SEPTEMBER 20, 2022
The Dangerous Civilian-Military Chasm In America
BY MELVIN GOODMAN
Several weeks ago, the mainstream media carried a statement from eight former secretaries of defense and five retired four-star generals that stated the obvious: military officers have a duty to support and defend the Constitution. The statement credited the “civil-military system” with the ability to “respond quickly to defend the nation in times of crisis.” On January 6, 2021, however, the civil-military system deliberated for hours while a seditious mob attacked the Capitol, the citadel of freedom in the United States. We still do not know who was responsible for this failure to act. Nor do we know who was responsible for deleting messages from the cell phones of high-ranking officials at the Secret Service, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.
The statement mentioned above was particularly weak in view of the fact that a year ago more than 100 retired U.S. general and flag officers signed an open letter that accused President Joe Biden of installing “a Marxist form of tyrannical government.” This partisan invective was signed by retired military officers who violated the norms of their profession and contributed to the erosion of healthy civil-military relations in the United States. It is particularly shocking that, at a time when American society is reeling from extreme partisan polarization, members of the retired military community have fallen prey to conspiracy myths.
One of the greatest weaknesses of presidential leadership over the past 60 years has been the lack of presidential experience in the military and the inability to control the military. Several weeks before his seminal Farewell Address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower told his senior advisers in the White House, “God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn’t know the military as well as I do.” His successors have been deferential to the military and too many of them have used military force to bolster their credentials. This has been a major factor in the expanded power of the military establishment.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/20/the-dangerous-civilian-military-chasm-in-america/
