Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Times
March 24, 2008
Pg. 14
Michael Barone demonstrates a profound ignorance of the U.S. military officer corps and a shallow inability to get beyond the trite civil-military platitudes of the past ("Importance of Fallon's fall," Commentary, Tuesday).
First, his oblique claim that military officers, possessed of graduate degrees from liberal (by definition) educational institutions, have thereby become increasingly liberal is preposterous on its face. Anyone who has spent appreciable time around military officers today, especially those of senior rank, knows how nearly universal their conservative and Republican preferences are.
More to the point, in characterizing Adm. William Fallon's infelicitous outspokenness as insubordination, Mr. Barone overlooks the hidden quid pro quo of civilian control and political neutrality: In return for their silent compliance, those in uniform have every right to receive (and even demand) strategically sound direction (unsullied by ulterior partisan political motives) from strategically literate civilian overlords. Absent such strategic competence, the tacit social contract has been broken — by the civilians. That should call into play the other imperative for the military, almost totally ignored by the self-proclaimed experts on civil-military relations who presume to dispense canonical wisdom: The military should be expected to serve as an institutional check and balance to counter strategic illiteracy and incompetence as well as militaristic impetuosity from their civilian masters.
GREGORY D. FOSTER, Professor, National Defense University, Washington
Editor's Note: The op-ed by Barone appeared March 18, 2008.
March 24, 2008
Pg. 14
Michael Barone demonstrates a profound ignorance of the U.S. military officer corps and a shallow inability to get beyond the trite civil-military platitudes of the past ("Importance of Fallon's fall," Commentary, Tuesday).
First, his oblique claim that military officers, possessed of graduate degrees from liberal (by definition) educational institutions, have thereby become increasingly liberal is preposterous on its face. Anyone who has spent appreciable time around military officers today, especially those of senior rank, knows how nearly universal their conservative and Republican preferences are.
More to the point, in characterizing Adm. William Fallon's infelicitous outspokenness as insubordination, Mr. Barone overlooks the hidden quid pro quo of civilian control and political neutrality: In return for their silent compliance, those in uniform have every right to receive (and even demand) strategically sound direction (unsullied by ulterior partisan political motives) from strategically literate civilian overlords. Absent such strategic competence, the tacit social contract has been broken — by the civilians. That should call into play the other imperative for the military, almost totally ignored by the self-proclaimed experts on civil-military relations who presume to dispense canonical wisdom: The military should be expected to serve as an institutional check and balance to counter strategic illiteracy and incompetence as well as militaristic impetuosity from their civilian masters.
GREGORY D. FOSTER, Professor, National Defense University, Washington
Editor's Note: The op-ed by Barone appeared March 18, 2008.