A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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January 29, 2008Should We Elect Generals?EVERY American war since 1789 has had to overcome a mass of incompetent incumbents in uniform; our constitution seems to fail us on this point. Meanwhile, electing generals isn't as stupid as it sounds. Ancient Athens used to elect theirs. Plenty of them were truly great by any metric. Themistocles invented half of naval strategy and used it to save Greece from the big, imperial Persia; he also left advice that let Athens make itself great the same way the UK did 2000 years later. Other great generals included Pericles, who, for better or worse, imposed and grew Athenian Empire on much of Greece. Pericles had a great fellow general, one Demosthenes. This last week, I've been rereading Fiasco, and binging in the Small Wars Council back threads while drunk. and thinking it didn't hafta be like that in Iraq. I mean, Rumsfeld and Franks' errors of not thinking we really needed an occupation was something really basic; Rumsfeld's choices to run Iraq reflected Ike's old observation about B men choosing C men as reports. Neither was remotely up to running a country. We have very smart men in uniform; but they seem to be badly represented at the top. We can see the same troubles in the Air Force, subject of my recent grumbling posts. Not only is is it uninterested in serving the ground as it's required to, it's made bad airplane order choices over most of my lifetime. They've spent so much money on so few planes that most of the effective planes and especially actual bombload deliveries are made from planes far beyond their projected lifetimes. Because USAF can't make choices about features, no replacement is expected for the now-failing F-15 for years; no replacement is planned for the most effective bombing platform by far in the last war and all its predecessors to Vietnam, the ancient B-52. The ultraexpensive B-2 delivers far, far less. Meanwhile, the new planned fewer planes will cost beyond belief to face a vanished threat. Generals, of whatever military force, are required to lead. That hasn't happened in USAF for at least three decades. Now, to be sure, the Athenian system had a real weakness: candidates for the position had even more of an incentive than other politicians to overstate threats, likelihoods of successful wars, and what kind of loot soldiers could hope for. One elected general, one Alcibiades, ended Athenian power forever by convincing Athenians in their arrogance that they could quickly conquer and get lots of loot from a fellow large democracy, Syracuse. We're different from Athens because we're a democratic republic, meaning, among other things, that the electorate is the whole nation instead of just the city of Washington, DC, making us much more stable. We've elected warlike Presidents, Presidents who went to war in stupid settings, but none who wanted to war on our friends and none who did anything so stupid as what Alcibiades did (Vietnam was stupid, but small), which suggests we could probably trust ourselves with electing generals, too. For better or worse, the system gave the Athenians far fewer petty and bureaucratic generals than ours does (they did have some). Proposed Constitutional Amendment: Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs, and one field general (to do what Franks and Schwartzkopf did in Iraq should it be needed), all to appear on the national ballot as Presidential candidates do. Terms would be four years, and a limit of two terms would apply. An alternative might be to have Congress pick them instead of the current system. Posted by Jon Kay at January 29, 2008 11:42 PMComments
You mentioned three successful elected generals. How many unsuccessful elected generals were there? They simply get left out of the history books. We would actually be dealing with the consequences. A few thoughts: Those that would be voting would not have security clearance sufficient to know enough to make informed decisions. Congress can't do anything right, and is a bunch of crooks. Should we allow truly incompetent (rather than unsuccessful, which I think is a more apt word to generally describe the generals you mention above) decision makers to pick generals based on who gives more money to their campaigns? The anti-war and/or anti-America nuts would then, theoretically, have a direct say in who executes our military campaigns. Surely they wouldn't vote for people they thought would ensure failure. And just to confirm, I'm not calling everybody that is against this war a nut. I'm talking about those that are anti-war and nuts. I'm going to have to side with the founding fathers on this one, sorry. Posted by: Justin (NC) at January 30, 2008 09:25 AMAthens had one significant advantage when it came to electing generals: it was small enough that all the voters could know the candidates. Not just as candidates, but over the years. Even Iowa or New Hampshire don't provide that level of interaction with candidates. For the whole country? No chance. There is also the detail that, if we are electing generals, we aren't just electing one person to run an army of a few hundred men; given the size of our military, we'd need a bunch of them. Unless you are thinking of just electing the one person in overall charge of the military . . . but we already do that, for better or worse. Posted by: wj at January 30, 2008 11:04 AMRemember that this President basically fired good generals who did not hold his view of how the war should be prosecuted. We should elect a President that knows how to hire a good general and fire a bad one. If we hire a President who's totally incompetent and runs a corrupt administration then I guess we won't get much better in the general department. Posted by: Marcus at January 30, 2008 04:53 PMI realized that there was one American war that was fought without useless top brass: WWII. FDR is the only President, before or since, to think of using the crisis that causebrought us in - Pearl Harbor - as an excuse to replace the incompetent with the good. So, anyway, Marcus, it wasn't just Bush, though IMHO he did worse than usual. Justin noted, thoughtfully: Those that would be voting would not have security clearance sufficient to know enough to make informed decisions. ...except, those WITH security clearances and personal knowledge of candidates mostly appear to mostly use their better information to keep the best down. You're right about mostly the great and infamous making the history books. I will point out that periods of able strategic Athenian leadership seemed to be roughly fifty years apart (the Persian War, the Peloponnesian War, and Demosthenes' failed but sound alliance against Phil of Macedon were all about 50 years apart). We have great military leadership about once a century, and both times it took ALOT of sackings to achieve. After Lincoln went through all those generals and failed battles, we had a pretty good force; WWII as described above. I think we're outperformed despite a bigger talent pool to draw from for the top today. wj pointed out, correctly: Sort of (Athens was a real city, so maybe only in town meetings) - but notice that we are able to choose Senators and Presidents pretty well without knowing them. Posted by: Jon Kay at January 31, 2008 02:32 AMJon, I have a history quibble with you here, although I would like to know what is your definition of a great general? There have been quite a few great generals or military leaders in each of the past few centuries, each facing a fascinating set of circumstances. Washington, Napoleon, Horatio Nelson, Grant, Lee, Rommel, Ike, Patton, Nimitz, Erich Von Manstien, Israel Tal, Moshe Dayan, Mao, Giap(N. Viet Nam), and Georgi Zhukov(sp?) would be considered by many to be a partial list. although I would like to know what is your definition of a great general? That's an excellent question, Marcus, because I was using the term both in the traditional sense of a general who fought outstandingly in a war and in a few other senses as well. What I'm really wishing for is something different and broader - ideally, I'd like to always have good Secretaries of Defense and general officers in top command who have the capacity to become great if war breaks out. People who understand strategy, get the Military 101 stuff like occupation planning, and make hard choices about expensive platforms. The US is long on very smart people - it's pretty sad it's not reflected so well in the Pentagon's top layer so well. That lack costs lives on all sides. If there'd been a well-planned occupation, it would've saved US lives lost to IEDs and Iraqi lives lost to gang warfare and extremist action. that's what you get when you keep firing the competent. Posted by: Marcus at February 1, 2008 06:49 PMPlease post a comment
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