The President And The Military
September 25th 2009 13:16
Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution provides that the President “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
By September, 1950, after General Douglas MacArthur’s landing at Incheon, behind the North Korean lines, the outflanked North Koreans retreated towards the Yalu River border with China with the UN forces not far behind. Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai warned that if the UN forces advanced to the Yalu, China would enter the war.
MacArthur told President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson that there was no chance of this happening, and he requested permission to advance; MacArthur ignored evidence that the Chinese had already crossed the Yalu in strength. The Chinese attacked the UN forces, forcing them to retreat down the peninsula. MacArthur requested permission to strike bases in Manchuria and China, but Truman resisted, fearing a war with Russia (after World War II, the U.S. had reduced its military forces considerably, and it could not hope to fight a war with China and Russia).
In 1951, MacArthur, in an end around the President, sent a letter to the House minority leader, Joe Martin, Republican from Massachusetts, disagreeing with the President’s policy of limiting conflict with China (MacArthur was being mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate). While President Truman was trying to start negotiations with China for a cease fire, MacArthur sent an ultimatum to the Chinese army, effectively ending the negotiations.
Truman relieved the insubordinate MacArthur of his command on April 11, 1951, enforcing the principle that the military is subordinate to civilian command. MacArthur apparently forgot this; he had been out of the country for eleven years while he served as the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan, a post that made him more powerful than the Emperor in the eyes of the Japanese, and more powerful than the President of the United States, in MacArthur’s mind.
Fast forward to the present; General Stanley A. McChrystal wrote an assessment of the Afghan situation and how to stabilize the insurgency that was meant for the eyes of Secretary of State Robert Gates and President Obama. Somehow, it made its way into the hands of Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, and the Internet, where it became available to me and everyone else in the world, including the insurgents. It has been suggested that this memo was released by someone in the Pentagon, with or without McChrystal’s knowledge, to put pressure on Mr. Obama to stop thinking and grant McChrystal’s wish for more troops.
If a link to McChrystal can be found, then this is the same sort of insubordination, no matter how well intentioned, that MacArthur’s letter to Joe Martin was, and it has to be stopped for the good of the country. If McChrystal remains in command, Mr. Obama and Mr. Gates should sit down with him and explain the reason for the wait (most likely to determine the outcome of the Afghan presidential election; bad Afghani government is what McChrystal rails about in his memo) and discuss with him, after he hears their explanation, whether or not sending more troops is still viable; he has to buy into their strategy if they are to buy into his.
President Obama is perceived as being weak by the Right and Left because he thinks before he acts instead of reacting to situations as President Bush/Chaney did. This is his strength, but he can’t let the military dictate foreign policy; Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution gives the President the privilege to “have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors.” That’s how foreign policy was defined in the late eighteenth century, but the power to conduct this nation’s foreign policy is still in the hands of the President, not the military. Thank goodness!
By September, 1950, after General Douglas MacArthur’s landing at Incheon, behind the North Korean lines, the outflanked North Koreans retreated towards the Yalu River border with China with the UN forces not far behind. Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai warned that if the UN forces advanced to the Yalu, China would enter the war.
MacArthur told President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson that there was no chance of this happening, and he requested permission to advance; MacArthur ignored evidence that the Chinese had already crossed the Yalu in strength. The Chinese attacked the UN forces, forcing them to retreat down the peninsula. MacArthur requested permission to strike bases in Manchuria and China, but Truman resisted, fearing a war with Russia (after World War II, the U.S. had reduced its military forces considerably, and it could not hope to fight a war with China and Russia).
In 1951, MacArthur, in an end around the President, sent a letter to the House minority leader, Joe Martin, Republican from Massachusetts, disagreeing with the President’s policy of limiting conflict with China (MacArthur was being mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate). While President Truman was trying to start negotiations with China for a cease fire, MacArthur sent an ultimatum to the Chinese army, effectively ending the negotiations.
Truman relieved the insubordinate MacArthur of his command on April 11, 1951, enforcing the principle that the military is subordinate to civilian command. MacArthur apparently forgot this; he had been out of the country for eleven years while he served as the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan, a post that made him more powerful than the Emperor in the eyes of the Japanese, and more powerful than the President of the United States, in MacArthur’s mind.
Fast forward to the present; General Stanley A. McChrystal wrote an assessment of the Afghan situation and how to stabilize the insurgency that was meant for the eyes of Secretary of State Robert Gates and President Obama. Somehow, it made its way into the hands of Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, and the Internet, where it became available to me and everyone else in the world, including the insurgents. It has been suggested that this memo was released by someone in the Pentagon, with or without McChrystal’s knowledge, to put pressure on Mr. Obama to stop thinking and grant McChrystal’s wish for more troops.
If a link to McChrystal can be found, then this is the same sort of insubordination, no matter how well intentioned, that MacArthur’s letter to Joe Martin was, and it has to be stopped for the good of the country. If McChrystal remains in command, Mr. Obama and Mr. Gates should sit down with him and explain the reason for the wait (most likely to determine the outcome of the Afghan presidential election; bad Afghani government is what McChrystal rails about in his memo) and discuss with him, after he hears their explanation, whether or not sending more troops is still viable; he has to buy into their strategy if they are to buy into his.
President Obama is perceived as being weak by the Right and Left because he thinks before he acts instead of reacting to situations as President Bush/Chaney did. This is his strength, but he can’t let the military dictate foreign policy; Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution gives the President the privilege to “have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors.” That’s how foreign policy was defined in the late eighteenth century, but the power to conduct this nation’s foreign policy is still in the hands of the President, not the military. Thank goodness!
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