Quote Originally Posted by Stu-6 View Post
This administration has gone out of their way to say that were listening to/relying on their military commanders since way before Petraus to the top job over there (whether the actually do is another story). To me it has been something of a cop out, sooner or later you have to realize where the buck really stops regardless of how much it has been past. The military has made plenty of mistakes with this but there is still only one commander in chief.
with only a rare exception in recent years like Eisenhower have little choice but to listen to their Commanders. Most have no military experience at all and if they have a little it may not be relevant to the task at hand. For instance, Bush and Rumsfeld have a teeny bit but they were Aviators with little knowledge of or appreciation for ground warfare. The man rersponsilbe to advise them militarily was the CJCS -- also an Aviator. They were three aviation centric folks and it has shown.

As long as we insist on the PC rotation of the CJCS and Goldwater-Nichols is not modified the problem will continue.

So this administration had no choice but to listen to the Commanders on the ground because the CJCS had no experience to speak to.

Thus, while your statement that there is only one Commander in Chief is sort of correct -- the Commander in Chief of CentCom, downgraded to Commander by Rumsfeld, was the de facto and de jure CinC concerned with the campaign -- may be a politically satisfying approach for you, it will also obscure the flaws that DoD perpetrated or allowed and if we are not to have any repetitions of such errors, those things need to be discussed.

The question I think is not who was overall responsible, that is obvious. The question is was the advice given by the Commanders on the ground correct so that proper policies could be formulated. My perception is that it was not and while I understand why this was so, I think it needs fixing -- and electing a new Commander in Chief or nailing the hide of this one to the wall will not fix the problem.

The domestic political aspects are for another forum, I think.