Sherry Chandler

One thing that worries me about our current government is not just that George W. Bush likes to dress up in uniforms and play soldier but also that he is militarizing our government more and more. In foreign affairs, he turns more and more to the Department of Defense and less and less to the Department of State. Even his State has been staffed with “good soldiers,” first in Powell and now in the ever-compliant Condoleezza.

She of the statement, paraphrased, “Of course the United States would never use its military force for anything but good.” A statement like that is either naive — in which case the woman has no business being National Security Advisor, let alone Secretary of State — or disingenuous — in which case the woman has no business being National Security Advisor, let alone Secretary of State.

Anyway, I’ve posted about this earlier this year. It’s a trend that gets noticed every now and then on the news blogs I read.

So I read with interest and some trepidation these thoughts about Bush’s new “war czar,” shared at Talking Points Memo. The first from a “knowledgable reader:”

I’ve never met Lute, but his resume is solid. It’s particularly noteworthy that his last three jobs have all been joint positions. He will probably be an effective organizer. But as a currently serving 3-star, he will be at best a coordinator, outranked by many of the key people he needs to coordinate.

It is somewhat troubling how more and more of our senior national security positions are being filled by military folks still on active duty or just recently retired (CIA, DNI, etc.). There needs to be a balance in backgrounds, and we’ve probably pushed past the right level.

And the second from The Nelson Report, pointing out that this trend is not particularly good for the military:

there’s a fascinating debate ongoing from “the uniforms” and from sensible civilian staff types. One major concern is the conflation of appropriate civilian and military roles.

Providing “best military advice” is the military’s responsibility, and also a right. The responsibility of the civilian leadership is to provide military leaders with enough knowledge of “national policy” to be able to advise, and to understand military matters well enough to understand that advice…and to give it proper and thoughtful consideration.

As we see with the Congressional debate and posturing over how to use the budget to set a schedule and “benchmarks” for success in Iraq, Capitol Hill now shares with the majority of the public the view that the Bush Administration’s civilian leadership did not live up to any of its responsibilities…aided and abetted by serious dereliction of news media and Congressional oversight duties.

What we hear repeatedly expressed as the danger now…both with this nomination, and with constantly rhetorically making Gen. Petraeus responsible for “the plan” in Iraq…is that the military will be held accountable for the policy. As a military friend privately comments, “This is simply wrong”.

…

It remains to be seen what Lute’s brief will be and given Title 10, what authorities he is given. In any case POTUS is tampering with fundamentals and it will have serious consequences that I hope have been fully analyzed and understood.

Read this whole clip. No link to the original Nelson Report, not apparently an online phenomenon.