“This is such a seething mass of stupid that one doesn’t know where to start.”
By Streiff, RedState:
I’ve said it dozens of times in RedState posts but I’ll say it again. Scratch a leftwing academic and you will find an anti-military bigot panting to get out.
The latest thing that has the left in an uproar is Trump’s decision to select James Mattis as Secretary of Defense and H. R. McMaster to lead the NSC. Apparently, having military people in leadership roles in the administration is a direct affront to civilian control of the military and a danger to our Constitutional republic in a way that Obama’s blatant, in-your-face lawlessness never was.
“Because you have a lot of military minds thinking of this in a military context, you are going to get answers to things that are really, really finely tuned to the military considerations but not the diplomatic considerations or even the domestic political considerations (by the way, did I miss something, or wasn’t Steve Bannon on the NSC thought to be a bad idea),” said Alice Hunt Friend, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who held several senior policy positions in the Obama-era Pentagon. “That is something the president should be very concerned about. Civilians are supposed to give them the political context of what they are doing and why they are doing it.”
“Effective civilian control requires three things: clear role delineation between Mattis, McMaster, and Dunford, set by the president and transparent to everyone on the NSC; a defense and military apparatus that is totally clear on the same; and strong civilian and non-defense counterparts, especially at the State Department,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, who recently served as senior adviser to former National Security Adviser Susan Rice. She was previously the chief of staff to the assistant Defense secretary for international security affairs.
“Through no fault of Mattis’ and McMaster’s,” she added, “it doesn’t seem like we’re even close to having any of those.”
It is also not clear to Schulman that Trump, who has repeatedly praised the military prowess of his Cabinet officers such as Mattis and McMaster, fully understands the civilian-military balance and why civilian control has been considered inviolate in the American system.
“By the president’s own words, it’s not apparent he’s clear on the two of them being in civilian roles, period,” she said.
Smith, a vocal skeptic of the decision to grant Mattis a waiver to serve as Defense secretary, said he worries that “hard-core Pentagon military folks are driving the ship.”
“They spend all day looking at bogeymen and figure out how to get them,” he said in an interview. “They have a certain way of looking at the world. There needs to be a counterbalance.”
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