Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Impending civil-military crisis?

April 22, 2009

Perhaps, but not from what you think. I ran across this article which I thought was interesting. It’s focus is military-civil relations and there’s a little insight into the usurper in chief’s MO.

From the (3-26-09) Fort Leavenworth LAMP, WILL KING reporting: [emphasis added]

A panel of experts met to discuss the future of civil-military relations. Dr. Richard Kohn, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill believes a “conflict in civil-military relations is coming soon, and is not a result of the presidential election.”

No, he didn’t mention the birth certificate or the dissension in the ranks because of it. Was he alluding to it? No idea.

“The Obama administration has taken dramatic steps to avoid a fight with the military,” Kohn said, noting that first lady Michelle Obama’s first official visit outside Washington, D.C., was to Fort Bragg, N.C.

He didn’t do so good at Camp Lejune when he telepromptered his fiipflop on Iraq. He only came out after the the National Anthem was sung by a lone female soldier. Coming out to “Hail to the Chief” like a foreign dignitary or King, who couldn’t be bothered with the pissant peasants. It was shocking. He didn’t even come out for the prayer. See this letter by a Marine present that day.

Next he mentions barry’s retention of Bush people so he would have someone to carry on the blame.

He highlighted the retention of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and nomination of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen for a second term, both holdovers from former President George W. Bush’s administration, as a sign to the rest of the military of respect for the senior military leadership and continuity during difficult wartime conditions.

And of course barry hedged his bets. It’s nice to see a) that someone noticed and b) was willing to say it out loud.

However, Kohn said President Barack Obama purposely sought out other former senior military leaders for his administration, including National Security Advisor retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, Secretary of Veterans Affairs retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, and Director of National Intelligence retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair.

“The president has arranged it so that he is free to ignore the advice of his uniformed chiefs and field commanders because he will have cover of General Jones by his side, and other senior military in his administration,” Kohn said, “and at the same time demonstrates that he has been reaching out to the military and wants to have military judgment.”

That is barry in a nutshell. Political expedience. Cover all sides of the issue, find the experts to tell him what to do, form a committee, talk talk talk, equivocate his words, make no decisions and then throw somebody selected for just that sole purpose under the bus. And then there’s the probarry media who lets him keep doing it.

He never admits he was wrong because “he was acting on the best advice of the best person with the best available information at the time”. He forgets that he was the one acting and the one who acts is the one who should be held accountable and he has not been held accountable for anything.

Specifics:

The four areas where Kohn sees potential civil-military problems in the future are in Afghanistan, the budget, gays in the military and the restructuring of military forces away from Cold War structure. He said budgetary issues would create the most problems of those four areas.



“The overlapping roles and missions, combat capability, organizational change and rethinking of personnel policies all lie just over the horizon,” Kohn said. “If the Obama administration steps up to these challenges, there will be considerable civil-military conflict.”

Steps up? barry needs to take some baby steps and stick by a decision - any decision - and then admit he was wrong all by himself. The closest he got was Tom Daschle and not until the fourth comment. And it didn’t stop him from picking another self-proclaimed (caught) tax cheat, Ron Kirk.

What type of Commander in Chief does this?

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