Aspin as Secretary of Defense, the decision to try to allow gays to serve openly in the military, an initial dismissiveness of military concerns led to near a near insubordinate response among the uniformed military. President Clinton’s quest to find senior leaders who were not openly hostile to his administration led to the promotion of a number of leaders later derided by Bush Administration insiders as “Clinton Generals” — all of whom were rapidly pushed out of the door. Donald Rumsfeld’s effort to control the officer corp by decree and meddling in the promotion process institutionalized a politicization of the senior military leadership. In short, a lot of the problems come from a bad approach by civilian elites.
And yet, the military also has a share of the blame. For too long, senior military leaders have had a contemptuous attitude towards members of Congress who they see as meddling amateurs. Their view of the press, as a near-treasonous element that must be manipulated and controlled every step of the way, is even more poisonous.
While there has been a lot of research about the “gap” between civilian and military attitudes, far less work has focused on the profound pathologies that have emerged in the concept of military advice to civilian authorities. While military leaders have a duty to follow orders, they also have an obligation to sustain the Constitutional order which includes a prominent role for Congress. Military leaders must obey the President, but they are under no obligation to confuse the interests of the President with the interests of the nation. Similarly, civilian leaders owe more to the uniformed military than to actively shop for the advice they want to hear. The path forward involves mutual respect and a conscious effort to depoliticize the concept of military advice.
