The Military and Politics

Military officers, as part of the policy of civilian supremacy over the military, are not permitted to publicly criticize the President. I fully support that policy, but I cringe when it goes to the opposite extreme. As an example:

Reuters, 18 Nov 2006 01:21:37 GMT

Army Gen. John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said in a speech titled "The Long War," at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.

If not stopped, Abizaid said extremists would be allowed to "gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend."

Abizaid said the world faces three major hurdles in stabilizing the Middle East region: Easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism, and dealing with Iran, which Washington has accused of seeking to develop nuclear bombs.

"Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq," said Abizaid…

Military officers should not be used as a tool to implement the political ends of the civilian leadership, either. In taking this stance, Abizaid is betraying the troops he is supposed to be leading.

The military should be removed from the political process, apart from it. When the generals become tools of the civilian leadership, pawns in the games played by politicians, we are led into false wars.

Like into disaster in Iraq.