Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

A Partisan Military?

Andrew Sullivan seems worried, as does Glen Greenwald, “about Malkinian rhetoric from a military public affairs officer. The drift toward a nakedly partisan military, operating primarily through partisan blogs and partisan journalists, is truly disturbing.”

Of course, it’s worrisome. Firm civilian control of the military has helped spare the United States a number of problems, ranging from the juntas of Latin America to the militarism of the Prussian General Staff. Yet, I wonder if it is fair to lay all the blame with the military.

Go back to the early days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, when “a top Army general complained that a White House aide had insulted him by saying that she did “not talk to” military personnel.” (LA Times 4/9/1993) A year later, the news media was still reporting that Clinton’s “record of draft avoidance and his early ill-fated effort to permit gays to serve openly in the military, the reported refusal of an unnamed White House aide to shake a general’s hand, and the tardy pace of Pentagon appointments heightened tension between the civilian and military leadership.” (Balt. Sun 12/28/1994)

Come forward a decade and you find Democratic Senator Dick Durbin comparing the conduct of US troops at Guantanamo to Nazis, which prompted the ADL to write Durbin an open letter stating, in part:

Whatever your views on the treatment of detainees and alleged excesses at the Guantanamo Bay facility, it is inappropriate and insensitive to suggest that actions by American troops in any way resemble actions taken by Nazis in their treatment of prisoners. Suggesting some kind of equivalence between their interrogation tactics demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his regime actually perpetrated.

It would hardly be surprising if some folks in the military started wondering whether it was really worth risking their lives to protect the freedoms of people who seem to hate them and the cultural milieu out of which the soldiers came. Especially those who have been exposed to the fever swamp of the comment section of some leading left-liberal blogs.

Maintaining civilian control of the military is a two way street. If the military is being Malkinized, maybe the Kosites of the world will find an explanation by looking at themselves in the mirror.

Update: What happened to the comments on this post? Here’s my stated policy:

On all of my blogs, I reserve the right to delete comments (or trackbacks to sites) that are off-topic, uncivil, obscene, racist, sexist, or just because I’m feeling cranky, and to ban those who make them.

When I checked this post and found a lot - not all - of posts that qualified as, at least, uncivil. Being in a cranky mood, I deleted them. In retrospect, I might have been a bit hasty. But, to borrow a favorite Ronald Reagan quote, I pay for this microphone.